Christmas ornaments and free winter/holiday LJ user icons!

Today's photos are ornaments I've received so far through an annual homemade Christmas ornament exchange organized by Amanda Snyder (thanks, Amanda!). A set of all the ornaments -- about 17 or so, I think? -- is going to be donated to the UK Fan Fund through Lissa Allcock, who has kindly volunteered to take them.

Click on any of the images for info, including who made them.



I've been investigating mailing list services because I've decided it's about time I set up a few notification lists. One for my Etsy shop, for example, to offer advance notice and special deals. Another for those who want to be notified about when certain comics are updated. And definitely one for those who want to know when my book(s) get published!



I want a mailing list service that is reliable and spam-free (e.g. does not accept customers who use it to send out unsolicited mail), automatically handles bounced mail, and that makes it super-easy for people to unsubscribe themselves.



Right now I'm considering iContact. I'm testing it out during a free trial period, and would greatly appreciate it if some of you could help me. In appreciation, I'll be including some winter/holiday-themed Livejournal icons in my test mailings to the list which you're free to use in your own LJs.



Your e-mail addresses will not be shared or used for any purpose other than this test. I'll be sending out 2-3 test mailings to the list and deleting the list after a week. Please let me know how easy it was to subscribe, unsubscribe (please try unsubscribing at least once), comments about the interface, etc.




Thanks so much! Please use the form below:




I'll be posting a review of iContact in an upcoming Blathering.

If you have any other mailing list services to recommend, please let me know. I don't mind paying a small monthly fee as long as the service is VERY reliable and has a good reputation for being spam-free and therefore not on any spam blacklists. One of the great things about iContact that I've found so far is that you can run your mailings through a "spam check" to see how spam-like they are; if your score is high, then it means your mailing is more likely to be flagged as spam.

Bounced address handling is also vital for me because I don't want to spend time administering those myself, but also don't want an e-mail address deleted from a list after bouncing just once -- it's possible that someone's mail server may be temporarily down, after all. iContact deletes after five bounces. I -do- want lists culled of dead addresses, though, so I have an accurate count of how many people are on each list.

Anyway, your help in testing this service would be much appreciated, thanks!



Livejournal comments