Top picks (digest mails) and broadcast delivery of email

One of the repeated requests received (The 3R of product management😜) is for networks to send automatic updates (aka the #DigestMail) to its Members whenever there are shiny new things going on.

An email digest mail is a regular roundup message that summarizes significant member posts from the network. We call it the "Top picks of the week".

Digest mails solve a potential issue seen with pro-social networks (like the ones built on the MainCross stack):

Since each network is purpose built, smaller & niche, there isn't enough continuous content and it isn't a variety show. Members don't have much incentive to hang around all day, or even keep coming back of their own volition. So they may miss out on the latest greatest. Hence delivering an update to their inboxes helps with:

1. Keeping members updated with the latest posts, happenings & events if its a community network and knowledge/information if its a information network
2. Spur re-engagement periodically. (And sometimes also serve as a reminder that the network misses the Member. 🙋‍♀️ Ola, welcome back!)

This feature is being released in Early Access, and if you would like to start firing off Digest Mails to your Members, please contact us and we'll send it out manually for the moment.

Transactional vs Broadcast mails

Till date, all Network Sites built on MainCross strictly send out transactional mails only. Transactional mails have none of the requirements that govern broadcast mails. They do not even need an unsubscribe mechanism. Though we provide one anyway, coz we be the good guys. Ahem.

Which leads to the setting under Profile > Settings

But #BroadcastMails are a different beast altogether. People may be familiar with "newsletters" as a category of broadcast mails. Similarly, marketing mails are quite common.

Although, the first thing that may come to mind is the never-ending spammy promotional shit that we are bombarded with.

Large and complex feature

Sending broadcast mails is a rather large and complex feature spanning multiple aspects:

First the legal requirements

Most countries have strict laws (privacy laws and anti-spam laws) around email delivery - of course this is violated with no second thought by anyone running a 2-penny server armed with a list bought from somewhere, but gee, we don't want to do that do we? Like we said, we are the good guys 😎.

So here's a quick wrap up of all that we (rather our Network Sites) need to be compliant to:

• Have a Privacy Policy in place
• Mail only when someone has single opted-in, or where required (eg GDPR) only after double opted-in
• Record and store consent
• Tell recipients how to opt-out of receiving future email
• Honor opt-out requests promptly
• Tell recipients where the business is located
• No false or misleading header information
• No deceptive subject lines
• ... and other thingies 😢

Underlying technical solution

This is the first time we have created the entire solution to handle broadcast mails. Our end to end solution handles all the following:

• Reliable delivery
• Reputation protection
• Return path
• Lower chance of falling thru spam filter
• Bounce / complaint management
• List management – sub/unsub/resub
• Delivery, open, link tracking
• Analytics

We use 2 of the best email infrastructure providers for this - AWS SES and Postmark. We send broadcast mails from a different domain and using a different infrastructure than transaction mails.

The user experience at the recipient

The user experience at the recipient is driven by some core things:

1. Do I recognize the sender, is there any pretext that tells me what this email is about? Should I even bother to open it? Does it pass the smell test?
2. When I open it, does the email even render on my device, big or small, across different clients? Is the text readable, are the images loading?
3. How interesting is the email? Is it visually and content wise attractive enough for me to spend 30 seconds, or does it look like something the cat dragged in.
4. Finally, if I don't like it, can I just opt-out super quick, or am I better of marking it as spam.

We've taken great care to not fall victim to the above decision tree that a recipient goes through! And we really, really do not want the recipient to mark our mails as spam. (Khallas! At this point we, the sender, have been f.u.c.k.e.d.)

1. We've created high quality templates that are visually clean, responsive, render on all devices and clients.
2. Additionally, broadcast email templates are more complex since they need to provide unsubscribe links which should handle the unsubscribe mechanism effectively & honestly, without making the user jump through hurdles.
3. We've created a high quality unsubscribe experience that works at 2 levels:
4. An immediate-gratification unsubscribe from X sub-category of broadcast mail. This allows us to send multiple sub-categories of broadcast mail, and allows the recipient to selectively unsubscribe from just 1 sub-category.
5. And a master switch to turn off the category altogether.

PS: If I had a $ for every mail I've received with a pretend unsubscribe link at the bottom, which doesn't actually work, or even if it works, doesn't actually stop the mails from coming - I would be quite rich by now. And this is an affliction that all well known branded and recognized Indian companies, big and small, suffer from - financial companies, startups, food delivery, banks, media companies and publishers, you name it.

Wrapping up

So there we have it. At this point we have most things in place, but its not self-service at the moment. This feature is being released in Early Access, and if you would like to start firing off Digest Mails to your Members, please contact us and we'll send it out manually for the moment.

Sending mail from one's own domain

Mails can now be sent from any custom domain, matching the domain of the Network Site instead of from the default @maincross.net and @m1.maincross.net email domains.

1. The Starter Network tier can request for this to be configured by paying a small one time fee.
2. Higher tiers are automatically enabled for this feature.
3. Read the help article for more details