Book page

7. Use of notifications / email marketing

Open Social
Open Social Open Social • 18 May 2018

Emails and notifications are very effective for driving users to your community. While automation plays a huge role in this, sending manual messages can be even more effective.

 

phone ringing

 

Automated Open Social notifications

Open Social has a variety of in-app notifications and email notifications. 

In-app notifications appear in the notification center of each user. An icon in the menu bar indicates the number of new messages for a specific user:

In-app notifications

 

In Open Social, in-app notifications are always sent. However, users can change their email notification settings to indicate if they want to receive email notifications daily, weekly, monthly, or not at all.

On top of the normal user notifications, Open Social comes with email notifications for community managers. These will help you track new activity on the platform. New activities include:

  • New users in the community.
  • New user-generated content (groups, events, topics, and posts).
  • New comments.

We encourage you to enable these notifications so you can manage and respond to new content while you’re building your community. Engaging with new users when they first arrive can really help kick-start an active platform.

Think of:

  • Welcoming new users to the platform by placing a welcome message on their profile.
  • Tracking inappropriate content so you can alter or delete if needed.
  • Spot the creation of duplicate groups or events
  • Track, monitor, and engage with hyperactive topics

 

We encourage you to make good use of notifications to ensure your users engage in your community! :)

 

Export User information

 

envelop

Open Social comes with an export feature that can export user data from the platform. This export provides lots of insights, for example, it shows when a user last logged in, how much original content they posted, and how many comments they’ve left. You can use this information to target different emails to users with different activity levels. Import your user groups in an email marketing program like MailChimp and start sending those emails to increase traffic and engagement!

Set up a reminder on your content calendar for a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly email updates and consider the following options: 

 

  • Use the user export to send reactivation emails to inactive users.
  • Filter users based on interest and inform them about new content that matches their interest.
  • Organize your own event and invite users (or invite them to user-generated events in their area).
  • Combine all of the above and create informative emails for your users based on activity, interest, and location.
     

Tip! Another quick way of sending personalized emails and keeping specific users active and engaged is by using the @-mention on the platform. Users will receive a notification in their inbox as well as on the platform