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I've just bought NS pro and am just testing it. With the forward to a friend feature, unless I'm mistaken, when the email arrives it comes with no information as to why it was sent to that particular person. In fact, if as is good practice, you include the person's email somewhere in the email by saying, "you subscribed with email address xxx. If you wish to unsubscribe click here, etc', then the forwarded-friend receives a completely misleading email and it stands a serious chance of being regarded as spam, because they will probably know they have not subscribed at all.
Furthermore, when they go to unsubscribe, there will be no entry for them to unsubscribe from. clicking on the link or pasting it in the browser gets them "this link has expired", leading them to believe there is no way of preventing themselves from getting further unsolicited emails, as they are not in the database to unsubscribe from. In fact, as it stands it is worse than an individual forwarding an email directly from their own mailbox, because at least then the forwarded friend would reaslise who it had come from.
I think using this feature as it is could unwittingly cause websites serious problems and have a completely counter-productive effect at the moment because - unless I've misread the documentation - there is no way to let the forwarded friend know that a SPECIFIC friend thought they would find it interesting to read. In my opinion, for it to be a benefit rather than cause unintended problems, the following enhancements need to be made:
1) the link to 'forward to a friend' needs to include the identity of the forwarder so that the page on the website knows who is doing the forwarding. The webpage should tell the forwarder that their identity will be included as the forwarder, and that the person won't receive any other emails unless they confrim subscription.
3) When the friend fowarding is requested, an entry needs to be included in the database as if they have subscribed and are waiting to be confirmed. If their email is already in the database, the forwarding is declined with a message to the forwarder saying they are already in the database.
3) If the new email address is not in the database then the forwarding request is accepted.
4) The forwarded email needs to have a line at the beginning that says something like "XXXXXX using email address YYYY is a subscriber to our website and recently received this newsletter. They thought you'd find it valuable too, so they requested one be sent to you. However, as you are not already a subscriber and we don't wish to send you unsolicited mail, if you wish to receive any further newsletters from us you will need to confirm you interest in getting further newsletters from us by clicking on this link (normal 'confirm subscription' link). If you don't wish to receive any more newsletters from us, you don't have to do anything. Also, now that you've been forwarded one newsletter directly from us, no-one else will be able to to if you simply leave your subscription unconfirmed.
Does that make sense? I had an experience recently with a website I'd inherited from a previous owner: A year previously he'd sent out an email to a large number of people with their email addresses in CC rather than BCC (which was a mistake) linking to a new article. One of the recipients, an irregular and naive internet user, had recently replied-to-all with a genuine question, including the previous content and link in the email. This was reported as spam and my bluehost account was shutdown automatically which resulted in several websites going offline. It took a day and quite a bit of effort to get to the bottom of it and persuade them of the innocent nature of the cause. Unfortunately, the current version of 'forward to a friend' is likely to make that situation much worse because there's no record of why they were sent the email and no information in the email to say who initiated it to be sent, making it look totally as if the website is just spamming.
In fact, because of these potential complications, it might be an idea to advise people not to use the 'forward to a friend' feature until those kind of changes are made. |