All posts in the topic Invitations on OGN (Short link)

Jul 12 22:37 UTC

Now when people are added to groups on OnlineGroups.Net they are always
sent an email that invites them to join the group. Previously existing
users were just added to the group, while new users were invited to join
the group. The change provides a more consistent user-experience, and
administrators get better feedback when users respond to invitations. To
try it out yourself, leave a group you administer and add yourself to the
group again.

The invitation that is sent to a existing user reads as follows (assuming
I invited Dan to join this group).
  Hi Dan Randow,

  Michael JasonSmith has invited you to join OnlineGroups.Net Admins on
  OnlineGroups.Net. To respond to the invitation click the following link
      http://onlinegroups.net/r/group_invitation/s0m3r4MD0Mst71ng
  You will be taken to a page where you can accept or decline the
  invitation from Michael JasonSmith.
Clicking on the link in the email message will automatically log the user
in, take the him or her to the Respond to Invitations page.

The Respond to Invitations page lists all the current invitations for the
user and options to accept or decline the each invitation, with accept
selected by default. If the user accepts an invitation to join a group
 * The person who invited the user to join the group is sent an email
   message stating that the invitation has been accepted,
 * The participation coach for the group is sent a message stating that
   a new user has joined the group, and
 * The new group member is sent a message stating that he or she has
   joined the group. A message is also displayed on the Respond to
   Invitations page stating the group that has been joined.
If the user declines an invitation, then the person who issued the
invitation is sent a message stating that the invitation has been
declined.

The invitation that is sent to new users remains unchanged. There are two
links in that message: one to accept the invitation and one to decline the
invitation. By accepting the invitation the user is logged in and asked to
set his or her password. If a new user declines an invitation then his or
her profile is deleted from the system.

                                    ❧

Sending out invitations rather than just adding people to groups causes
frustration for some administrators:
  * There is a delay between the invitation being sent out and the user
    responding,
  * The invitations are not "warming",
  * Users may lack the skills to respond to the invitation, and
  * Administrators have less control over the membership of the group.
I will respond to these issues below.

The delay between the invitation being sent out and the user responding
can lead to a delay in the group becoming active. The most effective way
that we have found to get a person to respond is to contact the new member
before the invitation is sent. Whether this is by phone or email is up to
you, but both tend to work. The main job of the initial contact is to get
the user enthused about joining the group, as people who are warmed up by
the initial contact often respond to invitations within minutes.

The invitations are not "warming", as one administrator put it. This is
less of an issue if contact has already been made with the new member, as
the new user should be warmed by the initial contact. Another way to
overcome the cold nature of the invitations is to create topic a where new
members are welcomed after they accept the invitation. The participation
coach in the group is a good person to greet new members, as he or she
gets a message whenever a new user is added to the group.

Some users may lack the skills to respond to the invitation, which does
require the ability to use both the Web and email. Sadly, I see few ways
to alleviate this problem beyond education. The person who invited the
user to join the group can coach the new member in how to respond to the
invitation. More coaching may also be needed to familiarise the new member
with other aspects of the online group, so it is good to establish this
relationship early on.

Finally, administrators have less control over the membership of the
group as invitations prevent people from being made to join a group.
People not participating in a group devalues the effort that an
administrator has put into creating an online group, which is unfortunate.
However, users have the right to not participate in a group; an inviting
the user the system makes the right of non-participation explicit.

There is a counter argument to the above that if someone receives
messages from the group then they will come to love the group. I find it
more likely that the user will delete the message or mark it as spam.
Deleting messages is the most common action in Microsoft Outlook
  http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/the-story-of-the-ribbon.aspx
So I am fairly confident that most recipients of email know how to delete
messages. Worse than deleting the messages, the recipient could mark the
messages as spam, which would  increases the chance of the group and site
being *automatically* marked as spam when sent to other users.

While every message sent from OnlineGroups.Net contains a link at the
bottom to leave the group, the link is harder to find and harder to click
than the Delete or Junk buttons. (The problem with the unsubscribe
link is that it is a small link at bottom of the message, rather than a
large button the toolbar.) In addition there is advice that you should
*NOT* click the unsubscribe link if you thin a message is spam
  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6208701/
  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/07/most_spammed/

The use of invitations for new users has been a remarkably positive one
for us. We frequently forward on lovely messages of thanks from new
users, who send it to us instead of the administrator by mistake. (We
could fix the invitation so the reply-to is the administrator, but the
accidental-thanks messages are the only good-news that ever arrives in
the support Inbox at OnlineGroups.Net.) The only serious problem that we
have found with the invitation system is that often incorrect email
addresses are added, and we have plans to address that issue
  https://svn.iopen.net/projects/groupserver/ticket/251

Thank you, Dear Reader, for wading though this lengthy post. I tried to
make it shorter, but I had a lot to write. F

Kind regards,
  Michael

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