Public Affairs email announcements

[dmaynes]

Did you request HTML or text-only delivery? The message emckirdy received looked like text-only, but the one you quoted looked more like HTML.

I don't remember how I signed up. I don't think that I had an option to say "HTML" or "TEXT"

You can sign up from this URL (below), but I think I used a different page for subscribing:
http://www.newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/

I think I signed up from here:

http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnex ... D&locale=0
http://visitor.constantcontact.com/emai ... l63i1ai5RX

There were additional links on the e-mail that I received from the Newsroom:

Here's the full e-mail (sorry for any confusion)

Newsroom.lds.org Updates in Your Inbox!
The Publicity Dilemma: Church Statement on Big Love

SALT LAKE CITY | 9 March 2009 | Like other large faith groups, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sometimes finds itself on the receiving end of attention from Hollywood or Broadway, television series or books, and the news media. Sometimes depictions of the Church and its people are quite accurate. Sometimes the images are false or play to stereotypes. Occasionally, they are in appallingly bad taste. <Full Story - link>

"Forward-email-url"

This email was sent to "me@my.e-mail-server.com" by publicaffairs-slc@ldschurch.org.
"update-email-url" | Instant removal with "Safe-unscribe-url" | "privacy-policy-url".


The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints | 15 East South Temple | Salt Lake City | UT | 84150

Thanks,
Dennis

[Kim S.-p40]

I recently signed up to receive announcements from the church's PR department - they come via email from publicaffairs-slc@ldschurch.org.

There is always a vague subject line, but the emails never actually contains anything other than links to forward this vague email to other people. Here's one I got yesterday:

----------------------------------------------

From: publicaffairs-slc@ldschurch.org
Subject: The Publicity Dilemma: Church Statement on Big Love
Date: March 9, 2009 1:25:26 PM PDT
To: eric@ericmckirdy.com
Reply-To: publicaffairs-slc@ldschurch.org

Greetings!

Forward email
http://ui.constantcontact.com/sa/fwtf.j ... 2496708656

This email was sent to eric@ericmckirdy.com by publicaffairs-slc@ldschurch.org.

Update Profile/Email Address
http://visitor.constantcontact.com/d.js ... xSyg%3D%3D

Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe(TM)
http://visitor.constantcontact.com/d.js ... xSyg%3D%3D

Privacy Policy:
http://ui.constantcontact.com/roving/CC ... Policy.jsp

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints | 15 East South Temple | Salt Lake City | UT | 84150
-------------------------------------------------------------


If the point really is to convey an entire story in one subject line, it's not working for me. Can this be changed?

Thanks!

What email client are you using?

Thanks
Kim S.
Public Affairs
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

[Kim S.-p40]

Looks like they were set to receive text only. I've changed it to html and they should see the stories in the next email.

Thanks
Kim S.
Public Affairs
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

[aebrown]

Looks like they were set to receive text only. I've changed it to html and they should see the stories in the next email.

As an experiment I changed my preferences to receive text only. And I just got my first text e-mail, and it was quite disappointing. I can see what emckirdy was complaining about.

The message consists of some simple text and a few links. That's fine, since I wouldn't expect much from a text-only format. But there is one huge omission -- there is no link to the actual story. There is not even a link to the newsroom. The only connection to the story is the actual subject of the e-mail message, which corresponds to the message title.

But even if that story title seems interesting, I have no way of finding the article. Every link in the message is to the constantcontact.com site -- 4 links for forwarding, update profile, unsubscribe, and privacy policy -- but none of them will get me to the article. That makes the text-only e-mail message pretty much useless.

Interestingly, when I used the Forward link to forward the message to another of my e-mail addresses, the message that was sent was a full HTML message, so it's not really a forwarding of the message I received. The HTML version is a nicely formatted message, with links to the Newsroom and to the article, even links for Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, WidgetBox, Text Alerts, and RSS.

The Public Affairs department should fix the text-only version by adding a link to the article (and probably to newsroom.lds.org as well) -- it would increase the usefulness of the text-only message dramatically.