Uneasy Rhetoric

If you belong to any nonprofit organizations that communicate via email, you’ve probably seen a link you could click to “forward this important message to a friend,” or “tell a friend about how great the Society for the Preservation of Rubber Duckies is.”

Kari Chisholm posts about a question and its answer: must the CAN-SPAM law apply to a “tell-a-friend” email? According to the FTC, the official answer is no. Read the ruling.

This is a logical answer. People forward all sorts of email. If a real person is thinking about me while reading a missive from the ACLU, and decides to send it to me with a note saying “thought you might want to read this,” that isn’t spam. It may be true that I didn’t want to see it, but it still isn’t spam. Even if the organization includes instructions on subscribing to their email updates, I still don’t think that it’s spam.

However, if the organization captures my email address and sends me stuff, they’ve become a spammer because I have not explicitly requested that they send me information.

For many organizations, “address harvesting” is a time-tested method for building one’s mailing list. But that’s postal lists, and people still read their junk mail. Although we all complain about the junk mail we receive, junk mailers have not received either the attention or the level of ire that email spammers have, and this is probably because email spam often goes beyond the pale, advertising products and services one does not always see in one’s mail box. Also, there is a certain visceral satisfaction to having a full mail box and to throwing out junk mail.

In the absence of address harvesting, how should organizations build their email lists? There are many ways including but not limited to the following:

1) Make sure you have a tell-a-friend feature. Even if you only get a handful of forwards and one or two new subscribers, it’s worth it.

2) Every one of your staff members should be trained to plug your organization’s email update list. Constantly. To everyone and their dog.

3) Have a web-form for getting more information about the organization. Duh.

4) Remember to give people something to do. “Tell your representative you’re pissed off! And become a friend of the Organization of the Righteously Pissed Off and get email updates so you’ll know other things that will piss you off enough to tell your representative.” This works better for political organizations, but I’m sure there are other iterations for other organizations.

5) Don’t call people subscribers if you can get away with it. They are members or friends. Always. They are a part of your community.

6) Embrace RSS. Granted, this won’t get you new friends (subscribers) for your email list, but it will get you new friends (subscribers) for your organization. Don’t be afraid to include the occasional pitch in your feed, just don’t go overboard. Advertising is already starting to appear in syndicated feeds. And always make sure people know they can get even more information back on your website - which has all that membership (subscription) information on it. They can’t get more information? Shame on you. You get an F and a “please rewrite.”