Thursday, April 26, 2012

Major announcement - Monthly Newsletter



In December 2009 I decided to create "Thank A Soldier" on the CAUSES application on Facebook and it grew faster than anything that I have ever seen in my life.  It was  great place for member interaction via videos, photos and links but then a lot of those member options were removed and it wasn't very interactive.  We were able to obtain 4.1 million members on there but only a few thousand would interact with monthly posts on ther so I decided to go a new direction.

In December 2011 we created the "Thank A Soldier" Facebook page so that people wouldn't have to leave FB to view our page and it has been amazing.  The interaction with members and posts are amazing and it's amazing how fast one post can go viral within an hour.  I love that we can post albums on there such as the Military Tattoo tribute album and the comments are incredible.  It is like having the "Thank A Soldier" page as a friend on Facebook only we will never ask you to grow our farm or help our mafia team grow.

With the CAUSES page I used to send out 2-3 email updates a month with our various projects and about 2000 people would read them (Out of 4.1 million members) so I emailed them to ask for an explanation and was told the following.

" the emails that you send via the cause continue to have very high complaint rates. A normal level of complaints for an email is .1% of users marking the message as spam. Your messages have complaint rates upwards of 1%. As a result, we have turned off email sending for your cause."

When people joined the "Thank A Soldier" cause there was a "Sign me up for email updates" and 1% of 4 million people is 40,000 which doesn't make any sense to me as most emails would show read by 3000-5000 people at the most.

Someone on our Facebook page suggested posting the Causes email and asking members to email them saying how our updates are not spam and we are just going to move along and go a whole new direction.

That being said I have decided to delete the Causes page all together and continue on with the "Thank A Soldier Facebook page and our Twitter account.

We be launching a MONTHLY newsletter were we will send ONE email a month updating all our group members via email with projects, YouTube videos, interviews and stories.  Basically what you see on our blog page with a ton of other things added.  What is in this newsletter is up to all of you as well.  I would like to feature a military charity every month, maybe a story of a military family and recognize a military member every month with our "Hero of the month" nominations, the possibilities are endless.

We are going to be looking for a name for our monthly news letter and if you have a suggestion leave it as a comment on our Facebook page photo here!

That being said, if you would like to have this monthly update come to your email there is a sign up option below, and PLEASE only sign up for it if you want to receive it.  I would rather have 50 people signed up for the newsletter that want it than 4.2 million people with 40,000 of them that are going to mark the email as spam.

When filling our the SIGN UP form the only required field is your country of residence, everything else is optional

Thanks 


Note : At 8pm Eastern tonight I put a notice on the "Thank A Soldier" cause page stating it would be deleted on April 30th, in five hours TWO people read it so I went ahead and removed it.  I would rather have a quality page like the "Thank A Soldier Facebook Page" with 60,000 active members instead of a cause page with 4.18 Million members with no one realizing they are on it.  It was tough to delete it but we are getting stronger and making more noise now than we ever have on our page.



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6 comments:

  1. Thanks Dave, signed up. Please keep up the wonderful work that you do :-)

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  2. Thanks Dave. Signed up and looking forward to the newsletter. Yup agree with your thoughts better to have 50 that want it and read it than thousands that have it going back marked as spam that then get TAS blacklisted. Funny how the actual spammers still manage to keep going...

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  3. Thank you for what you do! I'm excited to see the "new direction"! :-D

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  4. Makes complete sense!!! Again, your efforts are very much appreciated and your time that you spend doing this awesome work is noted !! Thank you and All Our Heroes!! Stay safe n healthy!! :)

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  5. I think you do great work & I love coming to the Facebook page & seeing all the new things posted/keeping us up to date etc with everything that is going on. I have lost a friend(that I grew up with) - he passed away serving our country while in Afghanistan. So the tribute pages,causes & support mean a lot to his family and friends(myself included obviously). I don't get on here as much as I would like to but when I do get the chance, it means a lot.

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  6. Dave, gladly signed up for Newsletter, love following you on both FB and Twitter. Keep up the good work, sweetheart, Aye, agree 100%, better having a small number who genuinely want to read your Newsletter, than thousands saying they do, but don't. Thank You to you and ALL our Brave Troops, wherever you are, Take Care, Remain Safe, God bless you ALL. Proud to support each and every one of you and your wonderful Families, you are all 'Simply THE Best' !!!!

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