Habbox Newsletter

[AgnesIO]

This came up in another thread. So why doesn't Habbox have a monthly newsletter, sent by email, to all users who are signed up to HxF who agreed to have emails sent to them by administrators? I know the last Newsletter was a big fail, however I think this is because it was really long, and contained a lot of information nobody cared about. The Newsletter could contain:

- Up and coming large events
- One managers comments on what is currently going on behind the scenes
- The last months large donations
- The Member of the Month's

The newsletter would not need to be massive, the size of habbos email one (well if they still do it), would be fine.

The pros of having a newsletter:
- It could bring old members back to see what is happening
- A way to show off what major things have happened at Habbox
- Give users an inside view of what is happening in a certain department.

The cons of having a newsletter:
- It would take 1/2 hours to produce (once a standard template has been made)
- It could be a flop like last time.

Thoughts?

Credit to Shar, for bringing this up.

[Alkaz]

Well the last four news letters which have been started have each time been a flop after the first month and that's not the same person doing it twice either, that's four different people trying on four different occasions. At the moment we are working on a kind of weekly or by-weekly newsletter just summing up changes around the place including staff, management, technical changes and also big upcoming events and competitions which we would like people to take note of. As for sending it out via email I know in the past this was turned down by General Management a couple of years ago from what I can remember how ever I don't know where we stand on that at the moment and if it is something Jin / Matt would like to happen.

This is certainly something we will be developing and hopefully we will be bringing it to you in the coming weeks.

[AgnesIO]

Well the last four news letters which have been started have each time been a flop after the first month and that's not the same person doing it twice either, that's four different people trying on four different occasions. At the moment we are working on a kind of weekly or by-weekly newsletter just summing up changes around the place including staff, management, technical changes and also big upcoming events and competitions which we would like people to take note of. As for sending it out via email I know in the past this was turned down by General Management a couple of years ago from what I can remember how ever I don't know where we stand on that at the moment and if it is something Jin / Matt would like to happen.

This is certainly something we will be developing and hopefully we will be bringing it to you in the coming weeks.

You have like 50,000 emails. Not saying send it to all of them, but people are more likely to read it if it is on their email. If there is an announcement with good things I often think 'yeh I will read that later' and forget. Whereas I check my emails daily.

[Alex3213]

Right first of all I'm going to be rather blunt and say that I don't want to know every single staff promotion, every single staff change or every single staff resignation. I frankly couldn't care less unless I knew them well really. Sounds mean but it's not something I want to know and if you wanted it short and snappy, that is not the way to go.

E-mail? Yeah I like that. Sounds like a good way to do it, but should also be published on the site. No further comments on that as I don't know anything which GM have said before.

What you've included is sort of what I agree with, but I think instead of "One managers" is just to split it into two sections. Content and Community. Content will be all the content departments stuff and Community for the rest (including Forum me thinks). The AGM of these could write parts of this and then ask each manager themself if they have anything they'd like to include (specify, not write).

I think it would be good to have this fortnightly as long as it was kept on top of! A day missed? Not good. A week missed? Even worse. Then it comes to the point that you have one every six weeks which makes it worthless. Make sure it is the same day every fortnight otherwise it will flop! Hook people in too, the last Newsletter, sorry Matt, but was terrible because although it was informative, it had nothing interesting or at least could have made it more interesting than it was. What was there was a forum skin. It was written in one line yet this could have been an explosive story rather than including staff promotions.

[Mr-Trainor]

Right first of all I'm going to be rather blunt and say that I don't want to know every single staff promotion, every single staff change or every single staff resignation. I frankly couldn't care less unless I knew them well really. Sounds mean but it's not something I want to know and if you wanted it short and snappy, that is not the way to go.
Agreed, it should only be changes of department management and general management.


E-mail? Yeah I like that. Sounds like a good way to do it, but should also be published on the site.
Agreed once again :D

[Mathew]

Well the last four news letters which have been started have each time been a flop after the first month and that's not the same person doing it twice either, that's four different people trying on four different occasions. At the moment we are working on a kind of weekly or by-weekly newsletter just summing up changes around the place including staff, management, technical changes and also big upcoming events and competitions which we would like people to take note of. As for sending it out via email I know in the past this was turned down by General Management a couple of years ago from what I can remember how ever I don't know where we stand on that at the moment and if it is something Jin / Matt would like to happen.

This is certainly something we will be developing and hopefully we will be bringing it to you in the coming weeks.
And the problem with this is clear... all the information of readily available in Habbox / Community Announcements.

To make the newsletter work, I really think there should be something which no other site has done. Maybe it's because I'm a tad geeky, but I'd love to have a weekly update about how active the forum has been, how many members were online, how many posts, how many registrations, etc. Maybe how this has compared to this week last year, etc.

Other ideas could be the "newspaper" style I spoke about in a previous feedback thread. Loosen up, let's have lots of columns about different things. A whole new department could be here, journalists to give their opinions on things in the news. Hey, it's far-fetched and you've already brushed the idea under the carpet... but it's feedback to say the least :)

[Samantha]

Firstly, I like the idea of a newsletter, I feel it would be a good way to receive more members.
But how do you know what to put in it?
I have to agree with Alex, I do not wish to know every staff change - although I look at the announcements I just feel it would be too much.
Also, I have to disagree with the e-mail idea, some people may not read their e-mail and I highly doubt hotmail, gmail, yahoo etc will let you send it to about 20,000 at once, I know hotmail has about a limit of 100.

On the other hand, how would it be made? What programme would it be used on?
As I know on my old laptops and computers, some files wouldn't open without the correct software, this could include microsoft office etc.

Furthermore, relating back to my first point of how would you know what to put on it. I feel you could make it a community run newsletter, of course Joe, Myke, or someone of the sort could run it off and distibute it but only the members will really know what everyone wants.
You could look for active people on the forum, take [@]Apple[/@] for example, you could then PM the user, and ask if he would like to join the 'Newsletter Community Team.' Which he could then accept or not.

However, I say make it community based, as there are many people who want to help out on the community but don't know which way to go about it, and they also may not be allowed the role of a staff again cough.

Overall, I can't remember what it was, I'm sure when I was part of the rares value department, Dan (Undertaker) used to do a RV Newsletter, correct me if I'm wrong, then there was a thread about it. And honestly I enjoyed reading it.

I probably made no sense now, but anyway, if you can make head nor tail of this don't worry. :D

[Roxy]

I am interested in trying to start up a newsletter again, so what kind of content would you be interested in? From this thread I've got:
- information about new things coming up (eg large events)
- management changes
- donations
- motms
- statistics (would have to check if people mind them being posted though)

Going from Sam and Matt's points, Mr-Trainor used to do a weekly newsletter for the rvr staff which contained room of the week, quote of the week, joke of the week etc which were submitted by the rvr staff so could perhaps do a few things like that but submitted by the community?

It also seems to come up quite often that people are interested in who won which competition, so perhaps a list of last weeks competition winners and the current competitions, although I think that'd only work if it was done weekly.

[Alex3213]

I am interested in trying to start up a newsletter again, so what kind of content would you be interested in? From this thread I've got:
- information about new things coming up (eg large events)
- management changes
- donations
- motms
- statistics (would have to check if people mind them being posted though)

Going from Sam and Matt's points, Mr-Trainor used to do a weekly newsletter for the rvr staff which contained room of the week, quote of the week, joke of the week etc which were submitted by the rvr staff so could perhaps do a few things like that but submitted by the community?

It also seems to come up quite often that people are interested in who won which competition, so perhaps a list of last weeks competition winners and the current competitions, although I think that'd only work if it was done weekly.

The "Newsie" was a very jokey sort of Newsletter. Small stories such as Alex3213 resigning from the RV dept. were blown up completely to create a huge article on it. Even "a throne takes a plunge" was included which wasn't exactly what we needed to know, it was something for a bit of fun. Maybe you could try it but I think that should certainly be community based.

As for the competitions, yes but it would only be able to be done weekly as that is a minimum of 42 a month, and more if there are 2nd and 3rd places.

[Roxy]

The "Newsie" was a very jokey sort of Newsletter. Small stories such as Alex3213 resigning from the RV dept. were blown up completely to create a huge article on it. Even "a throne takes a plunge" was included which wasn't exactly what we needed to know, it was something for a bit of fun. Maybe you could try it but I think that should certainly be community based.

Yeah I wasn't suggesting it'd be done exactly like that, was just picking out a few things he did which could be adapted and might work for a Habbox newsie.

---------- Post added 09-10-2010 at 10:12 AM ----------


The "Newsie" was a very jokey sort of Newsletter. Small stories such as Alex3213 resigning from the RV dept. were blown up completely to create a huge article on it. Even "a throne takes a plunge" was included which wasn't exactly what we needed to know, it was something for a bit of fun. Maybe you could try it but I think that should certainly be community based.

Yeah I wasn't suggesting it'd be done exactly like that, was just picking out a few things he did which could be adapted and might work for a Habbox newsie.

[Alex3213]

Yeah I wasn't suggesting it'd be done exactly like that, was just picking out a few things he did which could be adapted and might work for a Habbox newsie.

---------- Post added 09-10-2010 at 10:12 AM ----------



Yeah I wasn't suggesting it'd be done exactly like that, was just picking out a few things he did which could be adapted and might work for a Habbox newsie.

As I said, newsie does sound "jokey" hence why it was a jokey newsletter. I think you should be calling it the Habbox Newsletter because although it's nothing special, it shows its purpose. Also, don't overdo it. I think only 1 or 2 things at the end would be good.

[Grig]

Been there, done that. Never lasts for longer than 2/3 months.

[AgnesIO]

Been there, done that. Never lasts for longer than 2/3 months.

To be fair though, the last ones have been silly. I know we tried last time, but it was so boring etcetera. It needs to have information people want - not every single update and staff change in the past month.