List Serves and Mailing Lists

What’s the best way to maintain a email list of people who you want to attend your events?

Why your Email Client is Not the Right Solution

Have you ever tried to maintain a large email list in Outlook or another email program? It can be difficult to do with twenty people… what if you wanted to manage several hundred?
You can imagine the difficulties. What if subscriber email addresses change? How do you manage people who want to start or stop receiving your email? If you accidentally include someone, they could accuse you of spamming them— nothing like an irate email exchange to brighten up your day!

Try a Listserve

A Listserve is automated email management software that quickly allows you to reach hundreds or even thousands of subscribers. Listserve software allows your target customer to subscribe and unsubscribe from the list. It also provides management functions such as:

1. A count/list of all subscribers
2. Reports on new subscribers and those who unsubscribe
3. Ability to include header/footer information in every message
4. Ability to ban certain email addresses or domains from subscribing to the list

The person who administers the list is the list admin.

Listserve Flavors

Listserves can operate in two different modes:

1. Announce only — an administrator is the only one who can send to the list. This type of list is used for Auction and Meeting announcements. Users cannot reply to the list.
2. Discussion Groups— any member of the list serve may reply to the list, and all members will receive the reply. This type of list is very useful for your Board of Directors or committees. Some listserve software allows subscribers to choose whether they want to receive each response individually or receive the journal version which rolls 20–40 replies into one email.

How do I get Listserve Software?

You have three options for getting access to Listserve software:

1. Web Hosting Companies— your hosting company may offer Listserve software. For example, 1and1.com and golivehost.com offer listserves you can use. 1and1 even offers a very nice newsletter management system as part of their control panel.
   
   
2. Install List Serve Software— if you host doesn’t offer Listserve software, give them a call (or email) to ask them if they allow you to set one up. Some hosts have severe security restrictions around email and may not allow it.
   
   
3. Use a List Serve Service— there are several web-based services you can use. Yahoo Groups are fee, but your subscribers will be peppered with ads as part of the message, which I think reflects poorly on your club. Other services such as listbot.com cost around $20 per month. I avoid these services. It is often cheaper to switch to web host that offers listserves than to use one of these services.

Popular Listserve Software

There are at least twenty different list serve products in use. From a practical standpoint, they operate very similarly. For the small volume an aquarium club uses— less than 1000 subscribers— performance is just fine for all of them. Generally, you can send 1000 emails in less than five minutes, and that is more than adequate for any society.

Majordomo is the granddaddy of all listserve software. Majordomo is written in the Perl language, which all Unix hosts and many Windows hosts can run. You can find out more information about Majordomo from http://www.greatcircle.com/majordomo/.

Manual Subscriptions

You should avoid manually subscribing people. It can get tiresome, and you can always refer them to the form on your website.

However, sometimes it is a good idea. If you have an event like an auction, you might include a checkbox asking attendees if they would like to be subscribed to your Club Event Notification list. This is a great way to build your marketing database.
You can manually subscribe a person through email commands or, if your host offers it, through a web-based form.

For Majordomo, you would send an email that looked like this to subscribe somebody:
            To: majordomo@lists.yourhost.com
In the body of the message, you would write:
            approve your_password subscribe society-meeting bob@aol.com

The code above would add the email address bob@aol.com to your society-meeting list

To unsubscribe someone, you’d simply replace subscribe with unsubscribe.

Automated Subscriptions

A better way to manage subscriptions is to have your users manage the subscription themselves via a web form on your society’s website.
A potential subscriber enters their name and email on a webform. They receive a confirmation email. When the potential subscriber replies, the listserve then adds them to the list. This step is necessary for security… otherwise somebody could subscribe people who did not want be part of the list.

Better hosting companies generate the HTML page with the form for you when you set up the list via their control panel. 1and1.com, which I recommend, make the process easy.

The code looks like this:

<form method="post" action="http://yourhost.com/cgi-bin/list-request.cgi">
<b>Don't miss our Auctions and events!</b>
Enter email below:<br>
<input type="text" name="email" size="21"> <input type="hidden" name="list" value="SOCIETY-MEETING"> <input type="hidden" name="request" value="SUBSCRIBE"><br>
<input type="submit" value="Subscribe"></p>
</form>

It’s important to put a link, or better yet the form itself, on the front page of your society’s website. Go to at www.gcca.net which is the site I manage for the Greater Chicago Cichlid Association. On the home page, I created two forms that allow site visitors to sign up for some announce-only listserves. There is a Meeting Announcement List and an Event Announcement List.

Best Practices for Using Announce-only Listserves

You can easily damage your society’s reputation and betry the trust of list subscribers if you misuse a listserve. Here are some things to keep in mind:

1. Stick to the Topic— if you have a Meeting Announcement list, only use it to announce meetings. Don’t send weekly updates on the spawning of your new wild bettas!
2. Frequency— Your subscribers expect infrequent emails. Your society’s Meeting Announcement list should only get one or maybe two messages per month. The more messages you send to an Announce-only list, the less valuable it becomes.
3. Proofread— It’s embarrassing to send out one incorrect email. If you send out five hundred, you are going to hear about from lots of people! Make sure dates, times and details are correct. Check your spelling and grammar. It is a good idea to have someone else proof the message.
4. Consistent Subject Line— Your list subscribers get lots of email. They need to be able to quickly pick out the message from your society. Keep it simple and short. For example: Betta Society Meeting this Saturday, June 11

Best Practices for Using Discussion Listserves

Discussion Listserves have their own set of unique problems:

• People get Emotional— Email is a bad way to resolve disputes. Folks will say things in an email that they would never say over the phone or to somebody’s face. When two people on the list are escalating a dispute, you, the list admin, will need to step in. You should recommend that the “combatants” pick up the phone to resolve the issue.
  
  
• Training the Users— Include a welcome message to your list that includes your expectations for behavior on the list. Email Universe has some great rules to follow at http://emailuniverse.com/list-etiquette/. You need to set the expectation with your subscribers about what is OK and what is not. For example, bad language, sexual references, derogatory and insensitive remarks, will offend people. You may need to delete these users.
  
  
• Lurkers— Many people subscribe to a list, but don’t actively participate. As list admin, your job is to encourage them to become active. At the least, you should remind the active members that the audience is larger than they think.
  
  
• Shillers— Some subscribers will use the lists as an opportunity to sell items or services. Depending on the nature of your list, it may really turn off your other subscribers.
  
  
• Off Topic Discussions— If you manage a discussion list about guppies, chances are that discussions about cichlids will not be welcomed by subscribers. Remind your subscribers to change the subject line of their message to include Off-Topic: or OT so that other subscribers can skip these messages. Alternatively, remind the offending user to privately email people instead.