"Karen Lopez, I.S.P." wrote:
> [...]
> In my case, my goal is to get my domain (company) name in front of as
> many database and architecture professionals as possible. My target
> customer is an IT professional in a shop with an IT budget in the tens
> of millions of dollars. This target audience frequently leads to
> shops that have very specific and closed standards for what e-mail
> clients a subscriber can use. For instance, one client of mine, for
> whatever reason, is still stuck in a Windows 3.1, very old cc:Mail
> environment. They are forbidden from using any other client on a
> company machine. Another shop forbids attachments. Yet another
> forbids e-mails with the word "list" in the address line or header.
> Another forbids e-mails with more than 10 recipients.
>
> I could do all the nudging, pleading, and demanding that I wanted to,
> but they will not be able to change. I have made a decision based on
> cost, benefit, and risk to not exclude them from my lists or to
> implement features that might automatically exclude them.
I have this situation come up a number of times, most frequently with
subscribers at government sites. Since practically everyone -- even in
Stone-Age IT shops -- has Web access these days, albeit via a firewall,
proxy, external service, etc., I have had a lot of success in persuading
people to use a Web-based mail service like HotMail, Yahoo mail, or
Netscape Netcenter. And that way they will have the message right there
at work, too.
These people don't *want* to be in the Stone Age, since they can't get
personal mail with attachments or whatever, so the Web-based mail
services have been very popular. I like them too, since even though
HotMail sometimes has a bad day and eats its babies, delivery to the big
Web mailers is usually much smoother than to the Stone Age shops. (For
example, I had a reader at a certain government agency which shall
remain nameless -- suffice it to say you might associate their name with
"April 15th" -- whose mail started bouncing with regularity on Friday
afternoons. Apparently the sysadmin or whatever passes for talent there
would turn off the incoming mail server when he or she left for the
weekend, because after all, there was nobody to receive mail over the
weekend, right? D'oh!!!)
HotMail can be your friend in this sort of case.
--
Michael C. Berch
[EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
