Member Avatar for Dani

I have always left the default vBulletin emails that my forum sends out. (i.e. to activate a new account, inform a user of a new private message, etc.) However, I finally took the time to customize each e-mail - and I can't believe how much it's helped!

The vBulletin forum system is so common nowadays, I guess I never realized how many people get the exact same sterile e-mail from so many forums. Customizing the e-mail makes the forum more welcoming and has really increased the number of new registrations that actually post.

Just a helpful hint ;)

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Ted S
Member Avatar for Scribbller

I do agree, customizing email message helps alot, it makes the members feel more welcome, and community building is all about building friendships and making one feel at home :)

Member Avatar for chendrikv

I just signed in and yes it does help. Thanks

Member Avatar for rex_b

Which templates are those in Dani?

Member Avatar for kall

I think they are all in Phrase manager man.

Member Avatar for HeadBuilder

Thanks for this great reminder. I've been using the same old default emails for the past 2 years!

Member Avatar for Danny

I think I'm going to run over to my site and customize the emails. My only concern is that individuals might mistake customized emails as spam, since they're probably expecting the default vB emails.

I suppose the key is to not making dramatic changes. :-)

Member Avatar for bigcurt

Dani, if you have time could you tell me how I would do this??

Member Avatar for Ted S

In vbulletin changing emails is very simple, just pull up the phrase manager and change the drop down to "Email Body", this will pull up all of the email phrases. The main ones to change are activateaccount, welcomemail, sendtofriend, birthday. You can also search for these phrases by selecting search phrase variable name.

Beyond emails changing your guest welcome message (aka welcome header) is another great way to boost logins and registration. This text is also controlled via the phrase system, just search for "first_visit_message" as the phrase variable name. If you want to go a step farther I recommend you implement my 4 welcome header system as explained at http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3560 this will allow you to bug guests to login/register, uncomfirmed users to confirm, people who havent posted for a while to post and people who have never posted to introduce themselves.

It's also a good idea to check all of your emails for spam issues by signing up with a hotmail/yahoo account with the spam filter on or using your client's internal spam filters to be sure you pass without issues.

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