On Wednesday, March 26, 2003, at 11:42 AM, Brad Templeton wrote:
It is a more interesting question if, "Ok, sales staff, I want you to
all
write personal thank-you letters to all of your customers, and don't
cut
and paste text in any of them" is a mass mailing or not. Fortuantely
it's
rare enough (and inherently low volume enough) that I am not worried
about
including it in definitions.
However, "Have the computer send a mailing to all customers with
recommendations
based on their past purchases" is a mass mailing, even though each
message
is different. It's not a spam, though, because these are customers.
Is it? Even if only 20% of the message content is common?
I'm not talking about adding "Dear [[ first name ]] [[ last name ]]" to
the top and calling it personalized; that's really not.
Where this stuff is headed is in that direction, too. from bulk (50,000
pieces of email, all alike -- the e-newsletter model) to mass (50,000
pieces of email, personally addressed but quite similar, sort of like
the e-newsletter with an auto-pen (smirk)), to, well, something. Not
sure what term to give it, but it's 50,000 individual emails that work
from some template but which are customized to the specifics of the
customer.
To throw an analogy to the wolves, the difference is, well, McDonalds
(bulk), Subway (mass), and your local italian restaurant (where
personal email is your home kitchen). It's still turning out volume
cooking, but...
_______________________________________________
Asrg mailing list
Asrg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg