We Miss You!

[Alpha1]

A challenging aspect of running a XF forum is getting back lost members. There is a simple way to solve this.
For members who have not visited the site for over X time, show a 'Miss You' link / button on profile.
Users on the site can then click this functions to let the member know that he/she is missed.

The member will then receive an email to let him/her know that members, A, B, C misses them and would like to see them back. Of course with a few call to action links back to the site.

Emails can be sent once a week or so. Members would not receive more than 1 email a week. No matter how many members click the button. Do not send out a 'We Miss You' notification from the same member until the absent member has visited the site again.

 

[TPerry]

I can see where that could (and probably frequently would) be sorely abused - mayhap to the point of your mail server joining the ranks of spammers.
Most of us would like to think our forum users are adult in nature - but frequently the bad side of the anonymous (mainly) nature of it comes to the front.

 

[Alpha1]

Good point. It would not make sense to have this function available to new members. Only to members who have been long enough to actually miss another member. A threshold in minimum posts or usergroup would work.

 

[Martok]

How many "I miss you" emails would a user get? Would it be one for every user who clicked the link? That could potentially be a lot of emails! Or would it be time-limited in some way e.g. one email per day no matter how many users clicked on the link? Would the link disappear to those who have already clicked on it? Would it disappear permanently, or just for a period of time? Also, could users opt-out of receiving "I miss you" emails?

It might be an idea to flesh out how this suggestion would work to give the developers a better idea as well as to encourage others to support it. Currently I don't think it's a good idea and could just be a spamming annoyance to members that could be abused, but may change my mind if the idea is expanded upon.

 

[Mouth]

The member will then receive an email to let him/her know that members, A, B, C misses them and would like to see them back.

Most users will have their "email me when I receive a conversation" active, so just starting a conversation to a user that is missed will effectively achieve the same thing?

 

[SneakyDave]

You could throttle abuse by just sending out a weekly email via cron to the user with a list of member that think they miss him/her, but yeah, it probably wouldn't be abused any more than sending a personal conversation email.

 

[HWS]

You could throttle abuse by just sending out a weekly email via cron to the user with a list of member that think they miss him/her, but yeah, it probably wouldn't be abused any more than sending a personal conversation email.

You should send "We Mis You" mails to all your members not logged in for a certain time anyway...

 

[Alpha1]

You should send "We Mis You" mails to all your members not logged in for a certain time anyway...

Yes, but generic messages are far less effective than personal messages.

Most users will have their "email me when I receive a conversation" active, so just starting a conversation to a user that is missed will effectively achieve the same thing?

Sort of, but a one click call to action link is always more effective.

 

[Paul B]

Yes, but generic messages are far less effective than personal messages.

Yet your suggestion states:

The member will then receive an email to let him/her know that members, A, B, C misses them and would like to see them back. Of course with a few call to action links back to the site.

Surely then starting a personal conversation with the member is the better option?

 

[Alpha1]

Nope.
Personal messages are not going to manifest out of thin air. On the contrary, the number of personal messages to to absent members are not increase. They generally decrease for absent members. And part of the members have conversation alerts turned off.

My suggestion is to create a call to action that engages users to send a preset message with only one click. This will bring back more users.

 

[Paul B]

Yes, but generic messages are far less effective than personal messages.

My suggestion is to create a call to action that engages users to send a preset message

 

[Alpha1]

A well worded (preset) message can convey the personal message that specific members want them to know that they are missed.
That is much more effective than a generic message that they community misses them. People get loads of spam and meaningless emails all the time and have become immune to non-personal messages.

Can you see the distinction now?

 

[SneakyDave]

Nope.
Personal messages are not going to manifest out of thin air. On the contrary, the number of personal messages to to absent members are not increase. They generally decrease for absent members. And part of the members have conversation alerts turned off.

My suggestion is to create a call to action that engages users to send a preset message with only one click. This will bring back more users.

If members turn off personal conversation emails, wouldn't they turn off 'we miss you' emails too, if that option existed?

 

[Paul B]

Can you see the distinction now?

No.

A predefined message by definition is not a personal message.
Receive more than one and that would be even more obvious.

It seems like a very niche feature to me.

 

[Alpha1]

Can you please delete this suggestion? If someone else wants it then it can be suggested again. I am done splitting hairs. because ths is not productive in any way.
I was planning to have this developed for myself in any case.

 

[James]

An idea for limiting the abuse beside the obvious consolidate & send one email will be to restrict use of the button to users who have a prior relationship with the recipient (I.e. Follows them or is being followed by them).

 

[SneakyDave]

"Poke" them! There's the answer!

 

[Alpha1]

To come back to this suggestion: On my big board our 'Missing members' thread is always active. It has been for over a decade. Its where members post that they miss member X and if anyone knows how that member is doing.

The thought behind the above suggestion is to use this 'need' to pull missing members back in.
This could work by showing a button on members that have been away for X months. Clicking the button could give the member an optional message field to include a personal message.
To prevent abuse (as was suggested could happen) there could be a waiting period before the same member could use the function again. And a usergroup permission would also be useful.

 

[SneakyDave]

Alfa1, I'm not against this sort of idea, but would a "Poke" button actually be more beneficial?

1) A person could only poke somebody once, lessening the problem of abuse. This of course could also be applied to your suggestion. I know personally, I wouldn't want more than one notification of somebody "missing" me.
2) The poked person would receive an email notification that they were poked, but there wouldn't be any text to accompany it. Wouldn't that possibly engage the member to visit the forum out of curiosity, moreso than perhaps a simple message saying a member misses them?

Just some thoughts, not shooting down the idea.

 

[HWS]

What Alfa wants is a way to say to the missing user that he is really missed by certain, real persons (other members).

Since missing members usually do not login any more and prop. do not receive regular alerts any more, he thinks sending the notitication with e-mail is the best idea.

I also know this situation. We also have several threads where people are complaining about missing other members so much. But I do not think that throwing a lot ofg e-mails at the missing member with "I miss you" is a good idea. In almost all cases the threads are getting to known by the missing members. Some of them are already posting again, but with another user name and others get notified about such threads at Facebook by friends still posting. So I do not see a need to send "Miss U" e-mails.

But what should be in core would be a feature to automatically e-mail users who have not logged in for a definable amount of days. It could be called "We miss U" and include " You have not been at our site for a long time." and presentation of some threads created since then.