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Recently I signed up for a newsletter and when the confirmation came in my e-mail I noticed it had this in the bottom corner:

Photo

(I have wiped out the website name.) After looking into it I realized that this appeared to be a VCF file that was attached to the e-mail and this is the way Thunderbird presented the file to me.

My question is this: When a person signs up for a newsletter from my site is it a good practice to include a VCF file (as an attachment) in the confirmation e-mail so they can easily add my e-mail address and information to their address book?

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Perhaps there are hidden features to vCards that I'm not privy to since I primarily use Gmail, but I see no benefits in doing this.

vCards are primarily used for exchanging contact info (name, address, phone, email, company, title, url, etc.), which doesn't really apply to newsletters. Newsletters aren't contacts. Most users might put the email address of the newsletter in their email whitelist, but they're not going to add every automated mailer to their address book. And even if it were a discussion list, the only contact info that'd apply would be the name of the list and the associated email address, both of which would already be sent via the email headers.

Perhaps in some cases it might make sense to include the vCard of an actual person at your company, but a vCard for a newsletter is just pointless.

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  • I disagree that it is pointless. For some correspondences yes it is. However for others I think it can be useful. Point and case: I have users on my list that the most they know how to do in e-mail is hit reply, forward, and delete. Anything else is a stretch for them. I see it as a way for users to click a button that says Add To Contacts and my address is then added to their address book which will hopefully prevent my e-mails from accidentally being marked as SPAM. As a side note my question was Thanks for your input. => – L84 Feb 7 '12 at 21:47
  • @Lynda: Most of the user you describe are probably using Outlook, and in Outlook you add a sender as a contact by right-clicking on the sender and clicking "Add to Contacts". The process for vCards is pretty much identical. You right-click on the vCard and click "Add to Contacts", so I don't think it actually makes it any easier. – Lèse majesté Feb 7 '12 at 22:24
  • The ones I refer to use g-mail and AOL not Outlook but there are users who use outlook. Thanks for the input => – L84 Feb 8 '12 at 0:18

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