E-mail Newsletters on Orienteering Websites

[HotShot]

Does anyone have experience of using e-mail newsletters on orienteering (or other club-type) websites? This is where users can type in their e-mail address on the web-site and then receive newsletters by e-mail. The advantage of this method is that it is a "push" technology, i.e. the club pushes news out to its members/subscribers rather than posting the news on the website and hoping that people will visit (thereby "pulling" the information). Many organisations (e.g. supermarkets, airlines, online-stores) offer e-mail newsletters and they can be very professional in appearance (through the use of HTML/graphics).

I know many people will be thinking "use syndication" (RSS feeds), but I don't believe that the use of feed reader technoloy is sufficiently widespread at the moment to reach the target audience. Perhaps the best approach would be to offer a combined newsletter/feed approach, where users could choose the delivery method.

As I am thinking in terms of say 300 subscribers, I don't think that manually maintaing the mailing list is feasible, so the options are:

* Use a service provided by your website host (e.g. 1&1's Newsletter Tool)
* Use an external paid-for service ( e.g. yourmailinglistprovider.com, constantcontact.com, campaignmonitor.com)
* Deploy a mailing list package (e.g. PHPList) on your website's server

Host-provided solutions are often limited to 100 subscribers, which might not be enough.

Paid-for services are expensive, although yourmailinglistprovider.com seems good value. It even offers a free "lite" service (with advertising on the sign-up page but not in the e-mails). On the downside it does seem to be a small operation, which raises security/data protection concerns.

Server-deployed solutions may be tricky to set up and may be a security /data protection risk.

The possibility of newsletters getting flagged as spam also needs to be considered.

Experiences, advice?

[johnloguk]

Our club newsletter has gone out by e-mail to those that want it in that format for some time now, and I know many clubs do the same. But that is just a pdf of the hard copy that goes by snail mail. I know that lots of clubs do it this way.

We also have a monthly E-news update that members can opt into.

It saves a fortune in postage

A lot of the tech-speak in the original post was beyond me, maybe lincolnsteve can tell you more as he is our "web man"

[OldManHOC]

"I know many people will be thinking "use syndication" (RSS feeds), but I don't believe that the use of feed reader technoloy is sufficiently widespread at the moment to reach the target audience."

HOC Website RSS - One user only - so abandoned after 6 months trial
I suppose once RSS comes as-standard-built-in to Internet Explorer then the masses may start to use it more

OMH

[HotShot]

Yes johnloguk, the LOG Mailing List on the front page of http://www.logonline.org.uk/ is exactly the sort of think I am talking about. I have PM'ed the LOG webmaster to see if he has any advice.

[HotShot]

I suppose once RSS comes as-standard-built-in to Internet Explorer then the masses may start to use it more

I think that time may be here very soon as Internet Explorer 7 and Vista (next Microsoft Operating System, due January 2007) both have it. However, I still think there will be a need for e-mail newsletters for some time yet.

[Simon]

Paid-for services are expensive, although yourmailinglistprovider.com seems good value. It even offers a free "lite" service (with advertising on the sign-up page but not in the e-mails). On the downside it does seem to be a small operation, which raises security/data protection concerns.

Consider groups.google.com or groups.yahoo.com (the downside of the later is that, I seem to recall, you need a yahoo account to be able to get messages from the group). They both offer various options concerning who can read/post to the groups and also give a good web interface as an alternative method to view the messages. You do not have to pay for either service.

I think that time may be here very soon as Internet Explorer 7 and Vista (next Microsoft Operating System, due January 2007) both have it. However, I still think there will be a need for e-mail newsletters for some time yet.

Past history suggests that the uptake of either new product will not be quick.

[HotShot]

Consider groups.google.com or groups.yahoo.com (the downside of the later is that, I seem to recall, you need a yahoo account to be able to get messages from the group). They both offer various options concerning who can read/post to the groups and also give a good web interface as an alternative method to view the messages. You do not have to pay for either service.

I'll certainly have a look at Google/Yahoo groups, but my feeling is that they are more geared towards discussion rather than the announcement type functionality that I am looking for.

My idea is that we would send out a professional HTML/graphics e-mail a few days before each mainstream club event (that would be about once a month). Anyone who is vaguely interested in orienteering within our area would be able to sign up for the newsletter from a prominent "Subscribe to our Newsletter" link on our website - just like the one on the LOG website. There is no need for discussion - the e-mail will contain details of how to contact the organiser should the recipient have a question.

[Knee Deep Mud!]

Regular EMail updates are a great way to disemminate timely information / reminders to the punters.

I am in several orienteering and non-orienteering groups that use EMail mailing lists to push out regular updates and newsletters etc to members. Delivery frequencies varying from occasional to weekly.

These all use the good old EMail mailing list managed by one person technique. i.e. one person manages the mailing list and sends out the EMails. Anyone wanting to join the list contacts that person ( group members are deemed to have asked to be on the list unless they opt out). Once set up management is very easy as typical clubs don't have that high a turnover to cause a problem other than at the original setup. Anyone wanting to send info out sends it to the list manager and they forward it. All EMails bcc'd so as not to pass EMail addresses on. A bit of work for the list manager, but the only way that seems to work reliably. You can also break it down into sub lists to adjust the message to the target audience (members, former members, new enquiries etc). One group has an internet based EMail account for this purpose with several members of the committee having access so there is no problem if someone goes on holiday etc.

For the list I manage I only delete people who ask to be removed from the list. On several occasions people who enquired up to 3 years earlier but never came out eventually turned up after seeing one of the regular EMails advertising an event just up the road on a day they were free. EMail is an easy way to not give up on enquiries even if they don't immediately turn up at your next event!

Yahoo groups inbuilt mailing list system was used by two of the groups. One abandoned it after repeated problems and unreliability with the service. The other is still using it, but due to low take up has opted for the manual system described above as an additional way of disseminating information.

[roadrunner]

My club has used Yahoo groups for some time, for notification of events and the like. The emails are just plain text, maybe you can make it do HTML but we haven't tried. The only problem I've seen is that if emails sent to you "bounce" for any reason for a period of time, you stop getting them unless you go onto the Yahoo groups site and tell it to start sending them again (you can read the emails you missed there as well). This can be a nuisance, as you don't tend to realise that it's happening. (In my case, I only found out when I posted a message myself.)

[SeanC]

HotShot wrote:

"My idea is that we would send out a professional HTML/graphics e-mail a few days before each mainstream club event (that would be about once a month). Anyone who is vaguely interested in orienteering within our area would be able to sign up for the newsletter from a prominent "Subscribe to our Newsletter" link on our website - just like the one on the LOG website. There is no need for discussion - the e-mail will contain details of how to contact the organiser should the recipient have a question."

This is a really good idea. I'm sure there are lots of people who want to try orienteering but cant find a slot in their diary and arent hooked enough to keep checking websites.

I've some experience on newsletter applications through my work. If someone is willing to build an application it might not be too hard, all you need is

1) A database with one table and one column (email address)
2) Some code that allows anyone to post their email address to this database, then put a text box on the club website so anyone can store their email address.
3) Some code that allows anyone to remove their email address from this database. Its best to send an unsubscribe link out with every email, otherwise you'll get people ringing up the club secretary asking to be unsubscribed, ie something like:

http://www.oclub.org/unsubscribe?email=wot@ever.com

Then you have your mailing list.

To make it really useful you need a separate table with the following columns:

ALERT DATE (ie when you want to send the message)
MESSAGE (ie something like "orienteering event 10-12am at Wear Ever Country Park 14th October, see http://www.oclub.org for more info"

Another part of the application runs once a day and checks all the alert dates. If the alert date is todays date, send all the messages to those on the list. All you have to do is load up the messages every few months and leave it alone.

But I dont have any experience in how to do this without using oracle database and java. That's too expensive for non commercial uses! I understand you can do all of this for free with php and free databases like mySQL. I guess this is the technology many of the cleverer club websites use?

The only issue might be storing email addresses, there are laws on this and you may need to display some terms and conditions to say what your going to do with the email address and how to unsubscribe. I'm not a lawyer!

There might be scope for anyone who makes such a system to resell it to other clubs or to charge a hosting fee. If you're experienced with php and mySQL this might be easy and make you a tidy profit (to be ploughed back into your club development of course ).

[SeanC]

I should have checked yahoo groups out more carefully before writing that long post. Looks like yahoo groups can do all of the stuff in my previous post, the only downside seems to be that yahoo will send adverts with the emails. Does anyone know of any other drawbacks?

[pyrat]

I wrote a newsletter program at my day job which does exactly what you want. Written in ruby on rails and mysql it maintains a list of subscribers, gathers statistics, sends in rich html format and text only, has an api for adding and deleting subscribers and is easy to use.

I am quite proud of it but the downside as it is a commercial product so does cost a little more (~ 40 per month).

Contact me or my employer http://www.mercurytide.com for more info.

[openadventure]

Hot shot.

I run a mailing list for people interested in Open Adventure its pretty easy to manage. It uses Outlook - I just use normal email to construct the email messages in HTML inserting pictures where I see fit. I desperately try and keep the email size below 100KB.

To manage the email list (and the online entry system) I use email2db and a form on the website. email2db parses incoming emails sends a reply and adds the contacts to outlook. It can also be configured to add them a MySql database such as Access. You can configure email2db to remove contacts but I only get the odd one or two subscribers wanting to come off each month so I manually remove them.

In terms of cost - £100 for email2db (noting that this also manages the online entry as well).

http://www.email2db.com

Oh you can easily subscribe to one of my newsletters on http://www.openadventure.com/newsletter.htm and see previous newsletters (saved in html by using word as email editor and then cleaning up in dreamweaver).

If this looks all to much of a headache you might want to try a commercial provider e.g. newsweaver.

Enjoy - hope its helpful.