Following a call with @Nadia and @Noemi today, we will be sharing the following on our social media channels throughout the week. Any suggestions for titles and hashtags are always welcome.
We will also begin consolidating our data from various services (Buffer, bit.ly, Facebook, Google Analytics, Mailchimp) in order to provide a better overview of our social media presence and signal to noise ratio.
I’m super happy to be able to learn from you @owengot . Let’s keep it up, and hopefully you can structure a little what has been a messy process. Feel free to boss me around if you need more info and especially push for new ways of doing things :-)
Am looking forward on the stats re landing pages and effectiveness of written communication. It’s a lot of work putting together communication materials and we are sort of shooting in the dark most of the time. Nice to be able to go about this in a more structured, data-driven way.
Hey Owen, I noticed that our Twitter account is kind of silent. And that the countonme emails havent kicked off. Is there something I can do to help get this going?
We are good, my apologies for the delay in drafting these. Today’s Count On Me email has been sent and we have the status updates loaded into Buffer. On a side note, we will have to either upgrade Mailchimp or use an alternative as the service does not allow over 2000 subscribers (and this is the sum of all lists, not per list). It already went over this amount when I added the contacts @Noemi sent me, which then had to be removed. Mailchimp’s pricing model is such that it would cost $35 more only to get an additional 500 subscribers so an alternative might be a better option. Will post what I find.
There are two different kinds of mass mailings services: those that just act like a fancy SMTP server, such as SendGrid, and those that include message templates, online editor, user engagement tracking features etc… We need the second kind, as there will be no integration with the main edgeryders.eu platform except for analytics snippets when needed.
Of course, if you combine an open source mass mailing management software with a “fancy SMTP server” like SendGrid, it would also work and we could install it on, say, newsletter.edgeryders.eu. (I just do rather not want to use the edgeryders.eu SMTP server for actually sending out the mass mailings. E-mail sending is getting always more difficult, and it’s just too much maintenance effort for one newsletter to care about SPF records, DCIM signing, spam blacklists, sending rate limiting by recipient domain, removing stale addresses etc… We do send out notification e-mails with the edgeryders.eu server, but they are less critical.)
Sendy looks interesting, it uses Amazon SES rather than a self hosted SMTP server. But I’m not sure how the deliverability rate compares to services like Mailchimp, who have years of experience in handling the issues you mentioned.
@Nadia@Noemi I have drafted a weekend email based on @asimong’s interesting write up on care provision in a co-housing community, if you have a moment feel free to take a look and feedback always welcome.
Hi Owen, I had a look at the mailchimp newsletter you sent out and it looks good to me. Have you decided to stick to Mailchimp? If yes I will upgrade the account.
I am however learning that what works is often counterintuitive, at least to me. So I think you should just go ahead and see what works, and sharing what you learn with the rest of us in reflective blogposts/weekly calls. Works?
Hi @Owen and @Nadia : as a heads up before our call this Monday morning I’d like to submit my quick thoughts after these weeks. I find it easier in writing.
Thanks @Owen for work well done and for constantly reporting back
I think CountOnMe should not be more often than once every 2-3 days. Myself I am one of the heavier sharers and couldnt follow the last 3 coming in on Thursday, Friday evening, Saturday morning
I suggest CountOnMe contains no more than 3 stories. 5 or 6 seems too much to follow. I'm writing now as a recipient of the newsletter not as the read-everything-comm manager that I am.
I suggest CountOnMe is sent directly from a personal account and not mailchimp. I know you want the report, but mailchimp emails slip through and get to bulk, therefore reducing the number of potential opens/ clicks
Suggestions for the week:
Repurposing a story like the one in this weekend newsletter (great by the way!) as a primer in an email campaign for the entire ER list - including going through all key details about the event (registration, call for sessions, support for participants)
Making of an email campaign tailored to ER in Romania, Georgia, Armenia, Nepal etc. I can draft it.
Final push of the Masterclass 26-27 May in its last week!
