Considering how many members this site has, in comparison the chat rooms and forum are extremely inactive. I would like to suggest the admin send global PM's periodically that remind and encourage participation site wide, including the forum and chat rooms.
Periodic reminders might liven the place up.
In order to know virtue, you must first become acquainted with vice.
- Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade
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En vis mann slår aldri en hund i klubben med en stokk, fordi hunden vil vende rundt og biter mannens ballene av. The main thing with a newsletter would be who is providing the newsletter service (such as Aweber or GetReponse) and if they have a good reputation, as they would be less likely to be blacklisted by anyone. Getting members to double opt-in (sign up for newsletter, then confirm it in their email) is the best way to go and also remind them in that first email to put Lush on their safe/allowed list.
However, what I was talking about was a global private message, right here on the Lush site itself. We can send a PM to all our friends, can the admin send a PM to all members?
Anyways there could be lots of ways to remind and encourage participation. Just have to brain storm and find what works. Look into email marketing if you want to get more participation. You could also sell ad space in your newsletter and help fund the site and pay for the newsletter service.
"The list" is very important for web sites.
In order to know virtue, you must first become acquainted with vice.
- Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade
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En vis mann slår aldri en hund i klubben med en stokk, fordi hunden vil vende rundt og biter mannens ballene av. The occasional message wouldn't be bad, but I am aware of the many options on lush, and only participate in ones that interest me. If I would receive daily messages from the site about what is going on, that would start to feel like spam, and I'd be looking for a way to block those messages.
Yes, there's that as well Jebru.
I was going to to do a quarterly newsletter, something like that frequency, announcing competitions, site changes etc.
I've looked into aweber before Primal, it's expensive. A monthly fee plus $130 to send to our 20K members, which is charged each month regardless. When we get into the hundreds of thousands of members, I can only imagine the costs involved.
Sometimes keeping things original is best. the chatrooms are still new to Lush, so maybe a age group per chat room, say 20's room, 30's rooom, 40's, 50's, 60's,70's,80's I went to that age as I did not want to leave anybody out.
These are all good points. A private message from the forum goddess once every three months wouldn't fee like spam. Just a friendly reminder of the chats and contests and to join in the forum would be nice. With a friendly hello and you're welcome to join in type of message.
Did not say once a day, the best intervals for a newsletter or "global pm" is once a week, bimonthly or monthly. You try each one and find what interval has the best results for your target audience.
I don't remember my welcoming message at the moment, did it encourage people to use the forum and chat rooms? If not, it should.
The Lush Lounge chat room is how some people find this site, they Google and land at the chat room, not knowing anyone can submit stories to the main site. I have met several people like that this week in the Lush Lounge. I'm on my phone so I can't view the chat room right now and I forget, is there a link on the chat room to get back to the homepage? If not, there should be. You don't want any part of your site to orphan visitors (land on a page with no way to get to the rest of the site via any links).
In order to know virtue, you must first become acquainted with vice.
- Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade
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En vis mann slår aldri en hund i klubben med en stokk, fordi hunden vil vende rundt og biter mannens ballene av. Okay, I don't know what everyone here knows, so I was just throwing out some stuff I know just in case it would help.
In order to know virtue, you must first become acquainted with vice.
- Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade
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En vis mann slår aldri en hund i klubben med en stokk, fordi hunden vil vende rundt og biter mannens ballene av. 
