I have copied the entire board as we probably need to discuss registration at the next meeting. See the email from James in this thread
As of two minutes ago, registration is at 600, where it normally is 750 to 800 on this date. My personal opinion is that emails have been a factor, but the weather has been a major contributor. I wonder with all the rain if I will be in shape for a century, and would not be inclined to sign up for one. Fortunately we are a week later this year, and that may help, but it looks like all the rain is going to be on the weekends for a while. Also, Tierra Bella is the same weekend, which should have some effect for both rides. Sea Otter is also that weeked, with their grand fondo on Saturday.
Jim and I discussed it and putting another add in Cycle CA would have marginal gain. We are on their online calendar, and that is probably more important. Karen Barry had volunteered to make a poster and that should help. Julie said she would do an article for the Tri-City Voice, and that should help as well. Another thing we did in previous years is have a small flyer (1/4 page) that was handed out at the Cinderella Classic. Cinderella is on April 15. We can also discuss allowing day of ride registrations. We have not had that in many years
Any other suggestions are welcome. This is not a panic thing as we will still make money, but selling out would be better.
Andy
On Saturday, February 4, 2023, 11:37:25 AM PST, jameswedewer@... <jameswedewer@...> wrote:
Hi all,
So after a little effort and expense, we appear to be back in action on all emails.
TL;DR
A scale-up approach to emailing Yahoo worked as-is, but we were starting to see other blocks at small levels
A fixed IP address fixed Yahoo entirely; I blasted all ~1100 Yahoo emails with the clothing order email just before Feb 1, and they were not throttled at all.
The fixed IP address SendGrid assigned to us was already AT&T blocked when they handed it over. Easy to see when I noticed my test email to Jim got bounced…just a single email to him alone.
I did a removal request with AT&T from their block-list, they responded a few days later and had it cleared 2/2 or 2/3.
A repeat email of the clothing order message just to AT&T-hosted addresses went through successfully. Almost 92% received (normal), 50% opened (usually see 60-70%), and 1.5% clicked on a link (usually see 3%). We’ll see if the open/click rates increase after a few days.
Overall, this isn’t ideal, but everything is working perfectly now, and we’ll carry the services through the ride and a couple weeks after. Over the long run, we’ll want to look for an alternate solution. We’ll be doing an email list scrub too, to see if we can cut it down. The total list is just over 6000 today. I’m sure there are at least 1000, maybe 2000 or more, that haven’t opened our emails in years and we can get that list down below 5000 (some servers I’ve looked at have a cut-off at 5000).
