[bisq-network/proposals] Create a bisq-announce mailing list to replace now-defunct MailChimp newsletter (#20)

Chris Beams notifications at github.com
Sat May 5 18:47:17 UTC 2018


## Introduction

As documented at bisq-network/mailchimp#9 and elsewhere, MailChimp shut our account down. This leaves us with no way to communicate with our ~3,000 mailing list subscribers.

## Let's set up a new bisq-announce mailing list

We have our own mailing list infrastructure at https://lists.bisq.network; let's use it.

**I propose we create a new read-only bisq-announce at lists.bisq.network mailing list** that we use for broadcasting important announcements about Bisq and the Bisq Network, including:

 - Release announcements for user-facing applications such as Bisq Desktop and Bisq Mobile
 - Major milestones in network activity, i.e. events worth celebrating
 - Initiatives that deserve a lot of attention, such as liquidity weeks or other key growth efforts
 - Major Bisq media mentions, interviews, etc that Bisq users would want to be aware of and/or share

To date, our newsletter has been low-volume to a fault—we virtually never used it. I propose that this new newsletter would remain low-volume, but perhaps aim for a cadence of one or two emails per month. It would remain primarily focused on letting users know about new features and releases, and we would never want it to feel overtly promotional or slick. The medium is really the message here; by moving to a lo-fi Mailman mailing list, we're letting people know that this is a no-frills, value-oriented communication channel, not a marketing tool designed to surveil and manipulate.

## Pros

 - We're in full control of the Mailman infrastructure, and can't be de-platformed again.
 - This kind of Mailman-based mailing list is idiomatic for a FOSS project like Bisq. It moves away from the more corporate / startup-oriented nature of a MailChimp-based newsletter, and sends the right signal to serious Bitcoiners.
 - We can still do HTML email if we want to, and while we may not want to do any fancy templates, we can still include attachments, screenshots, etc.

## Cons

 - We can't segment by geolocation or other factors. This means, for example, we couldn't target people in a certain country for a currency-specific liquidity week. 
 - We can't segment by different types of Bisq users. For example, we had a list of BSQ genesis distribution receivers vs general newsletter subscribers under MailChimp. We couldn't do that sort of thing here, without creating a separate list.
 - We can't monitor open rates, clicks and other metrics, and we can't A/B test emails. This means we can't know much about or improve the effectiveness of our emails over time. We can only measure downstream, second-order effects, like increases in website visits, download numbers etc. It should be mentioned that we never really measured any of this stuff anyway. I did look at MailChimp reports after sending stuff out, but I never took any action or made any changes based on it, mostly because I never had time to focus on that.

## Open questions

**Can we automate the process of signing up for a Mailman list?** i.e. such that users can fill out a form field on the https://bisq.network website and subscribe to the list? This is potentially important because the Mailman web UI is super minimal and old-school. It's great for technical people, but may turn off or turn away less savvy people. And in general, it would just be good to be able to streamline this, such that we can have a simple newsletter signup form on the website. @Emzy, can you look into this? Note that even though our website is statically generated, we can hook in handling form submissions via our hosting provider, Netlify. So it is possible for us to have a bit of code that does whatever is necessary to subscribe someone.

**Anti-spam compliance.** MailChimp and other providers go to all sorts of lengths to ensure compliance with CAN-SPAM and other regulations. As far as I know, it's enough to have the usual unsubscribe link at the bottom of Mailman-generated emails. We're not a company, we don't have an address or contact information, etc, so we shouldn't need to put any of that stuff in the footer of these emails. I don't see how this list would be any different than any other open source mailing list, but I'm not a lawyer, so if someone can provide confirmation about this, please do.

**What to do with the existing 3,000 list subscribers.** I've been able to extract the set of current subscribers from our MailChimp account before being locked out forever, and I have that data now in CSV form such that we can import it into the new bisq-announce list. I would just want to confirm with everyone here that we in fact do want to do that. I don't see a strong reason not to; these subscribers did opt-in to getting announcements about Bisq, and we'd be transferring them from the old newsletter infrastructure to the new bisq-announce infrastructure that has essentially the same purpose. This seems like an entirely legit thing to do, but if anyone has a reason to object to this, please speak up.

## Prerequisites to accepting / enacting this proposal

**This list will need an owner.** I don't want to see us set up this infrastructure only to fail to use it like we did with MailChimp, and I don't want to assume this role myself. @m52go, you mentioned in LINK that you'd be interested in taking on this kind of role. I'd see the minimum set of duties being making sure that we get an email out to the bisq-announce mailing list every time there's a Bisq Desktop release, and to take the time to craft that communication a bit so that it's something more substantive than just a copy-and-paste of the release notes.

## Access to the list

Whoever plays the bisq-announce mailing list admin would have write access to the list. Anyone who wants to can subscribe to the list and read it, and of course the archives would be publicly visible at https://lists.bisq.network like all our other lists.

Subscribers would not be able to respond to emails though, in order to avoid the list becoming too noisy and people dropping off. We'd want to have a standard footer that directs people to ask questions via the Bisq Forum, Slack, etc.


## Announcing / promoting the new list

If this proposal is approved, I would want to announce it via Twitter in conjunction with making a bit of noise about MailChimp shutting us down. People should know that MailChimp is doing this to honest Bitcoin projects, but we shouldn't make that noise without also giving people something to do about it, like signing up for our new bisq-announce newsletter. So I'm holding off on any MailChimp tweets for now, until we've approved this and gotten everything set up.

Note that I also removed links to the old newsletter from the website, and I would also add those links back in when we announce this new list.

Thanks for reading. Please take some time to think about this and provide feedback, thanks!

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