For years, I’ve been advising organisations not to send a daily digest of new activity.
‘It overwhelms members and they stop reading all your emails!’
Last month I began working with a client who sent members a daily digest of new activity. I was hoping to pull a few quotes from member interviews to support the need to change it.
However, when I asked members about the daily digests and how they visited the community, they often gave the same response. They skimmed through the daily digest and clicked on the items they were interested in. Email digests were the primary route for most regular members to visit the community.
For sure, they wanted improvements to the daily digest, but almost unanimously they liked having a daily digest of new community activity.
There are a few lessons here.
1) Daily digests can be useful. For certain audiences, a digest is precisely what they need or have become accustomed to.
2) There are exceptions to every best practice. What’s best for most audiences might not be best for your audience. If in doubt, test it out. Don’t change things without checking with members first.
3) Don’t neglect member interviews. If you’re not interviewing a few members each month, you’re missing out on an incredible wealth of information.
Put your assumptions to the test in member interviews.
