Newsletter (Anyone remember DNTK?)

DeVore

A good while ago I started doing a newsletter for Boards but lack of time and working in Spin made me abandon the idea.

I'm thinking of resurrecting it because as Boards has grown so big its sometimes hard to make yourself heard (even for me!) to get information accross...

I used to enjoy reading FnckedCompany's irregular newsletter and am thinking about something in that style but havent thought beyond that.
Obviously we'd use the "Allow Administrators to Mail me" option to give Opt-In / Opt Out control to the users, but I'm wondering if anyone would be interested.

I'm thinking of something vaguely weekly and with a mix of stuff from Boards, stuff from the wider internet, announcements and the usual craziness that arrives in my inbox from time to time.

I know I could use the front page Newsletter area but there is something about a weekly newsletter that attracts me. I cant fathom what... maybe its the "we'll come to you" nature of e-mail that the user gets it delivered to them rather then having to come collect it... I dunno... *muse*

DeV.

flogen

I'd certainly look forward to it... I'm not a big fan of newsletters, but when you know its going to be something worth reading rather than some company trying to sell their wares, then thats a different story!

flogen

seamus

I used to enjoy the 5 o'clock shadow from p45, even though I've never been mad about their forums. For some reason or other I unsubscribed.

A newsletter from boards I think would be cool, and you'd have no shortage of people willing to help out. Content is the thing. Personally I'd be content with one email a day entitled, "DeV's crazy email of the day!" obviously containing that one brain melting email you've received that day.....or something.

smoke.me.a.kipper

i look forward to seeing this in my inbox.

The Muppet

Sounds Interesting

Raphael

Sounds great!

Stabshauptmann

Sounds great but why would this not be suitable material for the magazine forum or your Journal?
Sign me up anyway!

Bard

Bring it on!

DeVore

My journal is personal to me and the front page magazine is intended for something else (something more intended to be opened up to a few people like Seamus is suggesting).

Also we have a lot of people who have agreed to allow the administrators mail them and given my desire to write for a living that seems like a decent audience to have some fun with.

DeV.

The Muppet

DeVore wrote:

Also we have a lot of people who have agreed to allow the administrators mail them and given my desire to write for a living that seems like a decent audience to have some fun with.

DeV.

Is this in the userCP or is there a seperate signup for the proposed newsletter?

celticfc

Great idea

DeVore

Its in the UserCP. We dont write to our users otherwise (I dont think we ever have apart from DNTK which also obeyed that opt-in). It seems appropriate.

DeV.

amp

Never been a big fan of e-mailed news letters myself. Why not use webpages?

Sarky

[Insert "Bubbles for editor" joke here]

I like the idea. There's far too much going on around Boards.ie to see at once. A summary of sorts would be rather nifty.

Agent Smith

i give this my full approvel.....

BuffyBot

Sounds like a good idea!

Tom Dunne

This is Tom Dunne and I approve this message.

Or these messages.

Or these newsletters.

Or whatever DeVore wants to call them.

Moriarty

amp wrote:

Never been a big fan of e-mailed news letters myself. Why not use webpages?

What the yank said ^

Bard

Moriarty wrote:

What the yank said ^

What Sherlock Holmes' nemesis said ^

Agent Smith

what the celtic musician said

smoke.me.a.kipper

what neo's nemises said ^

Dr. Dre

ditto all the above

NeoSlicerZ

What the freaky doctor said

SantaHoe

What about people who signed up for a boards account, set it to allow admins to mail, then left the boards having posted once or twice, then a year later have a newsletter coming to them that they don't care about.
If I was getting a newsletter from a forum I hadn't been to in about a year; I'd be irritated by it.
"Allow administrators to send you email" (or something to that effect) doesn't neccisarily imply that they want a regular newsletter.
I wouldn't mind recieving one at all, but I'm just thinking of all the dormant/dead accounts that might consider it spam.
Unless you could limit the recipients to people who've been active in the past few months, although I'd say that's a lot of work to setup.
Why not do it via PM instead? That way, if you're not using your account, then you won't even know it's there.

flogen

SantaHoe wrote:

What about people who signed up for a boards account, set it to allow admins to mail, then left the boards having posted once or twice, then a year later have a newsletter coming to them that they don't care about.
If I was getting a newsletter from a forum I hadn't been to in about a year; I'd be irritated by it.
"Allow administrators to send you email" (or something to that effect) doesn't neccisarily imply that they want a regular newsletter.
I wouldn't mind recieving one at all, but I'm just thinking of all the dormant/dead accounts that might consider it spam.
Unless you could limit the recipients to people who've been active in the past few months, although I'd say that's a lot of work to setup.
Why not do it via PM instead? That way, if you're not using your account, then you won't even know it's there.

If they consider it spam, they'd just hit the "this is spam" button on their e-mail account... or contact DeV..

I'm sure they'd come up with some kind of "if you dont want to recieve this anymore, follow this link" kind of thing that most newsletters tend to have.

flogen

Crash

I'd say a pm version would be slick. cus i read my pm's more than i read my mail and i hate mass mail jobbies

smoke.me.a.kipper

crash_000 wrote:

I'd say a pm version would be slick. cus i read my pm's more than i read my mail and i hate mass mail jobbies

i tend to agree entirely. much better idea than email option.

SantaHoe

flogen wrote:

If they consider it spam, they'd just hit the "this is spam" button on their e-mail account... or contact DeV..

Not everyone uses Yahoo mail dude.

flogen wrote:

I'm sure they'd come up with some kind of "if you dont want to recieve this anymore, follow this link" kind of thing that most newsletters tend to have.

Yeah most spam has that aswell, but mostly to check if the account is alive so they can send more spam to that account... tbh I don't think most people are arsed doing that anymore.
I'd just add a mail filter to delete everything from that address.

The thing is though, why make a few thousand people have to do that, just because a few hundred of us want a newsletter?
I don't know the figures involved in what dead account holders will recieve a newsletter or not, but I think it's something to consider at least.

Or if you really want to go the email route, how about hax0ring a new checkbox into user options asking them specifically about the newsletter?

ecksor

What exactly do people have in mind when they click "allow admins to email me?" then? It's not like I'd consult in the event that I had to directly contact an individual user for some odd reason, it's purely for permission to send bulk mail in my opinion.

flogen

SantaHoe wrote:

Not everyone uses Yahoo mail dude.

Me included, but most of the main e-mail companies have some kind of bulk or spam mail diverter.

Yeah most spam has that aswell, but mostly to check if the account is alive so they can send more spam to that account... tbh I don't think most people are arsed doing that anymore.
I'd just add a mail filter to delete everything from that address.

The thing is though, why make a few thousand people have to do that, just because a few hundred of us want a newsletter?
I don't know the figures involved in what dead account holders will recieve a newsletter or not, but I think it's something to consider at least.

Or if you really want to go the email route, how about hax0ring a new checkbox into user options asking them specifically about the newsletter?

True, most spam has that, but so what? if someone doesnt want to recieve the mail what difference is it if they block it as spam or tell boards.ie not to send it anymore?

If its possible to put another option in the CP for users to click for the newsletter, then that would certainly solve any problems like the above.

flogen

ecksor

Ye do realise that spam is Unsolicited Commercial E-mail? Not "Thing that I signed up for and then realised that I didn't want after all". It doesn't help already overzealous spam filters if they're being trained with non-spam.