The Email Age

I wonder if in some future time this will be known as the Email Age. You know, kinda like we refer to the Ice Age, the Dark Ages, etc. I am a genuine, card-carrying emailer myself. I can’t seem to go an hour without checking my computer to see what’s new on Outlook and more often than not, there is at least one new message waiting for me.

Today, however, was a little bit over the edge from an email perspective. I spent a good many hours manipulating a 12,000+ customer database so that I would be able to fire out a mass email to advertise the bookstore. No one told me that my internet provider would not be able to handle 12,000+ email addresses in the same outgoing email. Darn. So I proceeded to break down the database into more manageable chunks. Then there appeared the issue of invalid email addresses. Outlook kept stopping the “send” every time there was a wonky address, which I had to find, delete, and start all over again. This was an exercise in patience, let me tell you! I finally finished the job only to find my mailbox filling up with undeliverable emails – 347 of them! Sounds like a lot, but actually isn’t when you consider the thousands that actually did work. But there is one more thing . . . the replies I’m getting from people who want to be removed from the distribution list. I get that, believe me, but what I don’t get is the lady who responded “please take my name off your computer because I am Catholic”. I blinked a few times while reading that one.