This little tip is more for larger forums or even sites that have a fairly large userbase. You may not realize it but sending out a newsletter can be damaging to your site for 2 reasons. First, you are putting immense strain on your server to send out thousands of emails at one time. Secondly, you are going to be sending those users back to your site after they read your newsletter, thus creating an immense strain on your server.
I came across this problem after talking with Bob Levinstein at CruiseCompete.com (which is a great way to get cheap cruises). They have over 30,000 users subscribing to their email newsletter so obviously they would have this problem. So they use a very genius way to keep the damage down while keeping the users coming back. In his own words:
The newsletter goes out on a rolling basis over the course of 2 weeks. It starts Monday at 2:00PM and goes until Friday morning. It then picks up and hits the second half of the membership the second week.
The rolling release does several things for us. It’s not a server load–it’s an agent time issue. No reason to get a whole bunch of request on one day–or to boost our numbers over the weekend when fewer agents are quoting. The smaller mail increments help keep us off anti-spam radar. And updating the messages based on what specials have just been posted in the last hour prevents agents from “gaming” the system–i.e., posting a bunch of specials to get their ageny’s specials out there vs. other agencies. It’s internal software we built–it’s not terribly complicated.
So this is my tip of the day. Spread your newsletter traffic over 1-2 week spans or as you see fit. Your server will thank you.
Rex @ CruiseLineForums.com
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