******* - Sendy Integrate [Paid] [Deleted]

[markku]

http://sendy.co/api

But that API is only for getting people subscribed and unsubscribed (etc) within Sendy.

I don't think it's possible to use Sendy's API to make changes to XF's side of things?

Have I misunderstood...

Or maybe below would do it (I suppose not, it's only a count... "This method gets the total active subscriber count")?

Get active subscriber count for a list → Download
An example on how to use the Active subscriber count API to get the active subscriber count for a particular list.

...if the XF add-on could query Sendy's API to get the recent bounced emails? Does Sendy's API support that? I don't see such an option on Sendy API page...

 

[Anthony Parsons]

My point was that they provide API's already, so making something to talk from Sendy to XF should be easy enough.

 

[nrep]

I'm thinking about purchasing this addon. If a user clicks the unsubscribe list within sendy, is this reflected within the XF newsletter settings?

Also, does this us the XF "Receive site mailings" option for the newsletter or a new option for each member?

 

[Anthony Parsons]

If a user clicks the unsubscribe list within sendy, is this reflected within the XF newsletter settings?

No, that is the issue, in that Sendy doesn't talk back to XF, only XF with Sendy. If the user unsubscribes / subscribes at XF, it changes it in Sendy, but not the other way round.

New option called newsletter subscription. You can get it to respect the initial site mailings option on your first rebuild to create your list in Sendy.

 

[cmeinck]

No, that is the issue, in that Sendy doesn't talk back to XF, only XF with Sendy. If the user unsubscribes / subscribes at XF, it changes it in Sendy, but not the other way round.

New option called newsletter subscription. You can get it to respect the initial site mailings option on your first rebuild to create your list in Sendy.

I'd like to better understand how this works:

1. Install add-on and it adds a 'newsletter subscription' field and that box appears at sign-up.
2. Run the cron and the initial group of members are instantly subscribers to your newsletter.
3. This batch gets imported at Sendy.co to the list of your choosing.
4. If a subscriber gets the newsletter and unsubscribes, that changes at Sendy, which conflicts with XF.

So is this add-on more of a one-time use? Let's say you add 50 people since the first run, what's the workflow to add them to your Sendy list?

I had previously setup newsletter lists at Mailchimp and Streamsend. Taking your advice, I'm going to start with people who have opened a Mailchip campaign. I'd like to establish a bit of credibility with Amazon. My concern is that when I initially import my XF list, that might result in a fair share of bounces and/or complaints.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

@cmeinck, pretty much, yes. The change of subscription at Sendy only, doesn't really matter in the context of things, like you outlined, the import is a one time process, then Sendy really manages everything from there. The add-on though respects that if a user chooses to manage their subscription from XF, then it will update at Sendy.

This isn't really a one-time thing, as once installed and initially migrated, it then automatically adds all your new registrations as people signup to your forum.

You don't have to use SES... this allows you to send via your server, via an SMTP or via SES. You setup which one you want. SES is simply the cheapest, but SES has rules and want primarily valid email going through their system. Plenty of people send lists with a 30% opening rate through SES, but those lists are likely established via SES. New lists Amazon take a much harsher approach. Once you start with a clean list on SES, everything after that is all good, pretty much.

And nothing goes to Sendy.co... Sendy is installed and isolated to your server as its own independent PHP / MySQL program.

Hope that helps.

 

[markku]

Plenty of people send lists with a 30% opening rate through SES, but those lists are likely established via SES.

How would Amazon SES even know what is the opening rate?

Bounce and complaints rates, yes, but opening rate, I don't think they'll see that? Or do they add a tracking image of their own to each mail going out?

Anyway, based on a little bit of googling just now, I don't think opening rate as such is a potential issue with Amazon SES. It's bounces that should be kept below 5% and of course as few complaints as possible.

Please correct me with sources if you know otherwise.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

You are correct, bounces and complaints are the issue. Researching the complaints issue, you will find that when clicked as spam without opening the email, suddenly you have a complaint without it being opened, thus NEW lists only with high unopen rates are susceptible to the complaints problem through automatic spam reporting, especially Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail versus established lists which have progressive reporting versus a whole bunch of spam reporting if you dumped a new list into SES with a high unopen rate, and subsequent spam reporting happening (complaints).

Correct me if I have read that data wrong on spam reporting available across the web. I read this through Amazon as well when setting up my SES... and one thing they warned about was exactly this issue with unopen rates and the way spam reporting is handled by these major email providers.

 

[markku]

Researching the complaints issue, you will find that when clicked as spam without opening the email, suddenly you have a complaint without it being opened, thus NEW lists only with high unopen rates are susceptible to the complaints problem through automatic spam reporting, especially Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail versus established lists which have progressive reporting versus a whole bunch of spam reporting if you dumped a new list into SES with a high unopen rate, and subsequent spam reporting happening (complaints).

Yeah I fully agree.

To play it safe, it's best to use another service (e.g. a premium SMTP) to run the list through a few times at least from so you can take out the addresses that bounced or got complaints from, before starting to use Amazon SES.
For me this alone worked well; after I had removed the bounces & complaints from the first 3 newsletters, the following ones did not gather a significant bounce / complaints rate, even though the opening rate is continually approx. 30% due to me not having removed all the unopened ones. I believe this sort of opening rate or a bit lower is quite typical for emails, according to MailChimp.

To play it completely safe, using (like you did yourself if I recall) such a service for 1-3 months and removing all unopened addresses at the end will indeed end up with a super clean list and likely an extremely high open rate for future emails. I guess I should do this too, nothing to lose, since the email addresses that haven't opened any of the emails after a few emails are of course unlikely to do so in the future either.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

Yer, I did a 3 month clean on mine... being a newbie going into SES I didn't want to get kicked out of the cheap email method.

 

[cmeinck]

Yer, I did a 3 month clean on mine... being a newbie going into SES I didn't want to get kicked out of the cheap email method.

Do you have any recommendations on providers? I was looking at Mailgun, but open to other cost effective methods.

Is there a way in Sendy to merge lists and de-dupe them? I have a list in Mailchimp, one in StreamSend and what will eventually be my XenForo list.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

I used http://www.serversmtp.com, but its much of a muchness IMHO... as mail gun is pretty much about the same for pricing it seems. Compared to mail chimp, such prices are insanely cheap via these SMTP providers.

You can't do those things in Sendy itself, Sendy only manages lists once in the system. Sendy won't list an email twice though in the same list, as it will only allow one registration of an email per list. So if you imported a .csv with duplicates, it will de-dupe it automatically by this rule.

If you wanted to merge a list, you just add more manually via .csv upload into an existing list, and again, it will not list duplicate emails automatically. You can copy and paste them as well, depending on the size of the list.

 

[Stemmy]

I purchased this addon 10 days ago and have not been able to use it yet.

I have posted here and messaged the developer and had no response to my question. As far as it is this addon is unusable in its present state. I will post the question here again and see how it goes before I go down the refund route.

I have 19,000 members on my forum, when I rebuild the memberlist to a clean new list it imports 23,000 members - how can this be ? I am only including valid members of the registered usergroup and members who have not opted out of site mailings. I know the list should be around the 13-15,000 mark as I have done the search within xenforo admin. Where are the extra 10,000 members coming from ? I have tried numerous times and still get the same result.

This hack looks great if it works but as it is now its unusable. having posted here earlier I see I am not the only one having this issue. please can something be done otherwise I will be pursuing a refund.

 

[Brivium]

Please check your conversation. I sent a message to you 10 minutes ago.

 

[cmeinck]

I used http://www.serversmtp.com, but its much of a muchness IMHO... as mail gun is pretty much about the same for pricing it seems. Compared to mail chimp, such prices are insanely cheap via these SMTP providers.

You can't do those things in Sendy itself, Sendy only manages lists once in the system. Sendy won't list an email twice though in the same list, as it will only allow one registration of an email per list. So if you imported a .csv with duplicates, it will de-dupe it automatically by this rule.

If you wanted to merge a list, you just add more manually via .csv upload into an existing list, and again, it will not list duplicate emails automatically. You can copy and paste them as well, depending on the size of the list.

Thanks. All three lists ultimately live in my XenForo database. I've decided to start fresh with that list. I'm going to export all email addresses for users who have zero posts and haven't been active in a year. I'm using two email verification services to provide me with a free estimate on what needs to be scrubbed, but likely plan to go with LeadSpend. They charge $50 for up to 10k emails. I'm going to change all bad emails to awaiting verification in XenForo. The resulting list should be much cleaner. I've been using Maildrill for transactional and going to use it for marketing as well. I've got an excellent reputation with them and the LeadSpend investment should help keep my bounces down. I'm not sure if I'm going to stick with them or migrate to Amazon. I'm excited to see where this all takes me and my forum.

 

[Brivium]

******* updated ******* - Sendy Integrate with a new update entry:

30/01/2015: Version 1.4.1

- Added option to select users those were banned.
- Minor bug fixes.

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[cmeinck]

I'm real impressed with LeadSpend and *******'s add-on. My only issue is that despite owning professional versions of his add-ons, this one dumped a link at the bottom of my forum. I'm extremely sensitive to this kind of stuff and that's why I pay three times the cost of the regular plugin. I shouldn't have to submit trouble tickets and search for ways to remove this. The downloaded files should come with this removed. That's a short term issue, thus my 5-star review.

As for LeadSpend, I cleaned about 8800 emails for $50. Using an Excel function found here at XF, I was able to convert the 1300 bad emails to User State Awaiting Confirmation Due To Edit. This ended up a nice way to clean the list before mailing.

 

[dotpro]

So this integrates with sendy, awesome but what do you send to members as updates? No, more than just a hello.

How about taking this add-on few steps further? Generate list of latest threads, popular threads, latest replies from a forum (preferably the one which has forum related updates/news) and add it to sendy? I know this is possible manually or with the help of another add-on.

Goal here is to reduce the amount of time I spend coming up with content for newsletter, refining it and then send it.

 

[Brent W]

So this integrates with sendy, awesome but what do you send to members as updates? No, more than just a hello.

How about taking this add-on few steps further? Generate list of latest threads, popular threads, latest replies from a forum (preferably the one which has forum related updates/news) and add it to sendy? I know this is possible manually or with the help of another add-on.

Goal here is to reduce the amount of time I spend coming up with content for newsletter, refining it and then send it.

Sounds like exactly what you want here: https://xenforo.com/community/resou...owcase-resource-manager-gallery-support.3958/