Why do people even use mailing lists any more?

Seriously, it comes up a lot as the only support option for freeware and academic stuff, but why? Don't they realise modern spam filters and what not makes this kind of feature almost impossible to use except for extremely old fashioned people? Why not a forum, support desk or even a newsgroup (because at least you can access Usenet through Google)?

 

I think you're missing the point, mailing list will always be helpful because you can get targeted email list for little to nothing.
You can use email clients to track when an email was opened, how long it was opened and what links were clicked.
You can also sort out the bounced emails, it's still a very much used marketing tactic and it will always be so.

 

im not sure what one is :rofl:

 

Mailing lists seem to be big with open source developers. I've always wondered why they even bother. I think it has more to do with people that have slow/bandwidth restricted connections

 

sorry but I don't understand the logic to either of your statements :|
I know some advertising companies that successfully use mailing list all the time.

 

Okay, why do free software developers often only use mailing lists for support? It's not about their marketing use, but about their discussion list/support use.

 

I never quite understood it either. From what I do understand of it, mailing lists are plain text only no graphic heavy (bandwidth wasting) forums. Believe or not some open source coders use strictly text based (From the command line) browsers too.

I don't see why a forum couldn't be customized to as much bandwidth as an email. It really makes no sense to me either.

Perhaps it's just tradition?

 

Here is an example of a newsletter we just sent out to our mailing list.
News & Events from Think Big Topeka - 3/9
Why wouldn't you want to keep your subscribers informed?

I don't think your newsletters have to be plain text, The mailing list itself is just a list of email addresses.
You can import those emails in dozens of applications, I just started using constantcontact (the link above was built in it) and I think it looks great.

 

Brandon we're talking about two different things. Now I know why we're both lost. I'm talking about discussion mailing lists, which are like newsgroups and they're similar to forums except they take place over email.

 

An example would be Apache HTTP Server Mailing Lists - The Apache HTTP Server Project

 

ah ok
I've been talking about an "email list" aka mailing list
it sounds like you guys are talking about a discussion list according to the wiki.

 

Yeah, sorry for that minor misunderstanding.

 

no problem at all, glad we're all on the same track now