I spoke with a Volusion CSR this morning regarding any advancement in their newsletter systems. Here is the scope of the conversation. This is not intended to be a rant, just a few facts and an opening for any suggestions and as a plea for Volusion to update/upgrade the newsletter sign-up procedure.

Volusion Support

Mike: What is the value of this – Configuration : Newsletter Titles? The real value?
Flavio: Thank you for choosing Volusion! A representative will be with you shortly.
Flavio: Can you please tell me where you see that?
Mike: If you go into a customer’s record and scroll down (while an admin) you can see newsletter interests table
Mike: I click the pencil and edit
Mike: /admin/AdminDetails_Generic.asp?table=ConfigSetup&Page=1&ID=Config_News1_Title
Mike: Basically, I want the users to select and manage “which” newsletters they would like to get. Having everyone lumped into one NL is counterproductive.
Flavio: That’s for your information to know which newsletter is being sent to the customer. You cannot have the customer select which newsletter they will receive when they sign up. You will have to choose which field the customer will be in. Please review http://store.volusion.com/kb_results.asp?ID=427
Mike: So I have to choose a specific field for about 80,000 customers? That’s funny.
Flavio: You can export and then import customers with the updated information.
Mike: How exactly will I know which customer wants which NL? Interview them one-by-one?
Flavio: Yes that is correct
Flavio: You will have to ask each customer which newsletter they would like to sign up with
Mike: Hahaha…thanks for the early morning entertainment. I may have to pursue more advanced apps for this.

This did humor me, but I had to get back to reality. As the newsletter DB grows so do the requirements. Many times you have customers who buy X and never Y. You sell both. You want to market to both, but sending the X customers a bunch of Y promotions will end up being counter productive. It shows that you are out of touch with the user’s needs.

Ideal scenario: When a new user signs up for the newsletter either through registration or through the .asp script, there should be some language and perhaps a list of check boxes for the user. At this point, you can’t really just offer it in the /myaccount.asp because there are a lot of users who never registered and will not have a password.

Now, I’m off to submit yet another ticket for feature requests.