ContentBlog reader Linda Nelson of Custom Craftworks writes in, "As a Yahoo user for personal emails, I am pleased to know that you have decided not to exclude us "free account" users. I started using Yahoo! when I was a marketing student in college (I didn't want to pay for the software, or a dial-up account). I still use it for personal email emails at home because it is just too much trouble to change it with everyone (I also like how it screens out bulk mail for me to review and then delete).

Currently I am using my work email for the newsletters I receive from MarketingSherpa, but I live and work in recession-hit Oregon. Lots of jobs exactly like mine were downsized last fall and I had always thought I could have these newsletters sent to my Yahoo address if I were laid-off. I do receive newsletters at that address, and if I truly opted-in for them, they get read. I always unsubscribe to alleviate the clutter of unwanted or unsolicited information."

It's a good point; most people do have a free (or AOL) email address they keep for years just because it's more trouble than it's worth to keep telling all your contacts to change your address. I remember the days in 1995 when we used to throw out the sales leads, we got from the site I worked for, that used AOL email because they "must be consumers with no real money to buy our stuff." We would never make that assumption now.

[Ha! About an hour after I posted this Blog, I went to get the mail. Guess what? The latest issue of Business2.0 Magazine had arrived, and polybagged inside it was a CD ROM to sign up for AOL. Weird but true.]