Announcement Lists Vs. Discussion Lists

Promotional Skills for The Chronically Amateur
(How to Get Your Message to the American Sheeple)

Part 10: Announcement Lists Vs. Discussion Lists
by Shonda Ponder

© 2002, Shonda Ponder

Some people confuse announcement lists with discussion lists. Here I'll try to be brief in explaining the difference between the two.

An announcement list is simply that: a list that is used for making special announcements. Most organizations use such lists to relay action alerts or special announcements concerning upcoming events, or simply announcing what is new on their web site. For web sites that update more than once per day, it is good to wait until the very end of the day to make any announcement.

Most people who will sign up to your lists do not want to get a barrage of emails every day. Yes, the information is good. Yes the information is important. But for those who only have a limited amount of time to spend on the internet, deleting hundreds of messages a day is not an option.

Discussion lists are great for think tanks who like to exchange emails concerning a project or idea. When you have a substantial amount of subscribers to your discussion list, this effort can sometimes be overwhelming for new recruits, who struggle to keep up with what each message is referring to. So, you must make sure that your discussion list stays on topic, or is at least informational in its content.

Some new recruits will join a discussion list without understanding that the list is meant to support group participation and exchange of emails. This could cause them to want to unsubscribe quickly, due to the amount of emails they will receive. When this happens, rather than be angry at them, try to find out why they are unsubscribing, and then offer to sign them up to your announcement list, which they may be able to handle better.

It is always better to try to hang on to your recruits than to let them go away angry.

In order to insure that each recruit is signing up to the list that they feel comfortable with, make sure you have included on your subscription page a description of each list, and how many emails they can expect to receive (approximately). This way, they will have no excuse not to know that the list that they will sign up to will be either high or low volume.

Another good strategy is to build your list with a company that allows you to put messages in a digest form. Some email list companies have a feature that allows you to click a button that will automatically change the format in which you receive emails into a once-daily digest. This way, if your recruit wants to stay abreast of the discussions, they can opt to receive just one email per day with all the latest discussions included in it, rather than have each email mailed individually.

Tailoring your message to fit what your recruits can handle allows you to be able to individualize each recruits' talents to your own benefit. Remember, not everyone is alike, nor is everyone pleased by the same things. In order to accomplish your goals, you will have to learn to do it in such a way that makes other people willing to work with you to the best of their ability.

This is Part 10 of "Promotional Skills for the Chronically Amateur"

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