- Joined
- Jan 1, 2001
- Messages
- 60,100
I strongly believe that Spam is horrible. I even block friends and family members who obviously spam me. And the choice to not receive unsolicited mail is theirs. But running a community means you have to get your users involved. And this is via an optional newsletter- which can be plain text or html email or published just online (or also online). This is what I have done and will continue to do as long as it's a doable task. I've also had years where I have not mailed a newsletter monthly, or yearly.
In the last 12 months I have been religious about it by trying to prepare and draft, publish and mail out a monthly newsletter which users on my community at http://wetalknation.net are subscribed to. And can opt-out. And with http://xenfans.com here I have it on my roadmap to publish one from October on (see our inf
news board for information and the Oct. newsletter btw).
Now, here's the thing. XenForo has you opt-in by default for receiving site-mails. Personally I find this fine. But in the fight against spam, users do not have a choice during sign up and they can only opt-out at a later stage after registration. This might obviously change, but at the moment with beta it doesn't seem to be an option to globally set it to opt-out by default and request users to opt-in for the site-news mailings. The latter is what I would desire.
Our first XenForo mail will be short and simple (October one was via WordPress) and will include the mention that users are opt-in by default and have option to opt-out via their preferences.
What is your idea about default opt-in for newsletters, and how do you deal with the feedback users give (which goes from "please unsubscribe me" to "delete me NOW" and even "I will hurt your mother and sue you for this invasion of my privacy" ..).
We've set things up for example via Google Apps and give various of team members access to the account in order to read and process incoming mail, and we always keep a closer look at the account the first 48 hours after mailing. And we always stay friendly and do our best to please everybody.
The big difference between blogs and forums is that on blogs you have to 'click to subscribe' where as on the forums (like XenForo) you have to inform the users they can unsubscribe (but have to login via their account, then go to preferences and change the value to no).
I find this quite irritating personally, because I am against spam, and I don't want those who don't desire to receive unwanted mail to find out they were forced opt-in - despite it not being my intention to "spam" them (It's technically not spam, but I understand it's how people perceive it) or bother them.
How do you manage newsletters on your site, or deal with the default opt-in value, or how frequently do you mail out to your members, if at all?
Please note that I find it important to inform the community about changes, as well as important or featured content. Or simply use it as a fun way to include them with the site by focussing on a user for their contribution to the site (good content, popular content, etc).
In the last 12 months I have been religious about it by trying to prepare and draft, publish and mail out a monthly newsletter which users on my community at http://wetalknation.net are subscribed to. And can opt-out. And with http://xenfans.com here I have it on my roadmap to publish one from October on (see our inf
news board for information and the Oct. newsletter btw).Now, here's the thing. XenForo has you opt-in by default for receiving site-mails. Personally I find this fine. But in the fight against spam, users do not have a choice during sign up and they can only opt-out at a later stage after registration. This might obviously change, but at the moment with beta it doesn't seem to be an option to globally set it to opt-out by default and request users to opt-in for the site-news mailings. The latter is what I would desire.
Our first XenForo mail will be short and simple (October one was via WordPress) and will include the mention that users are opt-in by default and have option to opt-out via their preferences.
What is your idea about default opt-in for newsletters, and how do you deal with the feedback users give (which goes from "please unsubscribe me" to "delete me NOW" and even "I will hurt your mother and sue you for this invasion of my privacy" ..).
We've set things up for example via Google Apps and give various of team members access to the account in order to read and process incoming mail, and we always keep a closer look at the account the first 48 hours after mailing. And we always stay friendly and do our best to please everybody.
The big difference between blogs and forums is that on blogs you have to 'click to subscribe' where as on the forums (like XenForo) you have to inform the users they can unsubscribe (but have to login via their account, then go to preferences and change the value to no).
I find this quite irritating personally, because I am against spam, and I don't want those who don't desire to receive unwanted mail to find out they were forced opt-in - despite it not being my intention to "spam" them (It's technically not spam, but I understand it's how people perceive it) or bother them.
How do you manage newsletters on your site, or deal with the default opt-in value, or how frequently do you mail out to your members, if at all?
Please note that I find it important to inform the community about changes, as well as important or featured content. Or simply use it as a fun way to include them with the site by focussing on a user for their contribution to the site (good content, popular content, etc).
