Mailing List usage guidelines
Thursday Morning Dialogue maintains an email mail list service that makes it convenient to send messages to all members. Every member and members who are on their first year of Leave of Absence (LOA) are automatically subscribed to this list.
Send questions, suggestions and comments about the TMD mailing list to admin@thursdaymorning.org.
Types of messages that are appropriate for this list:
- Announcements about TMD events or activities
- Sharing info about events or activities that may be of interest to TMD members
- Announcements about TMD members
- Requests for info or assistance from a TMD member
Types of messages that are not appropriate for this list:
- Commercial messages for sales or business purposes
- Solicitations on behalf of a third-party
- Frequently forwarded messages, such as chain letters, warnings or jokes
- Messages or chat between individuals that would be more appropriate for private email
- Inflammatory messages or personal attacks
Here’s how to use this list as a sender:
1. Address your message to tmd@thursdaymorning.org
2. Send your message from the same address that is registered in your profile with Thursday Morning Dialogue. (This is also the same address you use to log in to www.thursdaymorning.org.) If you send from a different email address, your message will not be delivered.
3. Provide a useful subject line. If the subject of the message is not about TMD business or activities, begin your subject line with “(Off-Topic)”. [TMD] will automatically be inserted to preface your subject line.
4. Don’t forward messages. Forwarded HTML email messages will often be delivered with some broken formatting and links. It is best to not forward a message and, instead, compose your own message. Copy and paste the necessary info from the original message.
5. Don’t add non-TMD members to the address fields in your message.
6. Don’t attach files, including photos and images. Attachments are allowed with some restrictions, but adding them may impact deliverability. It’s best to ask the web committee to post the document to the website where it can be available to all members. If you must attach a file, save your file as a .pdf.
Image files (e.g., .png, .jpg, and .jpeg) will be blocked. Files with these extensions are blocked from sending for the protection of our members: exe, bat, cmd, com, pif, scr, vbs, cpl.
7. Limit linked text—ideally to only one. Multiple text links will trigger spam filters from both the sending and receiving email services and may prevent delivery of your message. Instead, ask the web committee to add the links to an event posting or other part of the website (if they’re about TMD stuff) so you can just advise recipients to visit the TMD website.
8. When our listserv provider receives your message, you’ll be sent an automated confirmation message.
9. Delivery of your message may take minutes or hours, depending on how much processing our service requires to “scrub” the message to help ensure it is safe for our recipients. For fastest delivery, please follow these guidelines.
Here’s how to use this list as a recipient:
1. If you respond to a message, do not “Reply to All”. Instead, respond only to the Sender.
2. Depending on the email client you use to read your messages, the “From” line may include this phrase, “sent on behalf of”. This is a function of Sender ID-compliance, which ensures that the sender’s identity is transparent to you. Email sent to tmd@thursdaymorning.org is sent from a third-party’s email servers (Blue Host).
3. Images in the Sender’s email signature (if they use one) will be converted to attachments. Ignore these.
Other guidelines
The list is more effective when the messages are of value to more recipients, so these guidelines are meant to help ensure the list is as effective as possible.
1. Before using the list, consider if your subject will be of interest to most recipients, or only a few. If the latter, consider sending your message directly to the few likely interested recipients.
2. If the message is a forwarded email, take a moment to review and update the subject line to ensure it is relevant to the TMD list.
3. Avoid sending a message about a certain “Off-Topic” subject too often. As a general rule of thumb, limit it to once per month. Don’t resend the message and don’t send reminders.
4. Limit solicitations for donations or contributions to once per year.
5. If you send a message to promote another event or organization, include info about how a TMD member can subscribe directly to the third-party’s list.