Building Return Visits with Newsletters

Staying in touch with Forum Members

[rogerd]

I've seen widely varying approaches to periodic newsletters mailed in conjunction with forums. The vast majority of forums do no regular mailings. Some forums do periodic mailings, perhaps monthly or quarterly. A few forums do very frequent mailings, as often as daily in some cases.

Typically, these mailings refer back to discussions in the forum, and may provide a headline, some teaser content, and a link.

I can certainly see the benefits of this approach - a well-written headline might reactivate members who haven't visited lately. Infrequent visitors may find a particular topic of interest, and end up making valuable contributions to the discussion.

But, how much is too much? Is the benefit worth the effort? What's your take, either as a forum member or forum admin?

[Mohamed_E]

My own view is that any mass email is spam, period. I opt out as fast as I can, cursing the spammer.

[chadmg]

Mass email that is requested is not spam, by definition anyway.

A newsletter can be an invaluable tool for a website. For instance, I subscribe to Maxim Magazine and also to their website's newsletter. I don't visit their website often, so when I get their monthly newsletter I'll skim it, and if I see anything tantalizing I'll follow the link, otherwise I'll trash it. They get a visitor and perhaps some ad revenue.

I think the how much question will differ widely on who you ask. I think anything more than monthly might get to be a bit much. But at worse case, having to delete 12 emails a year is not bad and hardly an annoyance. At least IMHO, and only if I knowingly subscribed to the newsletter.

You could always do a cost-benefit analysis of your time spent on the newsletter and the revenue or perceived value of traffic from your newsletter. I will put a query string on my newsletter links to track this traffic. I will also check to see any spike in traffic after a newsletter is sent. Some people might go directly to the site, without the link. I say "will" because I'm not quite there yet, so I don't have any real results to share.

The question that I always ask, is do you leave the newsletter option checked by default. There are arguments for both. Do you lose the people who absolutely hate all mass mailings and gain those that would have just skipped over the option if it was off by default? Or the other way around? Personally, there are people in both groups I could do without, the very un-technologically savvy and the eternally pissed off. These days I'm wearing the ultra-white hat though. Which means the newsletter option is off by default and a member has to opt in. I might be losing some repeat visitors, but at least I'm not pissing anyone off.

[trillianjedi]

...the newsletter option is off by default and a member has to opt in.

By far the preferable method. I think it's also important to state how periodically newsletters will be sent.

[rogerd]

Whether you use opt-in or opt-out as default, I do think it's critical to make it exceptionally easy to unsubscribe. Even those who choose to opt-in may forget they did, and if you fail to provide a clear path to get off the list they are likely to add you to their spam filter (with potentially negative consequences for accounts with major e-mail services).

[Reflect]

But, how much is too much?

I find once a month is my "sweet spot" between annoyance and "oh, cool teaser" and click on the link. I think weekly and daily would make me opt out.

Take care,

Brian

[rogerd]

Reflect, to your comment I'd add that there is a tyranny to deadlines for busy people. Even a monthly newsletter can be a chore, and locking into a more frequent schedule could be brutal if the forum owner lacks the resources to devote to creating a good newsletter.