By Laura Haight
DFW Communications Director

With 8000 members spread out from Bangor to Santa Cruz, DFW uses email as the most efficient way to communicate. These messages include monthly newsletters, donation acknowledgements, tax receipts and other messages.

Dining for Women is very aware of the flood of emails all of us receive on a daily basis. To that end, in 2013 we significantly reduced our communications. Most months, the average member receives one email from us – The Dish; chapter leaders get two with the CL Newsletter. We have consolidated what used to be separate emails for new programs, trips or products into these monthly communications.

Occasionally, we have special events in your area or nationally – such as our 2013 conference that do deserve a separate email. But those are the exception and no longer the rule. And we do currently send our donation receipts, acknowledgements and statements out through our direct email service.

As a subscriber, when you receive emails from Dining for Women, you have three options and each one has a consequence – for both of us.

• You can unsubscribe from the email list. When you do this, your name and email address are removed from our account and we cannot add it back. We are legally prohibited from emailing you again – not even to send you donation receipts or statements. The only way you can get back on our list is by resubscribing yourself.
• You can report our email as spam. This can have serious implications and unintended consequences. Spam reports are monitored by your internet service provider, our email marketing company and potentially your company. This can result in DFW being blacklisted – a move that blocks our emails from getting to not only you but every other person on the same domain or customer of the same ISP.
• You can delete the email or – even share it with a friend. Word of mouth and sharing — from social media to emails – is an important way to spread the word about Dining for Women. Remember, sharing an email message with a friend does not add them to our email list. They will not get any emails from us unless they choose to. But you may be exposing them to something they’d be interested in.