It’s intended to bring users back to the community and to build engagement through enticing content delivered by email. Because it only sends those emails to users who haven’t logged in during a period specified by the admin, it won’t bother active members; it will only show inactive members what they’ve been missing.
The plugin automatically sends those members a summary of the most engaging posts in the community, the posts with the most likes and largest number of comments. Admins can define the duration of the users’ inactivity and set the number of posts to include in the digest.
An Email Digest with all settings enabled contains the following:
- Most Liked Post – The post that has won the largest number of likes over a set period.
- Most Commented Post – The post that has won the largest number of comments over a set period.
- Other Popular Posts – Other popular posts made by the community.
How The Email Digest Ranks Posts:
In PeepSo 1.6.0 we quietly introduced Activity Ranking. It takes four basic actions a user might do with a post and awards points on the following basis:
- 1 comment = 100
- 1 like = 50
- 1 share = 20
- 1 view = 1
So a post with 5 comments, 3 likes and 1 share would earn 670 ranking points. Points for views are only assigned when someone sees a post in a single activity view.
It took long discussion and plenty of trial and error to figure out the scoring method. We wanted first to reward engagement that prompts a user to contribute to a post’s conversation. We decided that ‘like’ was the next most important reaction, followed by sharing and views.
Email Digest Includes Plugin Content
Email Digests can display the text of posts, usernames / names and avatars. It’s also capable of displaying the content of other PeepSo plugins.
- Photos – supplies a picture attached to a post.
- Videos – supplies a thumbnail of the video shared in a post.
- Moods – supplies the name of the mood shared in a post.
- Location – supplies the location shared in a post.
- Tags – supplies the name of the person tagged in a post.
Privacy
Privacy is always crucial to us. We’ve just spent the last two weeks testing the Digest in every possible way. We wanted to make sure that the plugin only considers those posts that have either a Public OR a Site Members privacy setting. The plugin ignores the ranking of any posts with a privacy setting of either Friends Only or Only Me.
Configuration
Admins can choose a number of settings for the plugin. They’re all very clear and we’ve placed explanations under any that might need more explaining. PeepSo Email Digest Configuration.
- How often should the Email Digest emails be sent – Email Digests can be published on a daily or weekly basis. Because no one enjoys the sense of being spammed, we recommend setting the frequency to “Weekly.” Users who were inactive for a set number of days will receive a useful summary of what they missed over the previous week.
- Execute Email Digest email creation via cron job – We’ve found that sometimes the default WP cron job just didn’t cut it. So we created a setting to allow admins to create a server-side cron job and set it to run at a frequency of their choice. Server cron jobs are much more reliable. They don’t depend on users visiting your site and they are always executed on time.
- How many emails should be created in a batch – Depending on the number of users in your community—and the number of inactive users—you might need to create hundreds of emails. The batch setting prevents your server overloading. Emails are passed to the PeepSo Mailqueue which ensures they’re sent at the set time.
- Use images in emails – Our research and experience has taught us that the more images you use in emails, the more likely your emails will be marked as spam. You can read more about spam triggers in MailChimp’s post here.
Easy Opt-Outs
In addition to the unsubscribe link included in the footer of every email, users can also opt out of the Email Digest in their Profile Preferences.
Limitations
Please check with your hosting provider to find the number of emails you can send from your site in a day. Most, if not all, shared hosts place a limit. Email Digests may add significantly to other emails, including registration confirmations and notifications, sent from your site.
What to expect when installing and activating Email Digest:
- In the backend of your site go to PeepSo > Config > Email Digest, you will see a new area with settings for this plugin.
- In PeepSo > Config > Edit Emails, you will see a new box with the content of the email sent from this plugin, you can edit this email to fit your needs.
- Emails will start sending automatically at the day you set.
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