Pitfalls of sending forum emails

I use the “mass email members” feature on forums very rarely.

Reason is simple - I don’t want to annoy the members.

And yet, somehow, I usually manage to cock things up most times.

This morning I sent out a mass email from the Platinax forums. It’s about the third mass email in two years, which is a normal rate on any forum I admin.

The server seemed to be freezing up, so I clicked again. Still problems. Refresh. Hm, something wrong here - retry. Still freezing. Click again. Click again.

No good.

Wait a few minutes in case the server needs to calm down - try again.

Still seems to be freezing up, but this time I just left the process to it. Confirmation of emails sent.

A couple of minutes later I received a couple of angry emails pointing out that I’d sent at least 6 emails to everyone.

Oh, shit.

What was even more a problem here is that I was trying to pitch advertising and paid directory listings to the members.

All I achieved was to anger my prospective customers.

I use the “mass email members” feature on forums very rarely.

Reason is simple - I don’t want to annoy the members. But I usually end up doing so anyway.