Is there a way to keep track of who is unsubscribed #addmembers #subscription
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Hi, I am the moderator for the groups.io community for a membership organization that has under 500 members. ?I appreciate so much about the functionality of groups.io but this one is stumping me.
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Periodically I update our groups.io member list by bulk-adding the entire list of emails of paid members to our organization, to our groups.io community. That's is a sensible way to make sure that new members and members who have used a new email when they re-upped their membership are added to the online community.
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Sometimes members choose to unsubscribe -- no problem, and my members are happy to use the automated "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of a message, that's fine. On other online communities where I've been a moderator, the system keeps track of people who have "unsubscribed" so that they cannot be re-added automatically by a moderator, but they can choose to re-subscribe themselves. Basically, their email addresses stay in the member database with an "unsubscribed" status.
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With groups.io, that doesn't seem to be the case -- if someone unsubscribes, their email address leaves the system. ?So, when I bulk-add the list of emails, they are resubscribed. ?Oops!
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I really, really don't want to have to keep my own separate spreadsheet of people who have unsubscribed, so that I can manually remove them from my bulk email list when I do additions. ?That seems like madness.
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Right now the only "solution" that looks at all viable to me is that if someone "unsubscribes", that I elect to send them an email saying, please let me re-subscribe you and set your account to receiving no emails, as that will have the same effect but protect both of us from annoyingly resubscribing them when I do my bulk updates.
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Does anybody else face this issue? Does anybody have another solution they are using or that they would propose, that involves as little ongoing manual maintenance on my part as possible? ?Thanks for advice. |
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On Fri, Jan 17, 2025 at 05:19 PM, Sara Cormeny wrote:
Periodically I update our groups.io member list by bulk-adding the entire list of emails of paid members to our organization, to our groups.io community. That's is a sensible way to make sure that new members and members who have used a new email when they re-upped their membership are added to the online community.I think you are creating more work for yourself than needed by adding an entire membership list each time. If you just add the new members then your problems goes away. If a member leaves and then tries to join again, you can check if they're on your full membership list or not and then approve/reject the subscription request as needed. ?
if you have a premium group, you can see previous members by filtering the member list to show past members but there's no facility to tag them and then stop them being added again via Direct Add.
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Regards
Andy |
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I do not have access to the new members only list, or to a list with registration dates, only to the entire list of members. So sorry that was not as clear in my first message as it needed to be to generate an actionable suggestion, or one that wouldn't accuse me of creating more work.
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And I do not want to double check any list at any point, that's the point here.
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But, thanks for reading. |
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On Fri, Jan 17, 2025 at 12:19 PM, Sara Cormeny wrote:
Yeah, we have a similar problem. But trust me, if the system behaved otherwise, there would be plenty of people standing in line to complain about it ("I just had someone renew their membership but the system won't let me add them!")
You don't need a separate spreadsheet, just add a column with a flag for those who have left. Sort on that column and you can avoid trying to add them again.
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We had the same problem, and more. Our whole membership system seemed designed to make things as complicated as possible. Folks could join at any time, and your membership was good for a year, so we had to keep track of everyone's renewal date and - once a month - notify those who were expiring. We couldn't just do everyone at the same time. Further complicating things was that spouses had member status, could vote in elections, and participate the GIO group (with a separate email address, of course) without paying for a separate membership. So these spousal members had to be captured somehow too. I *hated* that, and at one time proposed a bylaws change to eliminate it, but several key people had their own axe to grind, and you can imagine how far it got.?
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We also had "Student" memberships, and on and on, but I'm straying further and further off-topic. Just be glad you don't have to deal with that other stuff, too. Or maybe you do have to deal with this other stuff...if so, you have all my sympathy. :)
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For what it's worth, here's what we eventually did:
1) Direct Add new members (and their spouse, as appropriate) as dues are paid.?
2) If anyone chooses to unsubscribe from the GIO group, just let them do it.
3) Whenever someone's paid membership in the parent organization lapses, give them a one-month grace period to renew.
4) If they still didn't pay after a month, remove them (and their spouse, as appropriate) from the group with a "Goodbye" member notice explaining why.
5) Once a year, audit the GIO Member List against the master membership spreadsheet.
? ?5a) If someone hadn't paid dues but somehow slipped through the cracks and were still in the group, remove them then.?
? ?5b) If someone had paid dues but wasn't in the GIO group, send them a carefully-worded?invitation. Most of the time, this would be ignored, but at least you're only bugging them once a year.
? ?5c) If a single member was subscribed to the group with more than one email address (it happens), kindly ask them to pick one.
? ?5d) Prepare an audit report explaining the findings and the actions taken for our board of directors.
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Yes, it was a lot of hassle, but the first audit was by far the worst. After that, having the previous year's report in hand was really helpful to sort out what was going on.
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Just letting things remain messy is of course also an option, but it goes against my sensibilities. I hope this helps, but it probably doesn't.?
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Regards,
Bruce
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Sara Cormeny
Andy Wedge
Bruce Bowman