Feature Rich Discussion List Tools
I’ve had a couple of conversations lately with people who were looking for tools to allow them to do careful management of email discussion lists. This is a surprisingly difficult thing to find.
There’s a number of options for creating a simple discussion list – free options like Google Groups or Yahoo Groups, great and affordable services like ElectricEmbers’ NPOGroups, and even the ubiquitous Mailman that comes with many hosting packages. Truthfully, so many organizations run mailing list services like Mailman or Sympa that many organizations will be able to find a free home for a simple list simply by asking around.
These tools work great in a freewheeling environment where there’s no desire to know much about who is on your list. But many nonprofits these days are looking for more ability to manage their lists, and integrate them with other data.
If you’re looking to send one-to-many email blasts, there’s a million and one vendors who will allow you to sign people up for your list online, collect a bunch of information about those registered, allow people to manage their own information, segment them into a number of different lists, integrate the list with a constituent database and the like...but what if you want to do this kind of management for a discussion list? As soon as you’re looking to let your constituents talk to each other, it seems to be a whole different story.
In fact, the only software packages I know that seem to fit the bill are considerably bigger ones, like GoLightly and Convio. They offer this functionality, but as part of a package with much more functionality (GoLightly, for instance, is strongly focused on online community) for a lot more money than you’d pay for an email blast tool. Sympa will do some of this, but you'll need to have a server to host it and the skill to administrate it. Anyone aware of a straightforward solution to support advanced discussion list management?
There’s a number of options for creating a simple discussion list – free options like Google Groups or Yahoo Groups, great and affordable services like ElectricEmbers’ NPOGroups, and even the ubiquitous Mailman that comes with many hosting packages. Truthfully, so many organizations run mailing list services like Mailman or Sympa that many organizations will be able to find a free home for a simple list simply by asking around.
These tools work great in a freewheeling environment where there’s no desire to know much about who is on your list. But many nonprofits these days are looking for more ability to manage their lists, and integrate them with other data.
If you’re looking to send one-to-many email blasts, there’s a million and one vendors who will allow you to sign people up for your list online, collect a bunch of information about those registered, allow people to manage their own information, segment them into a number of different lists, integrate the list with a constituent database and the like...but what if you want to do this kind of management for a discussion list? As soon as you’re looking to let your constituents talk to each other, it seems to be a whole different story.
In fact, the only software packages I know that seem to fit the bill are considerably bigger ones, like GoLightly and Convio. They offer this functionality, but as part of a package with much more functionality (GoLightly, for instance, is strongly focused on online community) for a lot more money than you’d pay for an email blast tool. Sympa will do some of this, but you'll need to have a server to host it and the skill to administrate it. Anyone aware of a straightforward solution to support advanced discussion list management?
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1 Comments:
Catching up on RSS feeds - the elctric embers guys support external data sources for list membership with their implementation of Sympa, so you could go the Sympa route without having to host/develop Sympa yourself. I've not used it, but their support is awesome and they would help or consult (ie, extra $$) if someone had a need.
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