Last weekend is probably the time I should have sent out another email, but I’ve been very busy and I’ve had doubts recently if we really need this or not.:~
The only options I had when sending through the CDO website was to specify the email address to be sent from, and to set a minimum bar for the post count below which people wouldn’t get the email.
Obviously this created a few problems.
Firstly that all members above the bar I set got sent the email (I think I did 10 posts minimum). Many of them are long gone and probably no longer interested in receiving ‘spam’ emails.
Secondly, the issue of how low to set the bar. 50 posts? 100 posts?
Thirdly, as we saw last time, there was confusion from people about which email account it went to. This is not something I’d want to have to clarify every month for all eternity. :~
Fourthly, because the email is from an unknown sender (to most people), this would probably go straight to trash anyway.
Lastly, I received an email from a less active member who said that ISP’s don’t look favourably on mass forum emailing apparantly?
He suggested we should look into an opt in email system (a “constant contact” e-mail account, whatever that is). Obviously this may come at a small cost, from my stint in admin I don’t remember anything like this being part of this system. It would also mean an ongoing issue of administering to a mailing list. If we kept a mailing list on an account somewhere it raises potential issues of what happens if the email account get’s hacked.
So my question is this; how much do we NEED a monthly email? The reason it was done last time was to try an make deadlines more obvious. So what could we do on the forum/ site to avoid the need for an email?
Over on another forum I’m on (can’t remember which), they have the latest news thread listed at the top of every sub forum. If we were to do this we would need to seperate out ‘news’ into forum information and actual interesting news (competitions/ exciting announcements/ campaign info etc), to make sure one listed at the top was always the most relevant. If that is a feature of this system is that something you’d be interested in?
I really don’t need a ‘newsletter-email’ - but I think we could benefit from some kind of bulletin board on the forum frontpage - giving us forum annoncements - like “AC IV is now running - deadline mm.dd.yyyy”, “WoH ## is on the street” ect. - and maybe with a link to a thread for mor info.
And if staff feels for a ordinary newsletter format - the please ‘yes’ - sticky it in all forums - rather that just in the ‘news forum’
I would leave email notifications to instant massaging - when we have short deadlines - like votings
I think they are saving up the next email for the astounding news of a confirmed “CD are being updated for Fall 20XX” rumour… Anything less is not quite email worth perhaps?
We looked into the practicalities of this, I feel we can do it more effectively by making better use of the forum and calendar more.
We (I) have not sent out any more after the first one.
One thing all the staff seem to be agreed on is that we will soon have a slight forum update to create another main section in the forum (the equivalent of ‘Chaos Dwarf Discussion’, or ‘the market place’ etc) specifically for new members, so they can see where things are, forum rules, introduction thread etc. Basically pull together all the FAQ and stickies relating to new members into one section.
This is one thread that could go in there as well, a sticky with the upcoming events in capital letters and dates etc. We could lock the section for new threads, so they wouldn’t need to all be stickies, then have this as the only one, which we update whenever there is something new.
Another thing I think we should do in all future competitions is to include the closing dates in the thread title. So every time anyone posts everyone who just browses the posts for that day will be reminded of the date.
