Firstly, what do we mean by personalised?

A truly personalised communication is more than just a greeting by name.  Offering the ability to use more information than just the name is not always as easy a task as it may seem.   Indeed even if one is just talking about a personalised greeting,  there are many differing opinions on whether there it is worth doing at all.   When almost every spammer seems to know the recipients  name, is there value in bothering with just that?

Pros of personalising

• Some people believe that the recipients value it and some people it is a waste of time and can be detrimental.
• Done well, it could be used to verify that the email is not a scam, by offering partial confirmation of details (EG: your account ending in 9876).  Again some recipients do not like having their personal details echoed in an email and would prefer to simply be requested to go to the website

Cons or Pitfalls

Some common mistakes or pitfalls with even very basic personalisation such as a personalised greeting,  are:

• Asking for too much information upfront is dangerous:
  • making it harder for people to sign up may reduce the number of signups.
  • some find the request for more information than is needed intrusive and may respond with garbage to get past these fields.  By echoing the garbage back, when communicating, the business reminds the reader of their attempt to gather more information than is necesary to deliver the product.
• 

  Example of Error in Personalisation

  Operator errors in setting up the emails.  Many of us who receive a lot of email letters, often receive such emails with errors.  For example I receive one every week with the same error from a large enterprise that publishes printed community newspapers.  (Not the only personal example I have!)

• So many spammers or phishing emails are personalised that you risk looking like one of them.   To reduce this risk, if you decide to personalise a greeting, do not personalise the subject line using the name, and do not have the name in uppercase this is a  classic spammer look

Review of some opinions available on the web.

1. Aweber – one of the major providers of Email Marketing Campaign tools  has a tip that suggests that one “Think before you personalise” and  asks “Isn’t There More To A Truly “Personal” Email Than A Name?”
2. Webmasterworld has a post by Tedster that says
   

   I’d like to take a closer look at the idea of personalizing mass emails: using the person’s name in the subject, the greeting, and/or the body copy……

   First, this is a technique and NOT really a relationship. It’s an electronic database trick and almost everyone knows that. A lot of the industry “information” that recommends personalization so very strongly actually originates with a company who sells personalization software!

3. webdynamic.com.au is a company that sells personalization software.  They have an article which describes how a truly personalised email is more than just  “Dear <First Name>”
4. freemarketingzone.com is another such company that offers tips on personalising emails and at least mentions some of the errors and pitfalls and differences of opinion.  They recommend testing to determine whether it is worth personalising.

When is something a truly personalised email?

It is more than just a greeting by name.   It will reflect information specific to or of specific interest to the recipient (this is more commonly known as targeted emails or segmenting your customers).  This page at the UK financial services authority has some useful examples and discusses what is and is not a personalised communication.  The following link discusess web personalisation is a much broader sense than just emails - Boxes and Arrrows says in an old but still true (imho) post: Personalization is not Technology….. Web personalization is a strategy, a marketing tool, and an art

WordPress Plugins or Options

So are there wordpress plugins that allow personalisation and if they don’t why not?

• The major free subscription “email” plugins do not offer personalisation.  Their aim is primarily to make it as easy as possible for users to sign up.  To do this they gather the minimum data (eg: a confirmed email address).  Thus for many of the users in the wordpress database, there will be no name to use, so why bother.
• The low cost membership plugins offer some personalisation once the user is logged in, but not yet in sending emails.  The more expensive software options typically do offer this functionality.
• Of course there are also the regular monthly cost third party services such as Aweber,  GetResponse, Pro autoresponder.  These may be worth considering if you have a high volume and generate enough income to justify the costs.

And then there is:

I have developed a plugin that  allows access to the user meta data, so that one may reflect this information if the user is logged in, or in emails.  It will be ready in the next week or so.  Personally I am not a fan of superficial personalisation, as this can make things unnecessarily complex and if errors are made, can make your web or email look unprofessional. However there has been a need and the request made.  So far it works with shortcodes in pages or posts.  It will work with Subscribe2 and Cambridge New Media’s Your Responder.(still in beta).

Stay tuned!

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Sometimes web owners wish to make these emails more personal.  There are varying opinions and schools of thoughts on this.

There are many different ways that people want to record their user detatils and then to email out to them.  Following are some notes (in progress) about ways of doing this in wordpress.

Factors that affect the decision:

• Amount of data wanted to capture – tradeoff – try for to much, users won’t subscribe.
• Ability to select or isolate user groups eg: by roles or member types.
• Confidence in email delivery and receipt – spam a big issue, and false positive’s happen.  This is a big problem even with the large scale dedicated email services (see below).   Aweber say that they have a relationship with many large hosts and so can offer a better success rate for email delivery
• Whether you want to involve a third party – yet another place the web owner has to login to manage their members or subscribers
• Degree on interaction required between other plugins such as role managers or membership software.
• Whether you just want the posts to gout by email, or whether you also want to be able to send custom emails that do not go on the website.
• Ability to save such custom emails (not as posts, or else you use the rss to email options!)

If you have a lower volume and want to keep costs down:

Subscribe2

• free, $40 upgrade to get html on the broadcast “mail subscribers”
• aimed at a “quick” subscriber to encourage users, therefore no capture of details beyond email address
• no personalisation, as many subscribers will not even have entered a username
• allows users to subscribe by category and to specify html or text

Post notification

• apparently came from a similar base as Subscribe2
• has similar functionality

mailpress

• lots of configuration options, may suit an experienced wordpress user.  Remember features = complexity which can = hard to implement.

Email Users

• sends mail to user groups based on roles
• plugin link does not work, no screenshots – don’t bother

mass-mail

• relatively new – maybe wait a bit and see how the feedback goes re bugs etc

Your Responder from Cambridge new media (Your Members plugin)

• looks like it will be a good option
• can save emails for re-use
• can select users by member type
• still in beta mode with a few annoying bugs

mailtostaff

• Aimed at quick informal internal staff communication, not suitable for customers

Mail2List

• syntax error in latest version loaded – testing??
• Can personalise?
• No screenshots, so you’d have to install to see more
• Can create custom lists too?

emailuserx

• Limited info, no screenshots, link to plugin page does not work – don’t bother.

Large volume and don’t mind spending more:

• Aweber – well regarded, and popular,
• GetResponse,
• Pro autoresponder,
• Auto response plus (an installed version)

Just want to convert the RSS Feed to an email

• subscribe 2 or post notification as per above
• feedburner – bought by google, sometimes unrealiable – or is that the nature of emails these days!
• feedblitz

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For the list of members with their status etc if the list is not too big (better tools required if list gets really large -  will hopefully be coming from the “Cambridge new media” crowd in later versions):

• Logon to admin >go to Your members > Members and subscriptions > Member Management
• see partial list
• Go down to  Number of Rows per page:
• Enter a large enough number and click reload
• see full list – select all, cut and paste into excel, or calc

Users who have subscribed to email notifications

For full list, including those who have subscribed to post notifications using Subscribe2.  Note since this is a quick easy signup – to encourage the user, the only info available is email address.  Any one NOT on the full list is only a  “please notify me” member, not paid

• Go to Tools > Subscribers
• Filter if you want to cut the list down, else select all.
• Top right hand side – select “save emails to csv” file

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• The Your members plugin
• The subscribe2 plugin, and
• The podcast plugin

to achieve a membership site for a weekly publication that includes a members only audio file.  They use a training website with publicly available sample material  from amongst others, the very interesting Intuitiveweek.com.

Publishing the weekly post

Descriptions of separate steps or concepts

If you are new to writing posts in wordpress, please view each tutorial and practise each step first in a play website eg: http://anmari.com/play/wp/

• How to add an mp3 file into a wordpress website
• How to write a post with a members only section
• How to add the mp3 into the post
• How to add audio player with podcast information into post

Summary or Overview for the more advanced

• Summary of how to write a post with a private section with a audio player in the private section., OR
• Summary of how to write a post with a private section with mp3 link only (no player)

Notifying subscribers

Sending a “broadcast” email using the Subscribe2 plugin “mail subscribers” function, to (public non members and paid members) of the above publication

• How to send email using  “mail subscribers”

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Summary:

For those who are familiar with writing posts in wordpress:

• Please ensure that you are either logged in as the author, or change the “post author” when writing,
• Write the new post,
• set the member access (trial, plus member)
• set the category (& optional tags)
• bracket the members only section with
  You need to be logged in to download the file or see the post
• upload the audio file, add the link into the private part. Ensure that the full URL is specified so that the “enclosure” custom field (required for the podcast feed) will be created by wordpress. check by saving/publishing and then scrolling down to the custom field section.

Detailed Description:

In order to be as detailed as possible, these instructions have been divided into the following sections.

• Writing the weekly message
• Preparing the mp3 file
  • Option 1- using the add media
  • Option 2 – Use FTP to upload the file
• Adding the audio link to the weekly message

How to Write the weekly message or Post:

These instructions assume that you have at least written a post in wordpress before.  If you have not, please familiarise yourself in a test or demo system if possible.  If using a live system to practise in (not recommended), do not “publish” – simply save as drafts, and then delete your tests later.

Logon to the admin area of your wordpress website.

Write the weekly message

Click Add New

Open the Post menu

In our example we are working with here, we have two parts to the weekly message.  A section that is to be the formal partially protected post.

• Open up the posts menu
• Click Add New

Add new Post

• Enter the title at the top
• Now before you do anything else, a good habit to get into is to set all the settings for that post before you write the content
• Set the access in the “Your members section”.  This defines who will have access to our post when they are logged in. In our example, we click
  • Trial
  • Member

• Set the Category - this may be correct by default already, always check.
• Scroll down to the bottom.  If you see a “Subscribe2 Notification Override”, decide whether
  • you wish to use the automatic notification of a new post according to the S2 settings, (by post or daily digest), with standard information or
  • no notification is to be sent (only feed readers, podcasters direct visitors will know of this post)
  • you plan to send a separate broadcast email – see notes on this at end.
• Save the draft
• Go back to the main text box.  In this example we will ad in some nice formatting, so open up the “kitchen sink” by clicking on the coloured line icon.  Now you should have 2 lines of icons.  Note these options now on the second line:
  • the Format dropdown box, and the
  • the “Paste as plain text” – if pasting from Msword or any document with it’s own formatting, always paste using this button, to avoid inconsistent formatting.
    
• Either type in the text directly, or cut and paste (as plain text)  from the source document.
• Select any text that is to be formatted as heading 2, click the format  dropdown and select heading 2
• Select any text that is to be formatted as heading 3, click the format  dropdown and select heading 3
• Save the draft
• Mark the sections that are private. Enter
  You need to be logged in to download the file or see the post
  at the end of the private section.  If you miss the ending tag, the post will be completely public.
• Preview – you are logged in as admin you will see the full post as a member would.  Check all looks okay.
• Decide where the mp3 link should go – to be private, it must be inside the private tags.  For example under the headings.  Put your cursor there.
• Click the Add Audio button.  If you have pre-loaded the file as per below.
• Click media library

Prepare the mp3 file

Depending on your internet connection and the size of the mp3 file, you should choose how to load the file onto the server.   If the file  is not too large, then it can be loaded using the wordpress media loader.   I suggest you test this out first with a representative size file.If you experience problems, then you may want to consider loading using ftp.  This will be discussed separately, For consistency this should be to the same folder or directory that the “Add New Media”  would have used.

Extract the file from the email if it has been emailed to you, storing it in a location that is easy to access for uploading.

Option 1- using the add media

Media Menu

It is possible to add media from within the post, however for large or complex files that may take a while, it is simpler in some ways to prepare it before you get to the post, or to upload it separately and return to the postto link the two together.

1. Goto the  admin menu area called “Media”,  click on it if it is not open, and then click “Add new”.
2. If you have previously successfully uploaded with the flash loader, you can continue on to click the “Select Files” button.  If you do not have the latest Flash version enabled in your browser, or you experience any problems uploading then next time, click on the “Browser Uploader” instead.
   

   Select Browser Upload, then Select files

3. Browser your computer and select the file in that handy location.  Click Open or Select or whatever your PC uses to choose the file.
4. The file will start uploading.  On my connection “downunder” (Australia is notorious for not yet having high speed broadband) where I have the fastest connection I can have, a 6 Mg file takes just about a minute to upload.   Wait…….. do not close the window or do anything else silly….. do your computer stretches.  When the file has been successfully uploaded, you will a list of media files with the new one at the top.  Note it is not “attached” to any post yet.
   

   Media List

Option 2 – Use FTP to upload the file

Specific instructions will depend on the type of FTP software you are using.   You need to know

• the hostname ( the domain name)
• the ftp username
• the ftp password
• the folder path to use for the uploads  Ask your administrator for the path.Example: http://yourdomain/some/wp-content/uploads-iw/

1. Run your FTP program, connect to the host, entering the username and password,
2. On the source side, browse to where the mp3 file is stored
3. On the destination side, browse to the folder destination
4. Upload the file
5. Check and get the correct url, by loading your browser, entering the url path in the address area and checking that you can access the file.  It will start downloading if it is found, Cancel the  download
6. Copy the url that has just worked – we will be pasting it into the post.

Now to add the weekly post / message that is to contain the mp3 audio file.

….. coming

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Resources:

• getting-started-guide
• support forum

Installing

• Got the email promptly, downloaded, unzipped, relocated and activated.  No problem
• entered email address to activate, wandered around and did a bit of setup
• Admin screen could use a bit of css to improve presentation – maybe float those list options next to each other
• decided to try adding a download since I was intending to sequester our files.  Discovered that this version has a minor annoyance about the upload folder.  It automatically created the upload folder that it wanted, however I had to manually change the permissions using my ftp tool   to get the upload of a download (!) to work.
• Some of the documentation looks like it needs an update – there is inconsistent terminology which is a bit confusing – I guess “registration fields” are “custom user fields”?
• Code changes required to cope if you have used the wordpress constants to relocate your wordpress admin and content folders.

Live

It is now live over at http://intuitiveweek.com.

• Currently membership is managed on a “partially protected content” basis – ie the shortcodes are  used to block out parts of the post, leaving a teaser.
• This site also offers a private podcast, using the private RSS token that YM offers.  A further code fix was required in this version to remove the mp3 enclosure if  there were mp3′s in the post if the public feed was used.  Ideally it should do this only if the mp3 is in the private section.  Hopefully the guys will include this in the next version.

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• Has a single configuration page with underwhelming styling.
• Content protection markers are configurable, so one could make this a bit more intuitive for the end user /site owner
• Forgot to logoff before testing (duh), but other than that it “worked”.
• Don’t like the default styling, but then the entire content message is configurable, so can redo that in the options.
• It has created more user roles, so can easily set a wordpress member to whatever level
• Looks like an option to manage membership if you don’t need payments

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[[purchase_cost]= Cost and currency of a purchasable post
[[login_register]] = Login or register form
[[login_register_links]] = Links for login and register
[[login_link]] = Login link only
[[register_link]] = Register link only
[[account_types]] = A list of membership levels that can see this post/page
[[duration]] = number of days that the user will have access for

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We were also using Your members and the Subscribe2 plugin, so I needed to see how they would handle the setup.

I wanted to get the users pre-loaded without emails flying out all over the place, and then advise me that they could come to the site and request a “lost” password or reactivate.

PhpMyAdmin

PhpmyAdmin has tools to import from a csv file.   Simply ensure that the column names are the same.

Life is not that simple however.

wp_users table was easy enough.  You need a minimum of

1. user_login
2. user_email

and can leave the rest blank or put a dummy password in.

Ideally you probably want at a bit more. I entered into  the phpmyadmin import tool this string:

user_login,user_nicename,user_email,user_registered,display_name

as well as obviously giving it a csv file with matching columns.  Remember to match the specification of delimiters and encapsulated strings.

Dealing with the passwords

You do not really have to!!   On login attempt, the user request ‘lost password’, get an activation email, click that  and get a new password.

That’s not all though…

However if they try to login with the new password, they get

“You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page.“

This is because the user does not have a role in the wp_usermeta table.

The easy way:

If the numbers of subscribers allow you to, use the authors/users too, select all users, deselect admin or others, then click “Change role to” subscriber.  Save .

If you have problems when you are testing this process (as in you cannot get the new password email), check that you use the same browser to click on the activation link as when you requested the password.  I use firefox for my logged in admin user and IE for my subscriber tester, however since firefox is my default for my email package, it used that when ever I clicked on the activation link and wordpress must check and did not send me new password due to no match.  Took me a while to figure that one out!

The hard way:

Find the userids from the wp_user table (or guess/extrapolate) and add entries (perhaps using another csv upload!) . Note (leave umeta_id blank, wp will assign).

1. user_id
2. meta_key – yourtableprefix_capabilities
3. meta_value – a:1:{s:10:”subscriber”;b:1;} for subscribers, or see what your other subscribers have

you also need another set of rows for

1. user_id
2. meta_key – yourtableprefix_user_level
3. meta_value – 1 for subscribers

At that point, the user should now be able to login, with appropriate access to wp.

Other Plugins:

Subscribe2:

S2 (Subscribe2 ) data is blank (so no emails?).     Although it does have some bulk update tools, the subscribers do not show up initially.  More sets of user-meta rows required.

1. s2_subscribed – -1 (for all categories, else category list
2. s2_autosub – yes
3. s2_excerpt – post or excerpt
4. s2_format – text or html

Your Members:

If no data,  YM 1.4.5  treats them as free, with no expiry etc. YM will assign an RSS token when they navigate to the membership details screen. You can do more sets of rows in the user meta table to update.

manually

There are also bulk updates in the YM member managment area, so if volumes are not too low and you can “batch” the data, you can probably update these manually.

or via the db

Creating the ym_user data via the DB  may be trickier…..

1. ym_status – active or inactive
2. ym_user O:15:”YourMember_User”:8:{s:8:”duration”;s:2:”10″;s:13:”duration_type”;s:1:”y”;s:6:”amount”;i:0;s:8:”currency”;s:3:”USD”;s:13:”last_pay_date”;s:10:”2009-04-18″;s:11:”expire_date”;s:10:”2019-04-18″;s:12:”account_type”;s:4:”Free”;s:10:”status_str”;s:20:”Free Account Created”;}

Your members does also have a bulk update tool in the member management area, and Sean and Tim are apparently coming up with a migration tool, so check their website.

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• Members and subscriptions

  • Member management – paged list of members,
    • can filter and sort.  Would be more intuitive if sorting was achieved by links on column headings, rather than a reload.
    • can do bulk updates of selected users. The styling and java script make the action areas seem seaprate, yet they actually relate to the user list.  Need to try to do this  in a way that is similar to wordpress user list
  • Members Roles – subscription options and account types
    • specify types of plans, and the account types they relate to.

• Content Management and Access Control

  • Access Settings
    • Registration control - say whether account type can be selected at registration
    • Specify Full or partial protection.  In Full protection, enable public access otherwise all will be directed to login screen.
  • Download Manager – to add cloaked (protected) download files – does not work at moment with podcast due to cloaking
  • Page excludes – exclude any thank you/cancelled etc pages
  • Pay Per post management – who has sold/bought and gifting a post
  • Users Custom fields (Custom Profile fields, eg: terms, country, address)

• Payment Gateways

  • Free – required for pay per post. Set duration and logo. How does this duration related to free account type
  • Trial – duration set in subscription options,  Set logo here.
  • Paypal – set paypal email address and return url’s (thank you and cancel – default  options are provided.).  Set logo, test/live mode, or subscription type.

• Other Settings

  • General Settings – Main, name, email, login redirect
  • Setup (Setup Posts) – Link Posts and Pages to Account Types – aimed at conversion of existing site?
  • Messages – text’s that the user sees
  • Modules (Payment Modules) – this is where you activate the payment gateways.  Also has access/link to setup all your paypal configuration. Remember to change the Paypal sandbox and user name

Reorganisation of Admin Area

Ideally I’d like to separate initial configuration (more skilled) and ongoing management (could be someone else):

Ongoing Management:

• Member management – paged list of members
• Pay Per post management – who has sold/bought and gifting a post
• Download Manager – addition of new protected material

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