Immediately after our Fall Fling, the number of residents who opened their newsletter dropped dramatically. At least that is what the numbers in the computer program that sends out our newsletter told me. ALARM is the only word I can use to express my concern after it happened the second week. But that didn’t add up when I talked with a few neighbors.
What is going on here?
Switches and Settings
Faced with the vast difference between what the “numbers” in software were telling me and what I was hearing from some of the neighbors, I examined my software once again.
Lo and behold the software had not made a mistake. It did exactly as I had instructed. Only I had accidentally unchecked the box to “count the number of opens.” OOPS, my bad.
Since the number of opens returned to the previous level, I assume that the only problem was in my not questioning the numbers sooner.
Bounces
Obviously, I am still learning the ins-and-outs of the software I use to send out the newsletter. While I was digging into the program, I saw a number of ‘soft bounces’ and ‘hard bounces’.
A ‘soft‘ bounce is when a newsletter does not reach you because of a a temporary problem. Could be something like a full mailbox or mail server maintenance.
A ‘hard‘ bounce is of more concern. That is when an email when your email receiver does not recognize this as a legitimate email (possible spam) and blocks it to protect you. When this happens, my software will stop sending to that email address. I have identified the few residents who have been impacted by these bounces and am working to fix the problem.
What You Can Do
- If you do not receive your newsletter by Tuesday night (remember only 1st & 3rd Tuesday in December), please let me know. I can resend it to you.
- You can also read the main newsletter content on the BLOG page of our website: https://gardensofoakhollow.com/blog
- It can also be helpful for you to add this email address (carita@gardsofoakhollow.com) to your contact list so your email server knows the Newsletter is not spam.