Hi Ron,

Have you looked into LISTSERV Maestro? LISTSERV Maestro guides the sender into
constructing an email, "pleasing to the eye", and *forces* the sender to *test*
the email before sending it to the end recipients. It lets you define message
templates, html as well as text, so that once you've hit on a good format that
works, you just have to fill in some fields and not risk messing with the HTML
code. There are also some canned templates.

LISTSERV Maestro might be the best way to give your new list owners some hand-
holding for sending out their messages. Even though it's marketed as an email
"marketing" tool, it's really "marketing" in a very broad sense. Among our
university Maestro customers we find that recruiting/admissions and alumni
offices find it very helpful. When you think about it, their emails are at
heart "marketing" emails -- their goal is to make a good impression and capture
readers' attention.

There is a Flash demo of the basic interactions with Maestro here:

http://www.lsoft.com/products/maestro.asp


Francoise

On 20 Mar 2008 at 14:51, Ron Wood wrote:

> We are seeing an expansion of new listowners running announcement-only or
> moderated lists ... who want to post messages that are pleasing to the eye..
> and who want them archived...
>
> of course, not all pleasingly-formatted messages are making it the archive
> given the use of multiple applications or mail clients to generate these
> messages.
>
> attempts to cut and paste formatted material into an email client and
> distribute it via LISTSERV can also result in gibberish.. garbage in,
> garbage out of course.
>
> Has anyone formulated simple instructions for this class of users on how to
> create (and subsequently distribute and archive via LISTSERV) attractively
> formatted documents with images using applications commonly found on their
> desktop?
>
> desktop application-dependent instructions for the unsophisticated, thank you
>
> Ron Wood
> University of Rochester
>



--
Francoise Becker

LISTSERV(R) - real software, real results.
See LISTSERV in action:
http://www.lsoft.com/products/listserv_flash_demo.asp