Canadian domain registrar “Webnames.ca” a looks like it still has faith in e-mail newsletters (and so it should).

Here’s their announcement to their current list telling of changes coming:

Dear Subscriber to Webnames.ca’s Monthly Newsletter,

This notice is to inform you that Webnames.ca will be publishing a new and improved monthly newsletter which will debut in April. The new newsletter replaces Webnames.ca’s monthly newsletter and is named “The Server Room”. It will include a new design, new monthly features and high-quality articles written by industry experts. We will highlight issues of importance to Internet-era businesses, profile real-world web experiences, offer relevant news summaries and, in general, try to earn your attention with incisive articles aimed at your needs. Be on the lookout for “The Server Room” which will be delivered to your mailbox the first week of April. We are confident that you will find it interesting, worthwhile and informative and welcome your feedback after you have seen it.

Sincerely,
Webnames.ca Inc.

As a subscriber, I was pretty happy to see they’d be upping the quality of the e-mail, but then again I’m a marketer. I’m not sure all subscribers will be thrilled about another e-mail in their inbox if it doesn’t directly benefit them — and this doesn’t.

They also missed an opportunity to ask subscribers to add the newsletter mail-out address to their address books to help avoid spam filter problems. If they change the mail-out address this is coming from I think they’ll find that lots of people don’t get future messages because Webnames mucked up their filters with the changes.

Does anyone have any experience with switching over from one sending e-mail address to another? What are the pros and cons?

Finally, I’m really not too sure about this rampant need to create a sub-brand for everything we do. Calling their newsletter “The Server Room” doesn’t really help Webnames establish themselves and further disconnects their content from their service. “Ariad” made a smart move a few years ago when they moved away from a heavily sub-branded newsletter (“Empact” intended to mean “E-mail Impact”) to their current strategy of calling it “Ariad’s Online Marketer” and using the company name as the sender. Ariad was smart to keep their company name front and center.

Let’s hope Webnames.ca does the same.

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Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on March 30, 2005.