To Assume Makes an Ass of U and Me

In the past two or three weeks I seem to have received quite a number of emails and pieces of literature in the post that try to tell me what I think, like, do or want to do.  And it annoys me.  These people are assuming that they know me . . . and they're getting it wrong.

For example, I got an email a few days ago from an internet marketer.  It began: "I bet you take at least one family summer vacation each year, right?" Well, actually, no.  And it went on "But if you're like most ultra busy parents - you probably aren't really going out of your way to create real-world entrepreneurial activities and lessons and unique family bonding?"  Well, I may be ultra busy but I'm not a parent.   So wrong again.  

Now, it so happens that I both like and respect this marketer and I have bought courses from him in the past.  But, if I didn't, I suspect that this sort of thing would lead me to wonder about the quality of what he was selling . . . after all, if he can get so much wrong in a single email, how reliable would his teaching be?

Admittedly, he was promoting "a special event for highly successful entrepreneurs and their families" and he went on to say: "If you have kids (or grand kids, nieces, nephews, etc) ages 6-18 this it a great way to let them get a taste for business".  But what puzzles me is why, with all his experience, he didn't start off with the "If you have kids . . ." bit.  That way he would have avoided alienating people who might assume that he wasn't a very good marketer and would have avoided the risk of upsetting anyone who had lost a child, who had no contact with his or her children as a result of divorce, or who desperately wanted children but was unable to do so.

Writing good copy is not just about capturing the reader's attention and persuading them to buy something.  It's also about being honest and being sensitive to the reader's feelings.  So I believe that it is counterproductive to assume anything about the people who receive our emails.  All we really know about them is that they gave us their names and email addresses via our opt in pages because they wanted something we were offering.  We don't know anything else about them.  And if we imply that we do - and get it wrong - we're in danger of losing them.

We need to be sensitive.  Implying that someone is a parent when they're not could cause distress.  Similarly the phrase "I bet you take at least one family summer vacation each year" could be hurtful.  Although some people do, indeed, take one or two holidays a year, there are still some who can't afford it.  And when we consider that a lot of people who start dabbling in internet marketing do so because they have lost their jobs or because the're having difficulty making ends meet, the assumption that everyone can afford holidays implies that the writer is out of touch with his readers.  Years ago, when I was working in a psychiatric hospital, we used to have a meeting of all the patients on the ward every morning.  One day, one of the women mentioned that she hadn't had a holiday for several years because she couldn't afford it.  To which one of the other patients (a very well-heeled and rather haughty woman) said in an amazed tone of voice "Can't afford a holiday?  I've never heard of that.  I have friends who go to Majorca three or four times a year."  All these years later, I still remember the distress of the first patient.

Have You Heard of URIBL?

Have you heard of URIBL? Well, maybe you have . . . but I hadn't until last week. It describes itself as "a real time URL blacklist served via DNS to identify unsolicited bulk and commercial email." And that's something, I imagine, that most of us would applaud. People can submit sites for inclusion on the list. This makes it harder for emails from that site or mentioning that site to get through spam filters.

However, I found out about URIBL not because I wanted to report a site . . . but because I discovered I was ON it!!! I was sending a newsletter from my autoresponder to my mailing list, telling them about my previous post on this blog: What do You Need to be a Successful Internet Marketer? When I'd finished writing it, I checked it and clicked the 'spam' button which tells you (based on a number of factors) how likely your email is to get through people's spam filters (bearing in mind, as I've moaned about before, that on Microsoft Outlook, even if you whitelist addresses, they can still get shoved into the spam folder).

Everything about my newsletter was fine . . . everything, that is, except for the fact that I was blacklisted by URIBL. This was the first I'd heard of URIBL. I had no idea what it was . . . and I was worried because, although it didn't seem to mean that my emails wouldn't get through, it reduced their chances. Now, unfortunately, the message about this on my autoresponder was in lower case, and I read it as URLBL. So when I tried Googling it, nothing came up. Not knowing quite what to do about it, I put it on one side until I could ask someone who might know the answer.So I continued with a piece of writing I was doing - and then went to www.tiny.cc to shorten a link I wanted to insert. (If you've never used Tiny, I'd recommend it - you put in your link, click a button, and your new link comes up. If you register (which is free), you can also keep a record of all your abbreviations, so that you can use them again.)

Well, as I say, I went on to Tiny to shorten a link to this blog. And a big red sign came up saying "Check terms and conditions". Which I did. And I found that Tiny won't shorten links to sites that are blacklisted on URIBL. Now it was getting serious! But at least I did now have the correct title of the site and was able to find it. I checked and, yes, I was on their list. Fortunately, it's fairly easy to ask to be removed - you put in your website url and explain why the listing is incorrect. I told them that I sent emails only to people who had given them to me through my opt-in box, that all my emails have an 'unsubscribe' link at the bottom, and that I had never sent an unsolicited email in my life.

I was taken off the list very quickly - although they didn't let me know; I had to go to the site and look. But it left me wondering how on earth they could think that a blog hosted by Blogger was capable of sending out bulk unsolicited email. So I had another look at the website and worked out what must have happened. Under 'List Information' it states: "URIBL lists domains that appear in spam, NOT where they were sent from." Which, to me, seems a very odd way of doing it.

So, why am I going on about this? Well,there is a lesson, I think, to be learned from it. I have to assume that someone on my mailing list received one of my emails in which I gave a link to my blog, and for some reason that person thought it was spam. And this could be because I've not been sending out emails very frequently . . . perhaps every ten days or so, which means it's quite easy for a recipient to forget that he or she actually signed up to the list.

When someone signs in to my opt-in box, to acquire the four books on internet marketing that I'm offering (have you got yours yet?), they are taken to a 'thank you' page where they're told that they will receive an email explaining how to download them, and they're given the address it will come from and asked to whitelist it. But, clearly, that's not enough. We obviously need to keep reminding them who we are - and, while not advocating sending an email a day, perhaps three a week might be best!

I'm left wondering how many sites get wrongly listed . . . and why a site can be blacklisted on a single complaint without, apparently, any investigation. At least they make it easy to get off again.

Oh to have a printer now that April's here!

My printer has packed up.  I can't complain - it's done valiant service.  It wasn't an expensive model - an hp deskjet actually - and I must have had it at least ten years.  I've ordered a new one but, what with Easter being this weekend, it won't be arriving until Tuesday.  So, meanwhile, I'm without a printer.  And I've had quite a lot that needs printing.

I suppose the sensible thing would have been to stick the files onto a memory stick and then load them onto my husband's computer and print from there.  But it seemed easier just to email the files to him.  Hmm . . .

He (for reasons best known to himself) uses rocketmail.  I've tried a Yahoo mail account before now and discovered that it often took days for something to arrive, if it arrived at all.  So when half an hour had passed and my emails to husband still hadn't arrived, I looked for other ways of getting them there.  (As to why I didn't use a memory stick at this juncture, your guess is as good as mine . . . but I didn't.)

So at this point it turned into a major operation.  I emailed the files to a hotmail account that I use occasionally.  Then I shut down microsoft outlook on my computer and sent the files from the hotmail account to my own email account.  Husband then logged into my email account via mail2web and - glory hallelujah - downloaded the files onto his machine.  What a palaver!

Meanwhile I have a memory stick sitting on my desk, looking at me reproachfully!

I shall miss my old printer - it was so simple to use, had good print quality, was fast and would print double-sided (although this was something I didn't discover until I'd had it quite a while).  I hope the new printer will be as good - although I doubt it.  I read numerous reviews of a wide variety of printers and this was the one that had the fewest negative reviews.   Although, come to think of it, there was one that had 100% positive reviews but it's no longer available - go figure!

Big Brother is Watching You . . . the protest begins!

There has been, as you might expect, an outcry against the UK Government's proposals to monitor our 'phone calls and emails and the websites we visit.  Yesterday, the campaigning online community Avaaz started a petition addressed to the Prime Minister, deputy Prime Minister and Home Secretary, in which it says:
As concerned citizens we urge you to immediately drop plans for an Internet big brother bill (Communications Capabilities Development Programme). Our democracy and civil liberties are under threat from the excessive and unnecessary internet surveillance provisions without any judicial oversight in this bill. We hope you will protect our privacy and keep your election promise to "reverse the rise of the surveillance state"
When I looked a few moments ago, over 38,500 people had signed it.  Interestingly, not all of these are from the UK.  People in other countries are clearly concerned that, if the UK Government gets away with this, their own Governments may start to get ideas.  I have a feeling that this petition may raise many more than the 50,000 signatures that Avaaz is looking for.

Big Brother is Watching You . . . if the Government has anything to do with it!

There was a story today on the one o'clock news that the UK Government wants to give security officials the power to monitor telephone, email and internet use.  The idea is that it will help combat terrorism.  My immediate question is . . . how?  Is it really likely that terrorists will allow their location or identity to be discovered online when there are easily available - and perfectly legal - ways of masking one's IP address?  Is it likely that it will be possible to monitor who is calling whom when one can buy a mobile 'phone for under £15, buy £10 worth of calls, pay for it all with cash and chuck the 'phone away when one has finished with it?

Maybe I'm missing the finer points of the proposed legislation - although Heather Blake, from Reporters Without Borders, is quoted as saying "Those who commit these crimes, will find other ways. They always do."  She has called on the government to release any data it has which shows that increased web monitoring will help in the fight against terrorism and has pointed out that, if the legislation goes through, countries such as Syria and Iran, will make what we do in the UK and excuse for the surveillance that they use.

Trefor Davies, a member UK's Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA) board, doesn't seem too enthusiastic about it either, pointing out that more people are likely to use free proxies, many of which are infected with malware.  And the icing on the cake is that the monitoring is likely to cost around £2 billion pounds to run for 10 years.

Over and above all this, though, my main concern is for people who have a legitimate reason for keeping private who it is that they are 'phoning or emailing.  As a doctor and counsellor, I'm thinking particularly of those people who contact crisis helplines or specialist counselling agencies.  Making that first contact is hard enough without the thought that somebody, somewhere might just happen onto the fact that you have been ringing the Samaritans or an agency that offers rape counselling.

 I have a feeling that this 'brilliant idea' is going to go the way of that other 'brilliant idea' which was also going to cost the taxpayer a small fortune - the ID card.  As I remember, it was proposed by the last Government as a sure way of combatting terrorism and illegal immigration, was vigorously opposed by large sections of the public   . . . and was then quietly dropped.  I hope I'm right.
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