Suppressed Email List

[Proulx06]

I'm not sure if this is best posted here or emailed to my rep, but let's start here. 

 

I have an idea on the Ideas page that asks for better email reporting. Basically, I want a concrete answer to the statement of "wahhhh but I didn't get that email from you guys!"

 

Right now I am typically able to see that an email was sent (most of the time), and depending on where the recipient's name falls in the alphabet, I MIGHT be able to see that they were on the recipient list. But I really have no idea what address it went to, if it was successful or bounced, etc. I can normally manually piece it together (ie "you were on that roster, we emailed the whole roster, your emails are xxx and xxx, so surely you received it, check your junk mail"), but it's a pain and I'm never truly sure. 

 

Here's about all we can see for a sent email:

 

 

If you're in the To: list above great. But you MIGHT be the "22 more" and that's a black hole. 

 

Most troublesome of all is this suppression list that exists. My understanding is that when a recipient marks an email as spam or junk, SE is responsible for making sure that they don't receive future mailings. I know there are spam laws in this regard, and I totally get that. In my experience, this is ALWAYS a comcast email, though I'm sure that's not true. But for whatever reason, I've had a half dozen comcast families who literally stopped getting 100% of our emails. In every case, they've been on this suppression list, and I need SE support intervention to get them off. 

 

My issues:

 

-I have no visibility into this list

 

-I don't know if someone is on the list until the parents complain, sometimes after a month and a dozen emails have passed, I look into it, I reach out to SE support, and they get back to me

 

-I have zero clue, this very second, how many of my other families are on this list. The only way to find out is to supply SE support with emails, and they look into it. We have about 1000 email addresses right now. So there's no way to check for all of them. 

 

Here's the fallout: 

 

We sent out emails to one of our HS teams back in February. It outlined that they had made our team, it included the tuition payment plan that spanned from February to June, etc. Our season begins in June. Because the email address for one player was on the SE suppression list, the parent assumed that the child didn't make it, so they took their kid elsewhere and he's not playing for another organization. My board is not very happy with me or this process. Could the parent have reached out before leaving? Maybe. But better yet, we have a way to know who gets and does not get our emails. 

 

I've used LeagueAthletics in limited fashion. I mostly really don't like it, except their email reporting is a thousand times better than SEs. In fact, much of the email system is better (the ability to use an alias, as well as email scheduling). 

 

I know SE is great at taking suggestions and making improvements, so wanted to throw this one out there, as being able to communicate with our parents is one of the top 1-2 things a website needs to be able to do. 

 

Thanks all!