A Day to Forget….

Hello Everyone!

Yesterday… a day to forget or to definitely remember! I don’t know which.  I thought I was really accomplishing something great by upgrading to a new mail list manager. Everything seemed to look like it would work great. It had to work better than my manual system. Keeping everything a lot more current and quickly be able to reach everyone in the loop.

I loaded about 2000 addresses from our database of email contacts. Pressed the button and sent them to the system. About an hour later, the fire war broke out!

Let me  say this, there is not a problem with my mail manager. The problem was with me and the settings; I thought I had set up correctly. The program does everything and more than I expected. The situation stemmed from my settings on the system. “Mailman” Works Great!

I had the reply system set wrong. Terribly wrong! My first mail went out to all listed. There were about 20 or so subscribers that sent in corrections and requests to be removed. They attempted to do this by reply. The reply address I had set was for the mass mail send address. When they sent questions and requests they went out to everyone. This caused everyone to receive the 20 or so emails. They filled inboxes quickly and this made people upset. They wanted to get off the list quickly, so they replied too. Some also replied to subscribers email they had received thinking they had been sent the message by mistake, which went back to the sender and then to the entire group. Major panic started!  I shut down the list by emergency moderation but it takes hours to have the fire war of box to box to subside.

I sent a first message to apologize. The first one had the mass mail address as a reply address and anyone who sent complaints and removal requests by reply went to everyone's inbox.  I finally got that stopped and begged subscribers to stop replying. Wow what a day!

I lost about 400 disgruntled subscribers. I hope they come back… Please.

Some people were upset that they didn’t subscribe to the list. Wanted to know how they got on the list. Well every address in the database came from training registrations and emails or email registrations to our website at Forest Applications.

People were mostly upset about the flood of email. Rightfully so!  I am sorry for the inconvenience, I apologize! I will even sing and dance at your next wedding- but please don’t stay upset. Re-subscribe. Tell your friends to subscribe.

ChainPoint is going to be a great loop and link to anyone interested in outdoor power equipment. Chainsaw, mower, trimmer information and training will be connected on ChainPoint Connections that will not be found anywhere else on the web. Stay Connected!

You can subscribe by following this link: http://mail.forestapps.com/mailman/listinfo/chainpoint_forestapps.com  or go to our homepage at www.forestapps.com

Good Sawing and Connecting,

Tim Ard

President

Forest Applications Training, Inc.