dMw Community Survey

[smilodon]

We've two options. We can use a free introductory feature of teh forum that lets us send out up to 500 mails for free (after which we have to pay) or w can create a mailing list in the forum software and export it to an external application to send. I'm not sure how best to send the mails if we use the mailing list feature. I use Gmail for all my mail and doubt it would work through that service. We'll need to look into it a bit ore if we do decide to create a mailing.

[TwoBad]

You guys probably already have this covered but i use a programme called SendBlaster 2 for doing mail shots for some of my clients.  I'd be happy to use it for this, all i'd need is a list of addresses but if you gave me more info like forum name i could personalise the mails a little more.  I can also add tracking to them so we can see how many people open the mails, click the links etc.

[Gone_Away]

Guys,

Have we sent the survey invite out to non-active members yet?

I've taken some of the info about ladders and community scrims but before I consider anything further I thought I'd see if we're done with the survey and if so request the final results. However, I would really like us to contact those on the database that haven't been around recently and get their input too.

Tks.

[Gone_Away]

Any News??

[TeaLeaf]

Had not seen this follow up for some reason.

I'm not convinced we should be sending this questionnaire to any non-active members.  The questionnaire was designed as a link and for existing active members.  Asking someone how many times they play on dMw servers or if they are Supporting Members when we already know they are not seems kind of pointless to me.

What I think people are thinking about is how we contact existing members who are inactive.   That's a separate question.

The clash here is privacy/spam versus communication of services.

Personally I see no reason why we should not periodically send an email to ALL registered dMw members promoting our community and servers.   I know there has been opposition to this in the past, buyt tbh if you register on a forum you expect some contact.  The balance is frequency, too often and it is spam, too infrequent and it is inneffective.

I'd suggest once every 3 months is a reasonable period for contact?  GLs would then need to come up with the content for these mails though!

[smilodon]

I think this would work. We might be able to work it into a newsletter format and give people the option to unsubscribe if they want. This would throw up the issue of how we manage the newsletter and make sure those who unsubscribe don't receive the message in the future. I imagine a manual system would not work and we'd need to go automatic. The Vertical Response service built into the forum would cost us about £20.00 for each mailing assuming we were mailing all 2400ish members. I think the system allows recipients to opt out which I thin k is a must have if we're not to be accused of being spammers.

I've not checked yet (I'm out and about on public wifi) but there may be an alternative plugin option for the forum? Or someone may have a better idea or have facilities themselves to send out mails?

But I think the idea of a news letter with what we're doing, what games we support, how the various LAN's, events etc went would be a good call.