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[Weekly Newsletter] We changed our weekly newsletter setting from the default "ON" to default "OFF"

Over the last couple of weeks we had a remarkable increase of members and activity due to the recent influx of traffic. This has resulted in our mail program to automatically send out thousands of additional weekly newsletters to all the new folks and bringing the total number of weekly participants to over 15,000.

Here are a number of issues with this:

  1. We noticed that we get about 10-30 spam complaints a week which made us realize that not everyone uses or knows how to use the link at the bottom of each newsletter to unsubscribe

  2. We realized that automatically subscribing new members to receive the newsletter is an annoyance, not everyone wants their inbox to be filled with updates

  3. It is actually costing roughly $30 to send out the over 15,000 emails each week using Postmark. These funds can be more effectively spent on better hosting or other services

Here is what we did as of today

All new members will need to manually subscribe to receive the newsletter, we will update documentation and literature to point out how to quickly do this. Those of you who were still subscribed to the newsletter up until this moment have been unsubscribed, however anyone interested in still receiving the newsletter can easily resubscribe (we highly suggest it). Here is a simple step by step on how to do so, click on your profile icon (up top) and go to your "Settings" area, click on the "preferences" tab and then click on the "Receive Newsletter" check box. Our newsletter goes out every Sunday in the morning, so resubscribing by Saturday evening at the latest will let you receive this week's copy. Having said that, we are excited for anyone wishing to get the weekly newsletter to subscribe, we love seeing people check out the stats and discuss them, we just felt that we were needlessly spamming thousands of people by automatically subscribing them (you) to something that should have been a choice in the first place.

OK, that's pretty much it! Have an awesome weekend everyone!

8 years ago by drunkenninja with 10 comments

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  • xg549
    +9

    I'm cool with this decision but

    which made us realize that not everyone uses or knows how to use the link at the bottom of each newsletter to unsubscribe

    I don't... just... the density of some people never ceases to amaze me.

    • cunt
      +4

      I think it might be to do with some people not believing the unsubscribe function will work because all websites are corporate sluts

    • FurtWigglepants
      +3

      It's more apathy than anything else.

  • Retzilience
    +6

    We noticed that we get about 10-30 spam complaints a week which made us realize that not everyone uses or knows how to use the link at the bottom of each newsletter to unsubscribe

    Oh, and that's only going to get worse with userbase growth. There are so many forced newsletters nowadays with the unsubscribe link being a complete farse, (you click it and you go to an Alices Rabbit Hole of a choir to unsubscribe), that most people just want to see that out of their inbox and quickly click the spam button and end up extending this behavior to most newsletters they are "bored" with.

    We realized that automatically subscribing new members to receive the newsletter is an annoyance, not everyone wants their inbox to be filled with updates

    True, but an evident (unticked) checkbox on the time of registering is good, brings qualified public. People who do want to receive it generally click it if they find it compelling. And in the case of mass mailing a smaller interested public is way better than a huge dismissive public,

    Because of costs and feedback, mostly.

    Also, if this turns out to be costly on this moment maybe it would be cool to see if it's plausible to work with a partnership with some mailing services.

    Mailchimp for example is usually pretty cool on this, maybe they would like to provide service at low or no-cost if the newsletter is dual-branded by Snpazu and Mailchimp.

    There are other services also. But if the cost is negligible, no need to seek this, I guess.

  • djrascal
    +6

    Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

  • redalastor (edited 8 years ago)
    +4

    Can I opt in to have it in my Snapzu inbox?

    • picklefingers
      +4

      Oh, that's a good idea. I get a lot of emails and even though I want to read it, I often miss it. I wouldn't miss it in my Snapzu messages.

      • redalastor
        +1

        Makes quite a bunch less emails to send even go people who do want to read it and saves money. Could be significant as Snapzu grows.

  • cringe
    +2

    I'm fine with the decision. I get too much newsletters too and every time I sign up somewhere I go to the settings first to check what mail I have to expect and how to disable it right away.

    Maybe you can split the setting up, one for the general newsletter and one for site announcements. I am generally interested in site announcements about new features or other important things, but not so much in an unspecific weekly newsletter.

  • HeroOfCanton
    +2

    As a new member, I don't know what's in the newsletter. So choosing whether to have it or not at sign-up seems like an almost arbitrary "do I want a random possibly-spammy email or not" question, rather than "would I like a digest of the content" question.

    I like redalastor's suggestion of instead sending it to the Snapzu inbox. Perhaps auto-subscribe people there instead of via email, then they can very easily turn it off if they don't want it, or leave it for the times that they do, without having to be bothered by emails.