Mass Private Messages

Have you ever sent out a mass PM as opposed to a mass e-mail? I find mass PMs to be a nice alternative to e-mails because they aren't as annoying, and they are more effective.

How are they more effective? Let's see:
Members get an e-mail notification that says, "You have a new Private Message at XYZ forum, please login to read it". They assume it's a personal message, so are anxious to read it. Score - I just got a viewer.
... As opposed to ...
I send a mass e-mail and everybody gets it. The subject is "Recent News on XYZ Forum". People who aren't interested will immediately trash the message and not even read it. Some will read it, and not visit the forum. With this method, far less users will actually visit the site.


I usually only do a mass e-mail for BIG news and that's probably no more than once every 6 months.

I do a mass PM maybe once every month or two, to announce our latest contests and events that are going on. Works nicely.

What about you?

 

Yes actually. I did send mass PM to all Pisoga users telling them about the new change and such. The new site is active every day.

 

I'm not sure how to send out mass PMs to people. I notice your profile lists vB 8.4, I don't have that version yet.

 

:lol: Yeah, I got a preview copy of 8.4.

I'm using the "Yet Another Mass Private Message" mod to send mass PMs.

 

:lol:


Thanks for sharing the mod you are using :thumbup:

 

Ive never looked at how that mod works, so I may be way off here - but if you have 50,000 users, I would imagine adding a PM to everyone at the same time is going to give mysql a bit of work.

 

Never thought about that, but unfortunately for me, I don't think that's a concern of mine, and won't be anytime soon. :lol:

 

There is a setting for the number of PM's to send at a time. You can also define the user groups to send to and well as filter by all the standard user search criteria. I use it on my forum but that's only about 600 users. I have used it on a 64K member site with a setting to send 100 at a time. Took a while but the logs showed they all arrived and there was not a big hit on the sever.

 

You might have some members with PM notification turned off who wouldn't get your message. It might be interesting to run a trial with one message sent via PM and another sent via email and see which one gets more users to visit.

 

The mod in question has a setting to Override "Receive Private Messages = NO" option.

 

PMs are just as annoying as emails. In fact, they are almost worse cuz I can't opt out of getting them from Mods/Admins unless I turn off PMs completely on a site. (But, I'm always anti these sort of things.)

 

I'd be pretty annoyed if I opted not to receive PMs and got them anyway.

 

Set up a test account.

Admins PMs will indeed get through even if the PMs are turned off and PM box full, if the permissions are set up that way.

 

We and other forums I know of use this mass pm mod to sell advertisements through private messages, it is very effective

 

The Mass PM deal doesn't always work as well for me because the verbiage of what the message is about is in the "you've got a private message at XYZ forum" email.

But, there is a way to remove that so that folks have to log on, right?

 

Very easy Arny, all you do is search either ***** or notif in your phrases and cut the part which gives them the data within the email so they visit the forum to read it

It is one hell of a small tweak but works wonderfully

 

Yes, that is exactly what I do. It also resolves the issue of members who reply to the notification e-mail thinking that's how to reply to the PM.

 

If I was a member of a forum and they started spamming via PM to sell stuff then I would leave. I hate spam.

 

Teens dont tend to mind so much when it is cool new sites with things like automatic signature makers etc they actually appreciate the info

Nick you need to do it on here as I get the emails through with the content

 

Don't think so, at least I do not need any PMs sent to me trying to sell stuff.