Photography Monthly Newsletter from Photo.net
by Josh Root; revised July 2008
Photo.net Monthly Newsletter
Starting in October 2007 Photo.net will be delivering a monthly
newsletter to its users. The purpose of the newsletter is to bring the
best of photo.net to our users' inbox. It will inform them of new site
content, draw attention to some talented photo.net members, and
highlight some of the more interesting tips, events, photos, and
information posted to the site every month. With thousands of new
forum and gallery posts every day, it would be impossible to keep
track of everything on photo.net. So this is the photo.net team's way
of helping with that problem.
Previous Newsletters
Things that might be confusing
Photo.net uses a company called Silverpop to mail out the
newsletter. Due to the sheer size of the photo.net mailing list we
have to be very careful about the way we send out mail. If we weren't,
all mail coming from the photo.net servers would quickly get tagged as
spam. This would be particularly bad because new user email, topic
notifications, email requests, and password reminders would all be
blocked as a result. This would, understandably, cause a huge logjam
of problems. This is where Silverpop comes in. They are used to
working with email and internet service providers to prevent
legitimate email from being blocked. Silverpop does mailings for
companies like Buy.com, Golfsmith, Mazda, and Jetblue. They are a
well-respected business working with Fortune 500 companies, not merely
a fly by night spam-marketer.
What does this mean for you, the user? It means that a few things
in the newsletter are going to be more suspicious than you would
probably want them to be:
- Some users have received the newsletter and others have
not.
This is not because of any sort of priority mailing list. It is
simply because even with a company like Silverpop helping us, we
cannot send to our full mailing list at once. This has to be done in
stages over a few days. As people have varying email delivery speeds
and a variety of different spam catching security systems, there is
bound to be a wide range of time in which users will receive the
mailing. As we gradually delete the out-of-date email addresses and
update the list to reflect those who have unsubscribed, the overall
delivery time should become faster.
- The newsletter is sent from a "no reply" email address.
This is a necessity due to the fact that without it our mail
servers would crash as a result of all the bounced email from
addresses that no longer exist. Within each newsletter we will list
the contact email (contact@photo.net) for our Director of Community,
Josh Root, so that he can help with any related issues that may
occur.
- The "from" address is different from the actual sender.
While the sender email is listed as "noreply@photo.net", those who
look into the email header information will notice that the actual
sender is from a "mkt691.com" domain. Again, this is part of the
system that email-marketing companies like Silverpop use to keep the
photo.net domain from being accused of spam activities.
- Newsletter links do not point to photo.net.
The links in the email (including the "opt-out" link) do not direct
you to http://photo.net, rather they point to
"http://links.mkt691.com". This is another part of the service that
Silverpop provides. These dedicated links allow them to tell us how
many people are actually using the email and how many are choosing to
unsubscribe. If we found out that 90% of our users did not want to see
a photo.net email, we would know to not bother in the
future. Conversely, if we found out that people particularly liked one
aspect of the newsletter (the "Featured Member" for example) we would
know to add similar content in the future.
- Does this mean that photo.net is selling user names and
email?
Absolutely not. Please read the Photo.net Privacy Policy
and be assured that we will never sell or give away your personal data
to other companies.
Known Issues (as of 6/22/08)
It was inevitable that the first editions of the newsletter would
have a few bugs in them. This was our first try at something like this
and good old Murphy's Law
states that you aren't going to avoid every problem. Depending on what
is on your list of "worlds most aggravating things" these problems may
have raised your blood pressure by a few points, or just have been
something to chuckle at. In any case, we are working to solve/improve
these problems as quickly as we can.
- Non-HTML email readers may see a blank email.
For the current issues of the newsletter, we do not have a
text-only email. If you are using any of the common email programs or
web-based email providers, you should be able to switch your view from
"plain" to "html" and have it display correctly. If you are using a
Unix or other pure-text email reader, we do not have a solution for
you right now. But you can view the current and recent past
newsletters by clicking on the links at the top of this page. Do keep
in mind that the unsubscribe link will not work when viewing via that
method.
- To unsubscribe, you must click on an "http://links.mkt691.com"
link.
Many people have had bad experiences with spam and their fake
"opt-out" links. We assure you that it is not a plan to cause you to
get more spam. As explained above, Silverpop is a real company with a
very large list of respected clientele. They cannot afford to screw up
something like this by selling to spam lists. That having been said,
we are working to get the newsletter "opt-out" integrated into the "my
workspace" area of photo.net. This would allow people to turn off the
newsletter from a familiar and comfortable interface.
- Users receiving multiple newsletter emails.
Due to the fact that photo.net has been around for over a decade,
many of our long time users have ended up with more than one account
during their time on photo.net. Since each individual account has to
have an original email address, users may end up seeing more than one
copy of the newsletter. Especially if they have set up their old email
addresses to forward to their new address.
Text and pictures ©2007 Josh Root.
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, October 26, 2007; 10:47 P.M. 
