Group Email

All members of the Company of Friends can use the group email lists by selecting the option in their personal profiles. Mail will only be sent to those who have chosen to participate. To email everyone associated with your local or special interest, just send a message to the group's email address on the home base or by adding a post in the Discussions area. (The Help tool will better explain how to do this.)

Remember the anti-spam guideline in the CoF FAQ: DO NOT use the email discussion lists to blatantly promote your business or redistribute online chain letters. If you're not sure whether you should send something, you probably shouldn't. Report all instances of potential misuse to your local coordinator. Many groups determine their own additional list usage guidelines.

Local coordinators will send occasional emails to everyone in their group to update members on events and activities. All CoF members associated with a group receive broadcast emails, even if they have opted out of the normal group email discussions. You will also get occasional emails from Heath Row, the Fast Company community coordinator.

The Toronto CoF distributed the following mailing list guidelines, which might provide helpful tips to make groups' mailing lists more productive.

• Make the subject as clear as possible. People should be able to guess the essence of your message just from reading the subject. Some newsgroups and lists even use additional header bits: ??? for questions, !!! for action requests, TIPS for suggestions, etc. as additional cues.
• Write in inverted pyramid style. Get to the point immediately. Most of us have been trained to write in 'pyramid' style: evidence, arguments, conclusion. Turn that model on its head when writing on line.
• Quote only what is absolutely essential. Respect people's time. It's bad form to attach the entire message in quoted form to a reply. The general Netiquette rule is to quote only relevant portions of any previous post, and if so to quote as little as possible in order to convey the meaning and context.
• If it's long, break it up. If a message is long or involved, use clear sub-headings. E-mail doesn't read as easily as paper, so messages need to be shorter or broken into chunks.
• Never send in anger. Fear, anger... the path to the dark side are they. If you are at all emotional when writing a message or reply, hold it for 24 hours before sending. Then re-read it to be sure. Without subtle conversational or observational cues, it's easy to send a message you'll regret later. This is bad when sending to one person, much worse when sending to a public list.

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