Liberi's idea: newsletter

[morrissey]

Many sites these days have sign up functions where you put down your email address and they send you monthly/weekly/daily emails about their site.

My idea (I renounce any credit if its already been suggested) is to do something like that, and have a monthly email sent out with info on the latest albums, links to the best reviews of the month, music news for the month, any major site developments, specially constructed monthly muses by selected writers, mp3s, links to interesting music sites etc etc etc.

The possibilities are endless, and are only limited by our effort. I know it'd take a lot of work, but if you made a set template and gave it to the mods and users to fill up with content, then it'd take little effort from a design standpoint. You've got a database of 115,475 users and their emails, and 8,153 of those being active on mx. If you sent it out to all of them, and made it an option when signing up, you'd probably get a lot more users coming back to sputnik. You'd also get people staying longer imo, as recurring the emails would prevent them from forgetting about sputnik.

I know I sound like that guy that said "Lets send thousands of troops up Omaha Beach into the Atlantic Wall! But it could work imo.
So to get discussion going, here are some questions you guys can answer:

- Good/bad idea?
- quarterly/monthly/weekly/daily or just whenever there is enough material to send out?
- things that should be mentioned in it?

It would be good if we could start getting serial muses going, the section has been pretty slow lately. So we could get regular writers from whom we have a month (or weekly, whatever) muse to look forward to and they get special mention or a spotlight in something like this, that would be a great move in the right direction.

So discuss discuss discuss.

[B]

I think it's a great idea.

A monthly one would probably suffice. Although maybe a bi-weekly one would be good if lots of people contributed to whatever was in it.

[innerdark]

- Good/bad idea?
- quarterly/monthly/weekly/daily or just whenever there is enough material to send out?
- things that should be mentioned in it?

Great idea, really great

Fortnightly/Monthly/Bimonthly depending on amount of material:


New feature section
Album Release Dates
Music news
RotM Details
User of the Month section
Review Tips* (basically, users write about how new users who need a little help could improve)


not sure if this could ALL be implemented, but i'm sure things could be cherry picked

[Liberi Fatali]

I like the idea, whoever thought of it must be a genius.

I personally think it should be monthly, things like this take a lot more work that you'd think. Then possibly fortnightly if we find we're cramming in too much.

[StreetlightRock]

If you're gonna do it, make it monthly. Cool idea BTW.

[mx]

I always hate when sites send me e-mails. If we did this it couldn't be sitewide, it would have to be for whoever signed up for it specifically

[innerdark]

I doubt one email a month would be that annoying. Maybe it'd only be for people who've reviewed plus whoever wants to sign up. I dunno.

point one-correct
point 2- no so

because of the sitewide integration scheme, mx would have to include in in the registration form for the forums, otherwise, we can't differentiate who wants it and who doesn't

[mx]

I'm not going to send out e-mail to all the members if they have not requested to see it. Period. That's a no-no, I don't want to be flooding people's inboxes, I hate when other people flood mine.

[NEDM]

I never check my email, nor did I allow the site to send me any.

This is a cool concept though, just not for me. Maybe a Sputnik Mailbox, but that's an entirely different idea.

[innerdark]

I'm not going to send out e-mail to all the members if they have not requested to see it. Period. That's a no-no, I don't want to be flooding people's inboxes, I hate when other people flood mine.

if it's my last post you're referring to, what i mean is you need some way to differentiate between who does, and doesn't want it, and you could have a little tick box thing like urban dictionary's word of the day

or, not sure if you could program it, but you could enter it as a feild in the reg. process which just needs a Y or N is an input

[Damrod]

I'm with mx on this one. If people don't request news about Sputnik, they should not be forced on them.

I think it's a nice idea though, and might be persued for devoted Sputnik users that sign up for email news.

[br3ad_man]

I'm with Sylvia in that I think it's a great idea but I really don't have any ideas to contribute. I'd be willing to help however I can once it's running.

[morrissey]

Alright well I think we'll give this a shot. I can organise it, if you guys want. Here's what I need:

a) if anyone is interested in receiving a newsletter, leave your email in this thread. No one will receive it unsolicited.
b) Can those interested in contributing to the newsletter please compile your favourite reviews and muses from the month of May, and perhaps add a short write-up for each?
c) Anyone interested in writing a recap of May, a look forward to the next month, a list of albums being released in June etc. etc. can just email it to me at mozzamorrissey at gmail dot com. Everyone feel free to participate and if anyone has a cool feature or write-up in mind, go ahead and write it.

Please send me your contributions by May 30th at the very latest, emails until May 31. I plan to send it out June 1.

[Sepstrup]

Yeah, I'll join the mailing list.

[morrissey]

There must be more than one person that wants it. :(

[Sepstrup]

Maybe make a seperate newsletter sign-up thread?

[Cripple Crow]

I think it'd work well, it'd be nice too. I think your best bet would be like the first or last of the month, each and every month. Every day/week might become too much.