Forum Newsletter Guidance, please.

tafreehm

tafreehm

Well-known member
Hello,
I am thinking about sending newsletter once a month. If anyone of you sends forum newsletter can you please show me a copy of it. I am confuse at the moment, because I am not really sure what to put in newsletter other than hand picked HOT TRENDING TOPICS and even for that how do you think I should display them ? Just display links, or should I include member name, avatar, little, teaser etc ?

I haven't done such thing before, but I think this could be useful.

Regards,
 
Upcoming changes, site news. What's your forum about? Maybe you could include news about what's currently going on in the world (about your forum topic).
 
Not quite what what you are asking, but I've been using Mailchimp since the forum started, and send out a mailer every couple of months. It's an opt in email list external to the forum and people sign up from a widget on my Wordpress front end site. That way it goes to people who aren't forum members as well to try and drag them in.

I use it to highlight the big things like events, forum updates and anything I feel people may be interested in. We get quite a few car images sent in each month so I use them to break up the text and links and make the mail more visually interesting. Nothing worse than a text email with links.

As for whether its a good use of my time or not, I'm undecided.
 
Gazhyde said:
I use it to highlight the big things like events, forum updates and anything I feel people may be interested in. We get quite a few car images sent in each month so I use them to break up the text and links and make the mail more visually interesting. Nothing worse than a text email with links.

As for whether its a good use of my time or not, I'm undecided.
Click to expand...
what you said in second paragraph is all I wanted to know. Is it possible to look at one of you template ? And are you not seeing good result though ?
 
PM me your email address and I will forward some over. Probably wont be till late tomorrow evening before i can send them though!
 
@xfrocks has done me an addition to his Forum Watch addon so I can set it per usergroup per forum, to send notifications; and no opt out.
I just have to install and test it but I'm sure it's OK.
(So soon available and will be checked for 1.2)
Then i just run a forum where no one can post except me, and set it for the usergroups I want to get my newsetter.

Note of advice @tafreehm never just give a link - most won't bother to click unless we know what it is - time too precious. Always give a snippet or a sentence summary of your own. Make it like a newspaper headline - spicy fun etc
 
Morgain said:
@xfrocks has done me an addition to his Forum Watch addon so I can set it per usergroup per forum, to send notifications; and no opt out.
I just have to install and test it but I'm sure it's OK.
(So soon available and will be checked for 1.2)
Then i just run a forum where no one can post except me, and set it for the usergroups I want to get my newsetter.

Note of advice @tafreehm never just give a link - most won't bother to click unless we know what it is - time too precious. Always give a snippet or a sentence summary of your own. Make it like a newspaper headline - spicy fun etc
Click to expand...

that could be a good idea for private or vip forums. And yes you are right, people are not stupid anymore (unlike 90s). They do not click if they are not sure what the link is about. Thanks for the advice :)
 
@tafreehm the 'correct' way to do usergroups on XF is to keep Registered an almost empty group for functions/ features. So a forum linked to this group would sent to all your members.

Also you are right about wariness on links but bI actually meant a bare list of links is not friendly/ sexy/ inviting. Until I know what it is \i am not going to risk wasting my time on it.
 
Morgain said:
@tafreehm the 'correct' way to do usergroups on XF is to keep Registered an almost empty group for functions/ features. So a forum linked to this group would sent to all your members.

Also you are right about wariness on links but bI actually meant a bare list of links is not friendly/ sexy/ inviting. Until I know what it is \i am not going to risk wasting my time on it.
Click to expand...

yes, I agree. I do not really have a VIP forum but I do have very active Private Forum where only staff member have access to it. So this could be helpful but I think 1.2 forum watch will take care of this. It will notify for new post/message via alert/email. And even if I send newsletter it will be categorized. One is for active member (those with more than X posts) and others who just registered but did not know what to do afterwards (user with less than X posts).

I actually wanted to send newsletter to two groups (not xf usergroup ). One is I just mentioned above, user who registered but did not know what to do afterwards I could send them tutorials and educate them about the forums plus what is interesting going on. For second group is for those users who used to be active in the past. If I can just tell them what they are missing maybe I will propagate enough greed so they can come back.

Newsletter can be very strong marketing tactic to keep your visitor engaged.
 
OK the 1.2 Forum Watch is not the same. It's user opt in so you cannot rely on users receiving your post as notification.
Second if they do not visit after one notification they do not get any more! This is XF standard - I hate it! It's exactly the users who DON'T visit who I want to get the notifications so they are updated. They are also on my board very grateful for this. Keeps them connected.
But standard XF cuts them off. This is reasonable on large boards, or a very busy forum. But I would like it to be an admin toggle.

You can send emails to a selected group of users not posting etc but sadly no records are made.
 
Morgain said:
OK the 1.2 Forum Watch is not the same. It's user opt in so you cannot rely on users receiving your post as notification.
Second if they do not visit after one notification they do not get any more! This is XF standard - I hate it! It's exactly the users who DON'T visit who I want to get the notifications so they are updated. They are also on my board very grateful for this. Keeps them connected.
But standard XF cuts them off. This is reasonable on large boards, or a very busy forum. But I would like it to be an admin toggle.

You can send emails to a selected group of users not posting etc but sadly no records are made.
Click to expand...

Yes I hate that "feature" as well. If someone wants email alerts on post replies, they should keep getting them until they decide to turn them off. Making them revisit the forum to continue to get updates, makes this feature annoying. Some people just plain forget to revisit then wonder why they don't get updates anymore on important threads. Is there a mod that can keep this switched on so updates are always sent?
 

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