Text-Version of eNewsletter - necessary or not

Ben Smith

We're thinking of discontinuing the text-version of our weekly eNewsletter sent out via Convio. Less than half a percent has opted into it and the number grows very slowly, so I think these are people who selected "text-only" a long time ago.

- If you're organization sends eNewsletters, do you NOT bother sending a text-only version? Any feedback? Blowback? Etc?

- Convio tech question - we have turned off the html/text option on all of our Convio sign up forms. However, its still visible in the ConsUserProfile - is there a way to hide the text/html email option in ConsUserProfile?

Thanks.

Ben Smith

Sally Heaven

I'll let others address the question of what they are doing now since I haven't managed a newsletter for about 3 years now, but I had a thought to offer. We used to spend a lot of time working on a text-only version of the newsletter and I'm not sure if it was worth the time. Having said that, there will probably always be some small portion of people who prefer to receive text-only emails.

So rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater, what about continuing to send it to people who have "Text" as their preferred option, and instead of re-creating all the content of the newsletter, just inserting a sentence like:

"The January 2009 Newsletter is here! View it on the web at LINK. If you'd like to change your preferences to receive HTML e-mail from us, click here to update your profile."

Much lower investment of time, but you don't totally reject the people who want text-only emails.

Ben Smith

That's a darn good suggestion. Thanks Sally.