Adam’s Mailing List and Commitment Devices
Yesterday, I announced that I’ve set up a mailing list. You may have noticed an unusual feature to the announcement: a public commitment to it being low volume, with a defined penalty ($1,000 to charity) for each time I break the rule.
You might even be wondering why I did that.
In the New School, we study people, and their motivations. Knowing that introspection is a fine place to start, a poor place to end and an excellent source of mis-direction, I talked to several people who seem like the sort I want on my list about their experience with mail lists.
The first thing I heard was fairly unanimous: people don’t subscribe because they get spammed.
The perception is that many people who create lists like this abuse those lists. So to address that, I’m using a commitment device: a promise, made publicly in advance. By making that promise, I give myself a reason to hold back from over-mailing, and I give myself a way to constrain helping others with my list. (But not eliminate such help — perhaps that’s a bad idea, and it should be just about those new things where I’m a creator. Would love your thoughts.)
The second issue I heard is that unsubscribing tends to feel like an interpersonal statement, rather than a technical one (such as “I get too much email.) So I promise not to be offended if you unsubscribe, and I promise to be grateful if you tell me why you unsubscribe. This is why I love Twitter: I control who I listen to. It’s also why I think the “unfollow unsubscribe bug” (real or imagined) was such a good thing. It provided a socially acceptable excuse for unfollows.
Are there other factors that hold you back from signing up for a mailing list like mine? Please let me know what they are, I’d love to address them if I can.