Do you send out newsletters?

[ChriSsY]

This is something i've been thinking about doing for a while now and im sure many forum owners here send out weekly newsletters to their members.

Just wondered if anyone could reccomend me any software or service, and what their experiences have been mailing out weekly round-ups to their community members.

[Joe Gronlund]

No i don/t myself, most of the forums i am on do though..

[MrNase]

Never. I did once but my members didn't like it.

[simsim]

Plain text newsletters are ugly & no one is going to like it. I use a small tweak which allows vBulletin to send out HTML emails. I designed a nice looking two-column newsletter template, & send users hand-coded (not automatically generated) bi-weekly newsletters about new threads, posts & site news. It was a major success to my forum.

[WurkAnimal]

My members said they don't mind if it's something to do with the website but if it's advertising or junk they get mad.

[Omri.L]

I really hate it when communities won't stop bugging me with stupid Emails even if they're containing advertisments.

[the geek]

Regular mail outs of highlights happening on the site (i.e. hottest threads, etc...) are one of the more effective ways to remind users about you and what has been happening lately. Done too frequently could be lame though.

I always get a boost in numbers after a weekly mail out.

[JakeS]

No, I don't like spam, so I don't send spam. Simple as that.

[someuser190826]

No, I don't like spam, so I don't send spam. Simple as that.

This is the mindset that some users should stay away from. Newsletters can be a very healthy medium to communicate to your users expertise, forum focus, additional news. Don't try to make it bloated with ads, but make sure the newsletter actually GIVES something to the user.

Maybe send one newsletter for the first time. Introduce your plans with the newsletter offer options to OPT OUT and than proceed. It'd be great if your newsletter touches base with whats going on with your forums, but more so a personal opinionated touch of goodness never hurt anyone.

I started testing with newsletters awhile ago, I am not too good. I am continuously testing to see what the users want. At the end of the day my users are my customers, so they get what they want. There are some great newsletters out there that you should look for advice.

As it stands you haven't mentioned what you will include in this newsletter. Will it be just some stats about your forum, some specific topic? Why not encourage opt-in to a special newsletter. The opt-in ones seem to be key! Getting them to opt-in is something of an issue.

[Creepshow]

No, I don't like spam, so I don't send spam. Simple as that.

What about opt-in newsletters?