I recently received an email from an association where I've been a member for nearly 30 years. In that time I've provided hundreds if not thousands of hours of volunteer time to them. The first line of the email read: "Wes, have you ever considered volunteering for [association name]?"

You can imagine my reaction.

The next line read "If you have served in the past..." IF I have served in the past? IF?

Why not just send me an email that says "We don't really care who you are, we're sending this email to everyone."

The entire point of today's data management technology is to help us avoid these kinds of unforced errors. Surely there is some way this association knows that I've been a volunteer in the past. In which case they simply had to set up two emails: one to those with no volunteer service and one to those with any volunteer service.

Instead, they chose the easy way ("Just send it to everyone!") and again reminded me that they don't really care that much about my volunteer work.

My advice? Don't offend your members.