Don't Play Tricks....

... when building your email list.

Here in Houston, there's a little local preservation issue going on; reports have surfaced that an historic shopping center in the city's tony River Oaks neighborhood may be razed to make way for a big-box store and high-rise condos. Preserving history is tough in a town where people love to bulldoze everything over 20 years old, and this is a much-loved landmark.

A local blog has started an online petition to present to the developer that owns the property. Following that example, a local preservation organization has done the same thing.

Here's the problem: to sign the preservation organization's petition, you have to join their mailing list.

Now, it's a good bet that people who want to sign the petition might be interested in Historic Houston's other activities. But nobody likes to be muscled into signing up for an email list - especially those of us who tend to be on email overload all the time anyway.

I signed the first petition; I'm not planning to sign the second. I'm not sure whether the approach they took with the second was a deliberate build-the-list ploy, or was caused by some other factor, but I don't like it.

I think they'd be more successful if they put up a petition that people could sign, and afterwards thanked them for signing it - and offered a chance to sign up for a mailing list to hear about other important historic preservation issues (and chances to save endangered landmarks) in Houston.

Straightforward, above-board, and no pressure. They'd get fewer people on the list. But I bet the ones who signed up would pay more attention to their emails.