How to handle mailing list?

[edwinthinks]

Hey there,

I wanted to start this discussion to solve an issue we currently have regarding maintaining a mailing list. Currently, what we do is do a SQL query to fetch all emails in our platform and manually bulk upload the list onto Mailchimp. Then we send off updates to our users via Mailchimp.

Here are a few problems we want to address:

• Manually fetching and updating the mailing list is extra overhead as it is unclear how often and who does it.
• Lynn from NDBN says that there are users that aren't even on the platform that may want to subscribe to our mailing list. These individuals wouldn't be included in our bulk upload.

Looking to find any new suggestions on how to do this. Ultimately, would like us to move forward with a decision and update the process.

[scooter-dangle]

We're leaning toward just using a standard emailing vendor with built-in subscribe/unsubscribe features and then including a link to sign-up from a few places in the app.

A scenario Scott dredged up was a user who uses the app but doesn't want to get things on the mailing list. They should have the ability to unsubscribe, but that would require more work to support if we're dumping the list from the app.

Note: Edwin asked in Slack if there are recommendations for vendors that would be free or super cheap at our scale.