Public Affairs email announcements

I recently signed up to receive announcements from the church's PR department - they come via email from publicaffairs-slc@ldschurch.org.

There is always a vague subject line, but the emails never actually contains anything other than links to forward this vague email to other people. Here's one I got yesterday:

----------------------------------------------

From: publicaffairs-slc@ldschurch.org
Subject: The Publicity Dilemma: Church Statement on Big Love
Date: March 9, 2009 1:25:26 PM PDT
To: eric@ericmckirdy.com
Reply-To: publicaffairs-slc@ldschurch.org

Greetings!

Forward email
http://ui.constantcontact.com/sa/fwtf.j ... 2496708656

This email was sent to eric@ericmckirdy.com by publicaffairs-slc@ldschurch.org.

Update Profile/Email Address
http://visitor.constantcontact.com/d.js ... xSyg%3D%3D

Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe(TM)
http://visitor.constantcontact.com/d.js ... xSyg%3D%3D

Privacy Policy:
http://ui.constantcontact.com/roving/CC ... Policy.jsp

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints | 15 East South Temple | Salt Lake City | UT | 84150
-------------------------------------------------------------


If the point really is to convey an entire story in one subject line, it's not working for me. Can this be changed?

Thanks!

emckirdy wrote:I recently signed up to receive announcements from the church's PR department - they come via email from publicaffairs-slc@ldschurch.org.

There is always a vague subject line, but the emails never actually contains anything other than links to forward this vague email to other people.
...
If the point really is to convey an entire story in one subject line, it's not working for me. Can this be changed?

You raise a good point -- it seems odd that there isn't even a link to the article itself. But I doubt that anyone from Public Affairs will see your post. I'd recommend that you contact them directly at publicaffairs-slc@ldschurch.org

I have replied three times now, and never had a response. I suspect replies to their mass e-mails are probably routed straight to the spam folder.

emckirdy wrote:I have replied three times now, and never had a response. I suspect replies to their mass e-mails are probably routed straight to the spam folder.

That may be. I wasn't suggesting that you reply to the message, but rather that you send e-mail directly. I know it goes to the same e-mail address, but a direct message may get past the spam filter. After all, the registration message says:

...
Thanks again for registering. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact us.

Sincerely,

Public Affairs
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
email: publicaffairs-slc@ldschurch.org

So it seems that they do welcome feedback, if you can get past the spam filter. I would suggest at least changing the subject of your e-mail message.

Sorry, costantcontact.com is a Church's site?
I went there but it doesn't seem so!

marianomarini_vi wrote:Sorry, costantcontact.com is a Church's site?
I went there but it doesn't seem so!

ConstantContact is a third party that the Church's Public Affairs department uses to manage e-mail subscriptions.

You seem to be implying that there is some problem with using a non-Church server to manage e-mail subscriptions. I personally don't see any problem with the Church using effective technology from third parties when it meets the needs and is cost effective. Do you see something wrong with this approach?

Alan_Brown wrote:ConstantContact is a third party that the Church's Public Affairs department uses to manage e-mail subscriptions.

You seem to be implying that there is some problem with using a non-Church server to manage e-mail subscriptions. I personally don't see any problem with the Church using effective technology from third parties when it meets the needs and is cost effective. Do you see something wrong with this approach?

(... jumping into the middle of the thread ...)

Of course, the Church can use any third-party service providers it wants. There is one problem, though. When I receive email claiming to be from party A (the Church in this case) that tells me to go to party B's website, especially when I have never heard of party B, I can't tell whether it's really from party A or a phisher. When I receive email from my bank (or another bank) telling me to go to a website based in another hemisphere to confirm my account information, I don't follow the links.

A couple of years ago, I received email claiming to be from FamilySearch inviting me to take a survey at some third-party website I had never heard of. I was happy to take the survey AFTER I confirmed with FamilySearch that it was legitimate. I would think it would be better if there were possible for the URLs in the email message to be to a recognizable domain.

emckirdy wrote:I recently signed up to receive announcements from the church's PR department - they come via email from publicaffairs-slc@ldschurch.org.

There is always a vague subject line, but the emails never actually contains anything other than links to forward this vague email to other people. Here's one I got yesterday:

...

If the point really is to convey an entire story in one subject line, it's not working for me. Can this be changed?

This is very strange. I received the same e-mail. The body of the e-mail I received looked like:

Newsroom.lds.org Updates in Your Inbox!

The Publicity Dilemma: Church Statement on Big Love

SALT LAKE CITY | 9 March 2009 | Like other large faith groups, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sometimes finds itself on the receiving end of attention from Hollywood or Broadway, television series or books, and the news media. Sometimes depictions of the Church and its people are quite accurate. Sometimes the images are false or play to stereotypes. Occasionally, they are in appallingly bad taste. "Full-story-URL"


"Forward email URL"

For some reason, your e-mail system appears to be stripping out the text from the e-mail. I'm not sure that I know why this is happening. The reason I am replying is to indicate that your experience is not universal, so the problem is not with e-mail composition or content. The problem appears to be with e-mail filtering or delivery.

Thanks,
Dennis

dmaynes wrote:This is very strange. I received the same e-mail. The body of the e-mail I received looked like:

For some reason, your e-mail system appears to be stripping out the text from the e-mail. I'm not sure that I know why this is happening. The reason I am replying is to indicate that your experience is not universal, so the problem is not with e-mail composition or content. The problem appears to be with e-mail filtering or delivery.

Did you request HTML or text-only delivery? The message emckirdy received looked like text-only, but the one you quoted looked more like HTML.

Alan_Brown wrote: Do you see something wrong with this approach?

Not, not at all.
I'm thinking that this must be known by the user.
That's all.

Alan_Brown wrote:Did you request HTML or text-only delivery? The message emckirdy received looked like text-only, but the one you quoted looked more like HTML.

I don't remember how I signed up. I don't think that I had an option to say "HTML" or "TEXT"

You can sign up from this URL (below), but I think I used a different page for subscribing:
http://www.newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/

I think I signed up from here:

http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnex ... D&locale=0
http://visitor.constantcontact.com/emai ... l63i1ai5RX

There were additional links on the e-mail that I received from the Newsroom:

Here's the full e-mail (sorry for any confusion)

Newsroom.lds.org Updates in Your Inbox!
The Publicity Dilemma: Church Statement on Big Love

SALT LAKE CITY | 9 March 2009 | Like other large faith groups, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sometimes finds itself on the receiving end of attention from Hollywood or Broadway, television series or books, and the news media. Sometimes depictions of the Church and its people are quite accurate. Sometimes the images are false or play to stereotypes. Occasionally, they are in appallingly bad taste. <Full Story - link>

"Forward-email-url"

This email was sent to "me@my.e-mail-server.com" by publicaffairs-slc@ldschurch.org.
"update-email-url" | Instant removal with "Safe-unscribe-url" | "privacy-policy-url".


The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints | 15 East South Temple | Salt Lake City | UT | 84150

Thanks,
Dennis

emckirdy wrote:I recently signed up to receive announcements from the church's PR department - they come via email from publicaffairs-slc@ldschurch.org.

There is always a vague subject line, but the emails never actually contains anything other than links to forward this vague email to other people. Here's one I got yesterday:

----------------------------------------------

From: publicaffairs-slc@ldschurch.org
Subject: The Publicity Dilemma: Church Statement on Big Love
Date: March 9, 2009 1:25:26 PM PDT
To: eric@ericmckirdy.com
Reply-To: publicaffairs-slc@ldschurch.org

Greetings!

Forward email
http://ui.constantcontact.com/sa/fwtf.j ... 2496708656

This email was sent to eric@ericmckirdy.com by publicaffairs-slc@ldschurch.org.

Update Profile/Email Address
http://visitor.constantcontact.com/d.js ... xSyg%3D%3D

Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe(TM)
http://visitor.constantcontact.com/d.js ... xSyg%3D%3D

Privacy Policy:
http://ui.constantcontact.com/roving/CC ... Policy.jsp

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints | 15 East South Temple | Salt Lake City | UT | 84150
-------------------------------------------------------------


If the point really is to convey an entire story in one subject line, it's not working for me. Can this be changed?

Thanks!

What email client are you using?

Thanks
Kim S.
Public Affairs
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Looks like they were set to receive text only. I've changed it to html and they should see the stories in the next email.

Thanks
Kim S.
Public Affairs
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Kim S. wrote:Looks like they were set to receive text only. I've changed it to html and they should see the stories in the next email.

As an experiment I changed my preferences to receive text only. And I just got my first text e-mail, and it was quite disappointing. I can see what emckirdy was complaining about.

The message consists of some simple text and a few links. That's fine, since I wouldn't expect much from a text-only format. But there is one huge omission -- there is no link to the actual story. There is not even a link to the newsroom. The only connection to the story is the actual subject of the e-mail message, which corresponds to the message title.

But even if that story title seems interesting, I have no way of finding the article. Every link in the message is to the constantcontact.com site -- 4 links for forwarding, update profile, unsubscribe, and privacy policy -- but none of them will get me to the article. That makes the text-only e-mail message pretty much useless.

Interestingly, when I used the Forward link to forward the message to another of my e-mail addresses, the message that was sent was a full HTML message, so it's not really a forwarding of the message I received. The HTML version is a nicely formatted message, with links to the Newsroom and to the article, even links for Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, WidgetBox, Text Alerts, and RSS.

The Public Affairs department should fix the text-only version by adding a link to the article (and probably to newsroom.lds.org as well) -- it would increase the usefulness of the text-only message dramatically.