UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums UBB.threads Version 7/8 Support email campaigns ok or not

I have been thinking for a while about sending out emails from the forum to members.
In the past used constant contact to create email campaigns. Had a few thousands of subscribers
but it was difficult to keep up a regular interesting newsletter due to we are into vintage bikes and there is very little news in that field. Its a different matter with new modern bikes which is subject to continuously developing.
Anyway the newsletter was appreciated and the downside was it costed $600 ea year for the service and I eventually used it once or twice a year only so I cancelled the service.

I still have the subscribers list so I could send emails to them but I don't as I think it may be caught as spam before it reaches the receivers.

We have now close to 10000 members on our forum, when they registered it said


I would like to be able to send emails and inform about important changes or opportunities maybe a couple times each year.

What do you think will happen if I send email to let say 100 members or 1000 members or 10000 members
should I use BCC or Emails One At A Time, Instead Of Using BCC???

I'm thinking of sending a short message including a link to the forum i order to re- activate members that has not visited for a while, what do you think will happen?
Will my britbike.com domain be black listed on email servers or is it a no problem?

please share your experince and knowledge.

I can now after testing a little more verify that html works see attached image however I used a Swedish letter when typing and the encoding came out wrong.
typed "å" and it came out like this "Ã¥"

the encoding might not be a problem as my intention is to write in english but what do you think it might be?

FYI I tested to send an email to 200 members, heck I must have missed something as it went out to 9901 members..
took a while to process..

387 email bounced and it must be a good number considering the accounts are from 2001 until now.

now I'm thinking of a way to handle these 387 it would be good either to delete these accounts or somehow make contact with these account owners in an easy way but that is a puzzle how to right now.

I received your email about an hour ago. looks good

OK thanks Isaac for feedback,
It read Plain text email when sending it and the text was regular font on the screen,
do you know why it said so ?
when I sent out only two emails to me it didn't state that and the text was bold.

Now I'm thinking of maybe including HTML but am puzzled about the plain text vs the other,
hope you understood my explanation

just came to think of could it be a auto-recognition if HTML is provided it turns on HTML and use plain text if its no html coding in the message?

If you look at the source of the email (through your email client), you'll see that when the email is sent out, both the PLAIN and HTML versions are sent together. My understanding is because it is up to the email client to choose which version it can/wants to display.


TEXT/PLAIN:

TEXT/HTML:

View the source of the received email. I use Gmail when I signed up on your forum a few years ago

Just FYI, UBB.threads was never meant to be used for a newsletter system (it was, and will remain, a Forum software title); the internals are there to send out mailings, but I'm sure you'll just end up getting your IP blacklisted (trust me, I've been there, plenty of times).

Generally we'd recommend sending messages out in groups so that you're not blasting 10k people at once (which may result in some email providers blocking you from their systems). Plus, there will be bounces (I actually made a script to deal with email bounces at some point).

Generally email campaigns are sent from private services such as Sendy (I have not used this service, it was recommended to me by a colleague), and they do all of the footwork of getting their IP's removed from blacklists, handling bouncebacks, etc.

The formatting of your email container is controlled by your forum's DEFAULT style, in the Style Editor. Its in the "Email Properties" group.

You could design your email "guts" template in a third-party HTML editor, such as Adobe Dreamweaver or a Mail Manager program, and then populate the subject and contents as needed, before sending out through UBB.threads. Though, its more advisable to use a dedicated Mail Manager for doing such things, as that provides a direct option for the reader to unsubscribe themselves. The dedicated mailer would maintain its own list of emails that dont want to have anything sent to them. Doing this means that when you export all the emails from your query to a list for importing to the Mail Manager, That Mail Manager will exclude everyone that had opted out. Theoretically. Though, Im not sure how that third-party program would keep track of re-subscribers. Thats beyond my experience with the proposed UBBT/Export => Mailer/Import setup at the time of this post.


EDIT:
Attached are a few screenshots of the extent of the current mailer search/select/send pages. Its all pretty basic stuff. Stuff for just sending out general emails to users who want to have communication from the forum.

There is one more page which contains search results, but I dont have a "clean" sample screenshot of that, which doesnt also display personal information such as login dates, email and IP addresses.

Gizmo, I hear you, sending out in small batches is the thing, the UBB sends out batches of 20 or something but it was 342 batches/pages so I guess it was threated as one large batch.

I wrote in message above that I used constant contact earlier and paid $600 a year for a service i didn't use much. Hop I don't become blacklisted now. have not seen any replies stating that.

Isaac, Thank for your replies I will look into it tomorrow.. to tired now

In the UK if your sending more than +100 emails, you will find your ISP will more than likely block them as spam.

If say hotmail receives say +50 expect to be blocked as a spam merchant, and enjoy the fun of convincing them otherwise.

Sending emails via the forums just does not work as intended.

I agree with everything Gizmo has said.
Its not great being black listed.

I would not advise using it for mass mail. Even the batches of 20 become tiresome if your doing it manually, and easy to loose track.

An admin internal mass pm would serve a better notice.

Or create a global announcement.

I cant even use the system to verify a user's email account due to domestic ISP seeing our forum as mass mailer. (not because of newsletters but watched topics, members and alike being sent out)

For me e-mail in the forum environment is almost but dead, it's just unreliable. As members whom try to do a password reset, they never get it, it's generated by the forums but bounces at the ISP.

I Strongly advise not sending mass emails.

damage is done, 1200 bounce emails so far.
I read your input too Mark and will be very careful in the future

got one reply from a member saying below.. anything you understand? I have never seen this feedback before

more info from the feedback

this is unrelated to the current topic and has been discussed to death. it means the urls in your website links are http, which is insecure for things such as passwords (login credentials). upgrade your website/urls from http to https

Discussion:
https://www.ubbcentral.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/259829/insecure-password-warning-firefox-52

How-to:
https://www.ubbcentral.com/forums/u...transition-your-forum-from-http-to-https

Like gizmo,
I have been down that road of being blacklisted using the built in mailer twice.
First thing blacklisted does is block all emails from your boards primary email.
Meaning forgot password,PM/topic notifications etc..
And it takes forever to get the main email address restored.
Just like spiders your have multiple blacklists.
And you need to wade through each one.
The hard part is finding each one.
Some use services ,some domains make there own.
Which entails phone calls to each it department involved...

Having bounced emails is normal on a old board, especially where the member has not visited in a long time and has changed their email but not updated their account.

You are better off downloading a mail list from ubb and importing it to a mail list server using a different email address that what the board uses.
If that gets blacklisted at least the forum still functions on notifications

this is probably the best advice in the whole thread

I totally agree with Ruben on this.

I agree as well; for what it's worth I use separate emails for various functions, forum@example.com would only be used for forum emails, newsletter@example.com for newsletters, etc.

I'm reading and taking your advice with me.. Thanks