Really old thread featured in email from Sift.

[AllUpHere]

I noticed a really old thread which was not much more than a sales pitch had been dug up earlier (from last reply in 2006). I was quite surprised to then find that it made it into the 'featured threads' section of the email we receive from Sift. The thread in question is regarding finding out which type of sales person you are, and seems to demonstrate that no effort or judgement is used when selecting these 'featured threads'. I'd imagine the mods have enough zombie threads to deal with without sift making it worse.

 

[directmarketingadvice]

Maybe the question is, how many recent threads are worth featuring?

Pretty much all I'm seeing is newbie questions.

And maybe the reason we're not getting anything like that old thread is that mods are so quick to call "spam", that there's no longer any point in putting the effort in anymore.

Just my 2p.

(Though I agree that a 9 year old thread with dead links wasn't a good choice to dredge up.)

Steve

 

[AllUpHere]

I don't think it's anything to do with the quality of the threads on the forum. It's more the quality of the thought that goes into selecting which ones to feature. Sometimes they are useful, and very often they are junk.

I do agree though, the thread in question would almost certainly have been deleted as spam or self promotion by today's rules. It got next to no attention at the time it was posted, and was only dug up by someone with nothing interesting to add.

I think it simply highlights the 'stick a pin in a map' approach to selecting featured threads for the news letter.

 

[Dan Izzard]

I'll pass on the feedback . Whenever I've picked out the threads it will always be ones that have been posted (or have had significant posting) within the last week. @RPower has been working hard on some new email templates with themes and structure which are looking ace.

We also would like to start having almost a 'guest editor' of one of the emails. What that would entail is up for debate (but would contain 4 + threads). Could be an intro to your business, your member details, could be a business topic you'd like to discuss linking through to a new thread.

Let @RPower and myself know what you want to see

 

[AllUpHere]

Whilst we are on the subject, the email we got entitled 'Only incompetent business owners will ignore this', was an all time low. It may increase open rates, but does you no good in the longer term.

 

[Dan Izzard]

Haha and I thought my titles were the pinnacle of clickbait! Fair comment, will pass that on too.

 

[fisicx]

@RPower has been working hard on some new email templates with themes and structure which are looking ace.

Only problem is I just see the words, all the formatting and imagery gets blocked by my email client. Some even get a spam warning.

And they aren't responsive either so they are difficult to read on a phone.

 

[AllUpHere]

Agree with Fisicx. It sounds like a case of style over substance. I'd guess most members would prefer something useful over something pretty.

 

[fisicx]

Sift should run some split tests on plain text and rich text emails. They may be surprised at the results. I now send all my marketing emails as plain text (with a tiny bit of styling) and get a much better response.

 

[directmarketingadvice]

It got next to no attention at the time it was posted

It may be worth pointing out that, when it was posted, there was no "likes" - so I don't know how easy it is to judge how much "attention" it got... other than the 18.874 views the thead has had.

Steve

 

[AllUpHere]

It may be worth pointing out that, when it was posted, there was no "likes" - so I don't know how easy it is to judge how much "attention" it got... other than the 18.874 views the thead has had.

Steve

I based my opinion on the fact it had very few replies at the time, and then was left to die for 9 years before being dug up.

Anyway, my point wasn't based on the quality of the thread, simply it's age.

 

[kulture]

I have removed a number of off topic pointless posts. Please stick to the subject and not criticize each other's posts.

 

[kulture]

I see that people have decided to ignore my request. I am therefore locking this thread