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Exactly. And the average web user does not have the aversion that we (techies) do for email. Most people don't use RSS or Twitter so email is their primary medium for online communication.

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This was brought home for me vividly last year. I sent an email out for Halloween to a few hundred people, neglected to send one out in November, and got an email from a lady in Kansas asking if I could please resend the November newsletter because her Yahoo must have eaten it. People like getting emails?! People like getting my emails?!? The newsletters are nowhere near my best writing: here's this month's holiday, you should play bingo, here's how. But at least some people miss them when they don't get them.

I swear, there is so much we don't know that we don't know about our customers.

Thank you for pointing it out again. We are not our customers.

I'm now heading towards mailchimp to finish and put online my email collecting form.

'Your Mom' is one of the best customers on the web. I always keep that in mind.

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