Hi Ari, What mailing list software are you using? If you use something like Mail Chimp you can add forward tags to the mailing:
http://kb.mailchimp.com/article/how-can-i-add-a-forward-to-a-friend-link/ If you have a few big donors you can also get the list of friends off them and customise the mail blast so it looks a lot more personalised which can look professional. Thanks, Glen PS: I highly recommend MailChimp - Free for small lists and really affordable for bigger lists and to remove the branding. The web based email builder is really easy to use as well. > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 11:47:08 -0500 > From: Ari Davidow <aridavidow at gmail.com> > Subject: [MCN-L] Forwarding e-blasts > To: Museum Computer Network Listserv <mcn-l at mcn.edu> > Message-ID: > <CAF+xBDVKmjmmAehxcT7VOYGPVk5f7wzYAqg47v-oWzmw_M=eXA at mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > 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 >
