ClassCreator.com | Blockbuster sites, amazing reunions

Share Tips

New Topic Reply Subscription Options  

We need a "Preferred or Nick Name" line to help personalize emails

Forums: Suggestions and Feedback
Created on: 05/15/11 02:50 PM Views: 6357 Replies: 31
Sunday, May 15, 2011 at 2:50 PM

It would be great to have a line added on the contact page right after the "First Name" line. My suggestion is it would be used for "Preferred or Nick Name", to help us personalize our emails.

Why? Well, when sending out emails (Email The Class) and using the $first_name$ feature to insert the first name of a classmate, our emails are going out as "Hi Johnathan R." instead of "Hi John" or "Hello Cynthia 'Cindy' ", instead of "Hello Cindy".

Many classmates have their First, Middle, sometimes third name and also a nick name all on the First Name line. That makes it difficult to actually personalize our bulk emails and it is obvious when they get a message from us that it is not personal. It just sounds weird getting an email that says "Welcome Mickael 'Mikey', We're glad you joined us!?

If this line was added, it would be easy to send a short note to everyone asking them to update their contact page and to enter their preferred or nick name to the new line that was added for this purpose on their contact page. It would be a good excuse to get a lot of alumni back to the website too!

Let me know what you think.

Thanks,

Bruce

Reply
Sunday, May 15, 2011 at 4:16 PM - Response #1

I'd back you on that one, Bruce.

I've wanted it for a long time but have had to settle for adding a Profile question asking what nickname or other name they were known by at school. I don't think the Profile area is the right place for it and your reason for wanting the change makes good sense.

Reply
Sunday, May 15, 2011 at 5:19 PM - Response #2

Yup

Reply
Sunday, May 15, 2011 at 5:28 PM - Response #3

Me, too.Rolling Eyes

Reply
Sunday, May 15, 2011 at 11:45 PM - Response #4

Me, three. Very Happy

This could be an extra symbolic variable in the email like "$nickname$", and if left blank, the email program would have to float in the "$first_name$" instead.

We have people who have had to put extra nicknames into the first name field, and it would be nice to have a nickname field by itself.

Reply
Monday, May 16, 2011 at 11:20 AM - Response #5

I'll add this to our internal wishlist for future development consideration.


Reply
Monday, May 16, 2011 at 11:42 AM - Response #6

I said this along time ago. In fact, I expanded it to say
We need 4 seperate fields for Then and Now
In School: First Middle Last Nick
Current: First Middle Last Nick

I do in fact have situations where every one of the IN SCHOOL names would be different than the CURRENT name.

Reply
Monday, May 16, 2011 at 12:25 PM - Response #7

YES! Definitely need this. Great suggestion.

Reply
Monday, May 16, 2011 at 12:58 PM - Response #8

It's going onto a page we call "Advanced Options" and those who want to turn it on can. Not until after the 3.0 updates though. Looking at the current timetable we expect to have most of the 3.0 upgrades in place in August.


Reply
Monday, May 16, 2011 at 6:23 PM - Response #9

I agreed with the discussion. Thanks. Looking forward to August! M:O)

Reply
Saturday, January 14, 2012 at 5:21 PM - Response #10

Arrghhh! It's January 2012! What happened?
Just wondering what our timetable is.
Here's how the beginning of our emails are still going out:

---------------------------------------------
South Pasadena High School
Classes of 1907 - 2011

Congratulations M James 'Jim' - You have successfully joined the South Pasadena High School Classes of 1907 - 2011 alumni website.

M James 'Jim', there's still three things I'd like you to check to see if you've done, as a new member of our website. (Save this email for future reference, it's got some helpful information you will use right away, and possibly later on.)

Reply
Saturday, January 14, 2012 at 7:11 PM - Response #11

Brad Switzer wrote:

It's going onto a page we call "Advanced Options" and those who want to turn it on can. Not until after the 3.0 updates though. Looking at the current timetable we expect to have most of the 3.0 upgrades in place in August.

Brad said AUGUST, but didn't say which year!!

There have been some slow-downs in the development of the ClassCreator 3.0 code. It is best to get it right the first time than put something in place that breaks everybody.


Reply
Saturday, January 14, 2012 at 8:08 PM - Response #12

LOL! Nice save! I'll have to remember to use that as an out too. Bet you use that line a lot! Well maybe by 2013?

Reply
Sunday, January 15, 2012 at 12:11 PM - Response #13

Kyle Erickson wrote:

It is best to get it right the first time than put something in place that breaks everybody.

I agree 100%, but August?

I was hoping the maintenance last night (yes, I was online all night) might have a goodie or more.

Then... Happy 2012, Everyone! Very Happy

Reply
Sunday, January 15, 2012 at 12:34 PM - Response #14

Well, August was from the then current timetable, which might have changed after that.

"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." - Yogi Berra

Reply
Sunday, January 15, 2012 at 12:56 PM - Response #15

Due to a variety of issues the recently-launched editor took more time than expected. There's several more 3.0 updates coming. The next one is the new Reunion Planner which launches later this month (shooting for January 27th). I should have learned by now to never predict the future. Wink


Reply
Sunday, January 15, 2012 at 2:30 PM - Response #16

Brad Switzer wrote:

I should have learned by now to never predict the future. Wink

Or when you do, don't be specific about the YEAR.


Reply
Sunday, August 2, 2015 at 11:53 AM - Response #17

Has this nickname capability ever been implemented? I can't find any Advanced Options.

Reply
Sunday, August 2, 2015 at 2:52 PM - Response #18

4 years and counting...... Brad never said what year for sure we'd get it but it's on a list.... LOL

Reply
Edited 08/02/15 2:53 PM
Tuesday, August 4, 2015 at 5:21 PM - Response #19

Sure would like to see that mythical "Wish List".....

Reply
Tuesday, August 4, 2015 at 10:40 PM - Response #20

Reply
Edited 02/22/19 12:30 PM
Wednesday, August 5, 2015 at 9:28 AM - Response #21

Charlie Taylor wrote:

I said this along time ago. In fact, I expanded it to say
We need 4 separate fields for Then and Now
In School: First Middle Last Nick
Current: First Middle Last Nick

I'll echo what Charlie wrote. Out of 300 active classmates, we have 4 who have changed their First names, to be different from what it was in high school. "Margaret" is now "April"; "Linda" is now "Rose"; etc.

Of course, if using $nick_name$ or $current_nick_name$ in an e-mail and there was no entry in that field, it would insert $first_name$ ... or as Charlie suggests, $current_first_name$.

To better personalize the e-mails, I may be avoiding the Class Creator e-mail program entirely, and use mail-merge from data on a spreadsheet. Another factor is not being able to IMPORT a selected mailing list, and thus having to manually select the targeted classmates from the list on the e-mail page. It's like going back to the "bad old days" (i.e. Before Class Creator) where I did everything with a spreadsheet and mail-merge for all the e-mailing. Adding "Nickname" and Import to Class Creator would be a welcome improvement.

Reply
Friday, August 14, 2015 at 4:36 PM - Response #22

We have decided that this is definitely something that we want to keep on the list, for when the time is right. We have some other projects that we need the programmers to focus on at this time, but we will keep this in mind for development when we have a gap that is appropriate.


Reply
Thursday, February 21, 2019 at 9:35 PM - Response #23

Scott Mastenbrook wrote:

We have decided that this is definitely something that we want to keep on the list, for when the time is right. We have some other projects that we need the programmers to focus on at this time, but we will keep this in mind for development when we have a gap that is appropriate.

I thought I'd just update everyone out of my frustration... Well, it's now February 2019!!! I started this thread May 15, 2011 and actually asked about it years prior to that.

Just yesterday I got a response from Scott that it was decided "NOT IMPORTANT" so it was dropped. It's been a little over 3 years since the last post on this by Scott. I know, there's way to many other important things. But it looks like there's been enough interest that it should have been implemented years ago.

Bruce Eskander (Webmaster)
02/19/19 8:29 PM

http://www.SPHSAA.org

Since 2009 we've been asking for this feature and over the years have asked for it again and again. ---> A NICKNAME FIELD!!!! Why is it so hard to add this? Again, the problem with using and sending a field is that you get an email to Johnathan Thomas .... rather than to Jon. It would be nice to personalize emails. You know, "Hi [Jon] instead of, Hi Johnathan Thomas, this is your reunion committee message". So help us out after 10 years of requests Smile

Scott Mastenbrook
02/20/19 5:04 PM

This has been considered many times and rejected for various reasons. I will certainly submit the suggestion again for consideration.

Thanks,

Scott Mastenbrook
Class Creator

Bruce Eskander (Webmaster)
02/20/19 5:25 PM

Thanks for looking into it again. I can’t imagine why it would be rejected. It’s a pretty standard feature on other mailing programs and I receive emails all of the time that are personalized with just my go by name from other mailing programs. I don’t go by my first name, and that’s the case with many other people.

As an alumni association we want to keep an alum’s full name so we can differentiate or track down the right person, but at the same time when reunions come up it’s much nicer to email to a person rather than just say, “Dear Classmate”, or Hi, etc. in fact it is a PROVEN FACT that there is a higher response rate when you use a persons nickname and populate an email with that persons name in a few places. WE CAN NOT DO THAT WITH THE CLASSCREATOR SYSTEM.

And of course now I'm having issues with jpgs not loading for yearbook photos. Tried it with Chrome and with Safari but no luck for 3 days. Sad

Reply
Edited 02/21/19 9:39 PM
Friday, February 22, 2019 at 2:05 PM - Response #24

I know you mentioned this again via another thread. I sent that on to the team for review. As for the image upload issue, we are working on that. The 3rd party that provided that product went away unannounced. We are testing a new alternative but are still having some issues with the implementation.


Reply
Friday, May 8, 2020 at 4:47 PM - Response #25

PLEASE HELP! WHO STILL WOULD LIKE TO HAVE THIS?

Can we please have a NICKNAME (alternate name) field option?

I am still sending out emails to over 7000 alumni and CAN NOT PERSONALIZE the emails. This is really sad... there are other systems that provide this feature. Why not ClassCreator?

FACT: Personalized emails get a much higher read and response rate! I am only getting a 50-56% read rate on our all-years website.

On my wife's and my own private class websites, we have changed all of the active names ourselves to nicknames and classmate names that they personally use rather than their full names and we get a 90-95% read/reply rate most times.

Brad Switzer wrote:

It's going onto a page we call "Advanced Options" and those who want to turn it on can. Not until after the 3.0 updates though. Looking at the current timetable we expect to have most of the 3.0 upgrades in place in August.


Scott Mastenbrook wrote:

We have decided that this is definitely something that we want to keep on the list, for when the time is right.

Scott Mastenbrook wrote:

I know you mentioned this again via another thread. I sent that on to the team for review.

Reply
Saturday, June 19, 2021 at 3:51 PM - Response #26

Okay, it's been about 10 years since this was originally asked for. (Scroll to the top of this thread) Talk about frustration... I really thought CC would do something much sooner and kept hoping.

I've had to think outside of the box many times to get things to work with the CC system.

So I wanted to let everyone know that I finally decided that since we have someone that keeps an enormous and very detailed spreadsheet on our high school alumni (1907 to the current year) which has student's full names, etc., I've finally opted for a different approach.

(1) I modified my 'Welcome Email' that goes out once an alum/classmate joins us. It now instructs them that they may opt to change their "first name field" from what we originally entered, (which may be a first and middle name or with an initial or even with a third name) and they can update it to just their first name only or the name they go by or their nickname. *I've always gone by my middle name*

(2) On a couple of June 2021 survey mass emails to almost 9000 website members I also suggested the same thing may be done.

That has created more website activity of members logging on and changing their "first name field".

This is not what we had hoped for because we will lose the feature of having a classmate's full name for verification purposes. But we know the response to a more personalized email will be higher and outweigh the loss of contact information.

Note: I could NOT send a 2nd email as a follow-up to those who did not respond to the 1st survey email. I had to creatively email the entire group again as a follow-up to try to get to just those who did not initially respond. This option does not seem available to multi-year websites.

Reply
Saturday, June 19, 2021 at 10:26 PM - Response #27

Hi Bruce,

This is still a wish list item. Most classes are simply using the nick name in the first name field.

Jessica


Reply
Tuesday, June 29, 2021 at 6:21 PM - Response #28

Obviously, they have to. We want to keep full names for those who have not joined us so they are Internet searchable and so we make sure on our end when we search for people we have their full name to get the correct person to invite. If you put nicknames initially before they join you defeat the purpose of finding alumni. There are too many John Smiths (or whatever out there) but if you leave Johnathan Robert Smith that narrows it down. Once they join it would be nice to give them the option to leave their full name and enter a nickname separately. Another reason to keep their full name in tacked is that when they pass away it is better to have them 'In-Memory' with a full name and not a nickname. Just saying...

Reply
Edited 06/29/21 6:22 PM
Tuesday, June 29, 2021 at 6:56 PM - Response #29

Bruce, on our site, for nicknames we put the nickname in quotes right after the first name. A couple of examples: Rich "Mouse" Malmstrom, Bruce "Smokey" Duncan, George "Skip" Lull.

The classmate doesn't add the nickname when they join. I add it afterwards, but you might mention to your classmates they have an option to add a nickname in quotes after their first name, if they would like to add it instead of you.

Having the nickname in quotes gives you the best of both worlds: you see their full name and nickname.

Reply
Edited 06/29/21 6:57 PM
Monday, July 26, 2021 at 1:12 PM - Response #30

I have improvised as well through the reunions. That is add 'preferred' names to legal names to include middle names. There is a purpose for each and it's time to move past the 'one approach fits all' name management. We are on our 50 year reunion and are reminded of the limitations of this database. I have toyed with the idea of adding it as a custom field in the profile and not display it to get it in the record. It's crazy - I'm sure there's issues with it and you'd have to have a tool for us to update it easily. It's time - make the update. If there's issues - put them out there and let the Class Moderators weigh in.

Reply
Sunday, September 25, 2022 at 6:50 PM - Response #31

This would help in printing nametags too. Many people complained that the nametags printed their “formal” name. GO figure. Can’t please them all!

Reply
New Topic Reply  
Subscription Options: Have all new forum posts sent directly to your email.
Subscription options are available after you log in.