We have just been through our annual trauma of getting an invite out to our annual luncheon. The problem lies with message forwarding. Here are some truisms:
1. If you send the information in a JPEG, no matter what happens (assuming that the image isn't filtered out), people can read it, and it will look as you intended. They won't be able to cut and paste, they won't be able to add it to their calendars, etc., but they can read and print it (assuming that they aren't using a mobile device that has enough bandwidth and doesn't have too small a screen). 2. If you point people to the "forward to a friend" button (which people seem to miss, anyway), they discover that they are limited to 3 or 5 forwards/hour--an alleged anti-spam setting (I say "alleged" because many more sends could be allowed per hour to meet human needs and still avoid worries of spam) 3. If you encourage people to forward using their regular email client, it may get mangled--and is especially likely to get mangled on forwards of that forwarded email. As opposed to these options, we have just a few big donors who want to forward the e-vite to just a few dozen of their best friends, something that cannot be usefully accommodated. So, we have gone with option (3), encouraging people to include something in their forwarding notes that "to send this on, use the "tell a friend' link at the bottom of this email so that you are forwarding a fresh copy of the message." We'll see what happens. How do other people handle this? ari
