Eric
Posts: 17321
Joined: 10/10/2003
From: Seattle, WA
Status: offline
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Today I finally automated a task that I have been performing semi-manually since 2005 - sending out payment renewal reminders to people who have paid in the past.
Historically I would send just one reminder on the first day of each month to people whose premium status was running out in that upcoming month. At the end of 2016, I also started sending a second reminder one month later. These emails were semi-automated: I would take a snapshot from the CellarTracker database and then create an automated email. For years I did this via "Mail Merge to Email" in Microsoft Word and then over the past few year graduated to using a scheduled job in MailChimp. This month, for the first time, I made a mistake. After carefully setting up the two emails and their destination lists, I was tripped by a MailChimp UI change and accidentally sent the renewal reminders for April to the list of users who had been reminded in March. Needless to say, people were rightly confused, since many of those users had already renewed one month earlier. Hundreds of personal apology replies later, it was clearly time to automate this once and for all.
So, here is the NEW regimen whereby going forward we will send renewal emails each day to three audiences:
- 30-days before your expiration date you will get a reminder.
- If you have not renewed, you will get a reminder the day your premium functionality has expired.
- In case you were traveling or busy, you will get one more reminder 14 days after your expiration.
- Six months later, if you still haven't renewed, AND you have been active on the site in the prior 3 months, you get one final item.
All of these reminders are coming through our integrated notification system, so in addition to email these will appear in the list of notifications on our desktop site. (TODO: our mobile site/app does not yet display site notifications.)
Since these notifications are triggered directly from our database, there is no snapshotting of lists, no status latency. It should not be possible to get a notification that is inaccurate. And based on your renewal status the 2nd and 3rd notifications will be short-circuited.
I am a little sad, because there was something charming and very personals about getting emails back from people. That said, I still do read and reply to any responses.
If the nagging is too much, please just let us know, and I have a way to short-circuit future reminders for your account.
Thanks for your support.
< Message edited by Eric -- 3/2/2021 2:43:33 PM >
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Cheers!
-Eric LeVine
http://twitter.com/cellartracker
http://facebook.com/cellartracker
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