Mailing List moved to Yahoo Groups
Due to typical problems with hosting of sites which may do mass emailings, the mailing list has been moved to Yahoo Groups.
The ChicagoFunNews newsletter has been self emailed for more than a decade. At first by CCs in a simple email client, later moved to a script from static list, then to database list and substitutions with batching. But ultimately even my best ISP eventually declared a limit of 200 emails per hour. At that time (mid 2008) time, the mailing list was some 5000+ addresses, which would thus require many hours to send. Bounces were processed, so all were presumed likely valid.
Faced with cessation of mailing, or buying a commercial service as other options, I choose to simply move mailing to an offsite group. This has further strong advantages such as additional exposure through that channel, freedom from subscription processing and bounce handling, and enhanced presumption of legitimacy. I still get to download the list anytime and control memberships, and could pay extra for freedom from ads.
The first several hundred key subscribers, those I perhaps knew personally or who had contributed content, I manually added directly. This must be done cautiously as it is a prime possible Yahoo complaint channel.
The remainder (some 4700 subscribers), were gradually emailed about the change, three times each, in batches over three weeks, requiring them to join themselves on Yahoo. Going further, the headline of the first issue mailed through Yahoo (week 579) was "IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED!". Of those, some 1400 did rejoin.
This is a loss of over 2/3 subscribers, but I'm content. Many many of the prior list were collected through forms which did not require a verify email response (not double opt-in). I believe this to have been an extremely useful filter, to retain only those who actually remember what they're subscribed to. But empire-wise, it's worth remembering what once was.
<PREV NEXT> FIRST LAST AUTO UP OFFSITE
2008.07.01