Posting Email & Flyers

Purpose Of This "Posting" page: This "Posting" page is for mainly for publicity people, regarding sending emails to the Track2 RailNet Listserver to announce shows and open houses. The Subject lines will be of a prescribed format, such that when the received emails are viewed by subject, the emails will display in order of event date. This new system (as of May 2001) is intended to get the bottleneck (me) out of the process of maintaining show information, and empower any interested groups to compose and send their own show announcements, and optionally post their own flyers.

A. The 3 Steps Subscribers Should Do

Subscribers are requested do the following 3 steps:

1. Create a new mail folder named "Track2-2001".
2. File all future emails for shows in this folder.
3. (Optional) If you have Eudora or some email program that does automatic "filtering", you can set up a "filter" to look for "[Track2]" in the subject line, and Eudora will automatically file these show messages in the 'Track2-2001' mail folder.

Results: Your emails should display similar to the screen capture shown in Figure 1 below.

• Question: What if I lose the emails?
  • All the Listserver's messages will also be available in the LIstserver's message archives, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Track2-RailNet/messages.
• Question: Just how many of these emails am I going to get in a year?
  • I guesstimate maybe a couple dozen. (Examination of the archive pages for year 2000 reveals that I had posted about 43 shows and 23 open houses, a total of 66. But I guesstimate groups will actually send notices for only a small portion of these.)

B. The 5 Steps Email Composers (Publicity People) Should Do

1. Verify the event location is within the boundaries of the Track2 RailNet, as shown below.

   

2. Create an email announcement containing all information you want to tell about the event
   • The body of the message must contain at least one contact name and PHONE number.
   • The rest of the body can contain whatever information you want to include. (Such as Date 1: hours • Date 2: hours • CITY: Group--Event Name--address. Other special notes, such as Directions.)
3. Format the subject line per the next section "Subject Line Formatting".
4. Print it out, and read it over to make sure you haven't forgotten anything.
5. Email it to me.
   • I will verify the format of the subject line is correct, and that the event is in fact inside the RailNet, and then send it to the Track2 Listserver.'
   • If any publicity people are comfortable formatting the subject line themselves, I can give them "posting priviledges", so that they can post directly to the Listserver without having to go through me.
     
     

• NOTE: If you have a FLYER you would like to post in the "files" area, you should do that first, before you send the email announcement. Then you can provide a link to the flyer in your email announcement. (Info on posting flyers is below )
  
  

C. How To Format The Subject Line

Figure 1 - Email Subject Line Example

Comments - Per The Above Figure 1

Open House: oStartDate-EndDate-City-Event_name Show: . . . sDate-day-City-Event_name

Note the format for the subject line of the Open House announcement is almost the same as the Show announcement, except the following differences:

• An "o" will be used immediately in front of the date to indicate 'open house' (as opposed to 's' for 'show')
• For the 3rd item, an "End Date" will be used -- rather than the "day" -- because most open houses take place over different days, scattered over a series of weekends and sometimes weekdays.
  • Use the minimum number of characters to define the "End Date", (In the above figure, "10" is sufficient for the example on the second line, while the first line requires "0101" since the "End Date" is in a different month.

Other Notes

• Terminology --
  • "Open House" -- Open House & Display" means a club open house or module display or railfest, with none or only a few sales tables
  • "Show" means a selling event with many sales tables, which may also include operating displays.
• Note about length of subject line: I believe most email programs will only display about the first 46 characters of the subject line, so try to keep the 'key' information contained within the first 46 characters -- see "Number Of Characters In Subject Line" (below)

D. Other Possible Questions

Subject Line

• Why are you being so nitpicky about the way the subject line is worded?
  • As shown above by Figure 1, if the subject lines are formatted consistently, they will order themselves in the recipients mailboxes by 'open houses by event date' first, then by 'selling shows by date' second.
  • If the format is not adhered to, then the recipients' (all of us) mailboxes will be 'hodgepodges'.
    
    
• What flexibility do I have about the content of the email's subject line?
  • As described above, the date, day, and city are required to be in the specified format. The rest of the subject line you can word however you is most effective.
  • I.e. for the following examples,
    o1209-10-Williamsport-10th Annual Toy Train Expo
    or
    o1209-10-Williamsport--All-Ga Operating Layouts Expo
    the first part (shown in red) is dictated by the above conventions, and the rest (shown in green) can be worded however you think is most effective.

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Composing The Email

• Question: How many emails can I send for each event?
  • You should send only one email per each event.
    • Reason: If we clutter up subscribers mailboxes with a lot of excessive 'traffic' by multiple emails for the same event, they will unsubscribe.
• Question: Can I include attachments or bolded text?
  • No. The Listserver will remove all attachments and change all text to plain text, in order to minimize download time and be readable by all mail readers.

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General Questions

• Question: Are clubs going to bother sending you announcements, when there already are a half-dozen other train show sites?
  • This I don't know. I have reviewed the other sites (links included on the shows page), and I am not that impressed. Most cover several states, and it 's sometimes difficult to find the events for Central Pennsylvania.
  • The Track2 RailNet is the only site I am aware of so far, that is presenting events specifically for the Central Pennsylvania region.

Question: Who do I contact if any of this isn't making sense? Contact me, Jim Ingram, at 570-477-2520, if you have questions.

E. Checking Number Of Characters In Subject Line

• The email mailbox probably will display about the first 46 characters of your subject line--as shown in Figure 1 above.
  • (The email window seems to display the first 55 characters total. Since the '[Track2] ' subject tag' uses 9 characters, this leaves 46 characters for your subject line.)
• Thus you want to choose your subject-line wording so that the most important information is displayed in the first 46 characters.
• You can open a temporary document and use Courier or some other constant-width font to lay out the subject line, similar to the example that follows:

.........1........10........20........30........40....46..50........60

.........|...|....|....|....|....|....|....|....|.....|...|....|....|

.........123456789*123456789*123456789*123456789*12345*789*1234*6789*

[Track2] o1124-0101-Bethlehem-Lehigh & Keystone Valley Open House

[Track2] o1209-10-Williamsport-10th Annual Toy Train Expo

[Track2] s0409sun-Lock Haven-Clinton Central Annual Spring Train Meet

[Track2] s1111-1112-Allentown-First Frost Train Meet

[Track2] s1203sun-Williamsport-Whistle Stop Train Show

• In the above examples, the right ends of the subject lines shown in red exceed the 46 character length, and will not display in the subject line.
• Note that the entire subject line will display when the message is opened, and also in the Listserver archives.

F. Posting Flyers

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Will Track2 RailNet still be posting any FLYERS for clubs on the web?
   • I will continue the same free-of-charge service of posting flyers on the web page, for clubs that choose to continue participating in the Publicity Exchange, as detailed on the Publicity Exchange page.
2. Where are the flyers currently located?

   I have moved the flyers to the Yahoo Listserver's "Files" section. You can view them at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Track2-RailNet/files/ .

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3. Is there any way clubs can post their flyers THEMSELVES?
   • Yes. If a publicity officer joins Yahoo, they can upload files to the files area themselves. The main requirement for posting files is that you convert it to JPEG format, and follow the file naming conventions
4. If I post the flyer myself, do I have to put the "track" note on the bottom?
   • No. The note is requested and appreciated, but not required when you do the entire process yourself.
5. How much baloney do I have to go through to access this "files" area of Yahoo?
   • If you receive the emails, you are "subscribed" to the list, but this is not the same as "joining" Yahoo.
   • To "join" and have access to the files, you need to do the following:

     Click on Yahoos "join" link, (at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Track2-RailNet) and you'll be asked some nosey questions, and they will give you a Yahoo ID and password. You can then "join" the "Track2-RailNet" group. At this point, the Yahoo system will allow you to upload files to the files area.

6. How difficult is it to upload files to Yahoo?
   • Uploading files is very straightforward. You (a) open a browser window in the file section (link above in the yellow box), (b) click the "add file" link, which opens a 'browse' window for your hard drive, then (c) you 'click on' the filename on your hard drive that you want to upload, and then (d) Yahoo software uploads it and it's done.
7. How do I learn how to upload files to Yahoo?
   • Yahoo has an excellent set of help pages for uploading files (http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/groups/files). Once uploaded, you can modifiy the filename and/or description, or delete the file, if you need to upload a new flyer.

Naming Flyers

• The file naming conventions assure that the files will display ordered by date and then by city.
• I have detailed the naming conventions in the first file in the "files" section, which is
  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Track2-RailNet/files/1-Rules-For-Posting-Files.html.

Kinds Of Flyers Permissible:

• This is detailed in the above-mentioned "rules", but in general flyers should be JPEG format, size not to exceed 100 K.
• You can also upload text or HTML files, if you don't want to create a JPEG file. You DO NOT want to upload an application-specific word-processing document, because the rest of us that don't have that application will not be able to read the file.

This page modified 8/12/02