How to let everybody on Craigslist down gently via email

[batasakas]

in Dayton, Ohio, our access to delicious Chicago-style deep dish pizza is limited. For Christmas, I wanted someone to deliver my wife’s favorite pizza from Chicago to Dayton. My years of experience posting on Craigslist has prepared me to sometimes get no responses and sometimes be overwhelmed with responses. In this case, I was overwhelmed. Within the first 12 hours of posting, I had more than 100 responses from interested parties. Here are a few samples:

Some thought I was insane for offering $400 for a couple pizzas:

But most responded with genuine interest:

It’s surprising just how powerful Craigslist is, 20-plus years after its launch, but it’s also exciting how much interest a “strange” gig can garner. Especially when over the years, many have declared germany phone number material Craigslist dead. But then again, people declare email dead all the time too, and clearly that’s not the case. I’m sure you could find someone to declare me dead, too.



This story isn’t about the pizza delivery, the delicious Pequod’s caramelized crust, or how much I love my wife. This is about doing what most Craigslist posters don’t do — emailing everyone back with the gig’s status, so they’re not left wondering. As someone who responds to Craigslist ads, I can only imagine that being left to wonder — never getting a response to your response — feels awful.

Using my Gmail plugin, GMass, sending a message to everybody I was NOT hiring took about 90 seconds. Here’s how I did it.

Step 1: Search for everyone who responded
This was easy. Everybody who had responded had put “Pequod’s” in the Subject line and was still