[OSGeo-Conf] Mailchimp

Fri May 15 20:28:05 PDT 2020

Hi All,

>How many contacts do we have?
The CLOC did a “permissions campaign” at the start of our engagement and asked everyone to opt-in to different levels of communication. Thus the list should contain only active and relevant contacts.

Cheers,
Jon

From: Conference_dev <conference_dev-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> On Behalf Of Steven Feldman
Sent: Friday, May 15, 2020 4:18 PM
To: Eli Adam <eadam at co.lincoln.or.us>; Malena Libman <malena.libman at gmail.com>; OSGeo-Conf <conference_dev at lists.osgeo.org>; Smith, Michael ERDC-RDE-CRREL-NH Civ <michael.smith at erdc.dren.mil>
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Conf] Mailchimp

The first thing we should do is pause our MailChimp account billing:

If you have a paid monthly plan and don't need to send campaigns for a while, you can pause billing on your account. You can keep your account paused as long as you need to, but you’re limited to two pauses each year.

When you pause your account, we immediately end the current billing cycle and suspend sending functionality. You can still use Mailchimp to create and edit campaigns and templates, view reports, and make changes to your audience. We’ll even continue to manage new signups for you.

When you're ready to send campaigns again, you’ll need to purchase a plan to unpause your account.

I have also checked and here is what MailChimp says about archiving:

When you archive a contact, you remove them from the contact table and add them to a separate archived contacts page. As long as a contact remains archived, you won’t be able to edit their profile or send them any marketing communications. However, you’ll retain all of their data, including identifiable information in campaign reports. Archived contacts don’t count toward your billing.

You can unarchive a contact at any time, and they’ll appear back in your audience with the appropriate email marketing status. A contact can also unarchive themselves if they sign up through your Mailchimp signup form or interact with your connected online store.

Seems to me that we should archive all of the contacts (perhaps doing a bit of segmentation before archiving to make it easier to selectively unarchive when we want to reactivate mailing).

How many contacts do we have? We should check that we are on the best MailChimp tier for our needs. It would be much easier to stick with MailChimp and manage our costs than try to set up a new system, find volunteers to do the sysadmin work and then worry about GDPR compliance etc.

I suggest that the cost of the MailChimp is paid for by the Conference Committee. We have the unused budget for the TGP for 2020, we should ask OSGeo Board to allow us to use some of that budget for this purpose. We should continue to hold this as a “central” cost in the future and provide access to the account to a FOSS4G LOC (could be used by regional events as well as global if well set up). The quick way to do this could be to set the payment method to come via the OSGeo PayPal account (hence I have copied Michael Smith inas OSGeo Treasurer)

I run a MailChimp list for a small local charity, so I know my way around MailChimp. I’d be happy to have a look at how we are set up if there is no one else with more advanced MailChimp experience.

Hope this is helpful

Cheers
______
Steven
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On 15 May 2020, at 21:59, Eli Adam <eadam at co.lincoln.or.us<mailto:eadam at co.lincoln.or.us>> wrote:

On Fri, May 15, 2020 at 1:53 PM Bart van den Eijnden <bartvde at osgis.nl<mailto:bartvde at osgis.nl>> wrote:

Stupid question maybe, but why does the LOC have to pay for this? Why is it not covered by OSGeo?

No good reason, just that's the way it has always been done.  My
initial side comment was questioning if we want to re-evaluate that
(which is probably a different thread rather than this thread about
what to do with Mailchimp for the next # months). It is not just
Mailchimp, the whole conference is more or less entirely completed
from scratch by the LOC with very little institutional continuity from
year to year.

I'll also point out that depending on how finances are configured,
sometimes OSGeo money and LOC money are the same thing and the
"difference" is mostly fictional.

Best regards, Eli

Best regards,

Bart

On 15-05-2020 22:17, Malena Libman wrote:

Thank for your answer Eli.

I think some of my answers are not as perfect in english as a thought they where.

I didn't mean we wanted to start to pay whenever we want, it's just that with no income for at least 4 months and the need to relieve the CLOC of the MailChimp expense now (the next charge is may 19th), we don't have the money yet to cover this.

As for the final comment, I also meant to agree with you, not to say that the CC should do any of our work.

Malena

El vie., 15 may. 2020 a las 17:10, Eli Adam (<eadam at co.lincoln.or.us<mailto:eadam at co.lincoln.or.us>>) escribió:

On Fri, May 15, 2020 at 12:48 PM Malena Libman <malena.libman at gmail.com<mailto:malena.libman at gmail.com>> wrote:

Hi all,

For the FOSS4G BALOC, the issue right now is that we don't have the budget to support the mailchimp billing while we are not using it.

My question was more of, "When does BALOC want to send messages?"  And
not, "When does BALOC want to start paying for the service?"  Many
years, the next LOC is very ready to start sending messages the
day/week after the prior FOSS4G and sometimes (with careful
coordination) before the prior event.  If BALOC wants to start sending
messages in September (four months from now), we may want to just
leave it as is, even if BALOC doesn't yet take over payment of it.

We are working on locking the exact dates, but as long as we don't launch the CFP or the ticket sales, we don't need the mailing platform and it's imperative we reduce expenses considering the pandemic situation world wide and the precarious future of the conference.

Thanks Steven for the suggestion on archive method, maybe that's the best way to change the billing plan without downloading information to avoid the concerns that Mark mentions or losing important data.

As Eli mentioned, it would be good for us (as LOC) to know exactly which tasks are managed by the committee and which we need to take care of.

I think the typical approach is that the LOC does almost 100% of
everything and the Conference Committee does very little beyond the
initial selection and being available for guidance or advice or if
issues need input.  My (not directly related to this thread) comment
was about whether we would ever want to reconsider that and establish
some long term continuity that does some of the routine conference
logistics.  That was mere commentary on my part.

Best regards, Eli

Cheers

Malena

El vie., 15 may. 2020 a las 16:29, Eli Adam (<eadam at co.lincoln.or.us<mailto:eadam at co.lincoln.or.us>>) escribió:

I have some hesitancy to ever be in the situation of "we can't send
emails to our list" which could happen if we plan to migrate later (or
even, unarchive  later).  If there is some reliable method to increase
and decrease expense that doesn't conflict with other uses of that
function, that might be worthwhile if some individual wants to
reliably take that on.  Do we know when FOSS4G 2021 wants to start
sending messages?

I'm also open to evaluating options like https://phplist.com/pricing
if it were found to be equivalent (or better) and would support open
source software while doing it.  Generally, I think there is some
value to stability in things like this and we shouldn't be changing
too frequently.  Any change should be done in coordination with a LOC
(or if it were to be part of a more centrally managed service by the
Conference Committee).

For straight cost, +1 to what Darrell and Mark said.  This cost is
minor in the big picture.  Generally sysadmin time is one of the more
scarce resources around OSGeo and I think that is best reserved for
other functions that can't easily be done otherwise/elsewhere.  We
would need to talk to SAC before shifting responsibility of FOSS4G
emails going through correctly on tight timelines to them.

More generally, evaluating which tasks are managed centrally by the
Conference Committee and which are shuffled from LOC to LOC might be
worth a larger conversation (maybe on some other thread).

Best regards, Eli

On Fri, May 15, 2020 at 9:34 AM Darrell fuhriman <darrell at garnix.org<mailto:darrell at garnix.org>> wrote:

My general feeling on these things is that it’s worth the money to not put any more burden on volunteers than is necessary — especially if that burden can be easily outsourced for what is frankly a pretty small charge in the grand scheme of things.

If you can revert to free and then upgrade as necessary, that seems like an excellent investment to me.

Darrell

On May 15, 2020, at 08:52, María Arias de Reyna <delawen at gmail.com<mailto:delawen at gmail.com>> wrote:

Dear Conference Committee,

We just had a meeting with the Calgary team to give us the credentials
of the shared accounts by all LOCs.

We have a question regarding MailChimp. We understand this is an
interesting tool that has been widely used in the past. Right now it
has a cost of 93€/month.

Considering we are not going to widely use it in the next few months,
we are going to export all the contacts to convert it to a free plan
for the time being and then decide at a later stage what to do with
it. Possibly reimport all the contacts and pay again, if there is no
better alternative.

Can the Conference Committee discuss to have some FOSS version of
this, like PHPList (https://github.com/phpList/phplist3 ), on OSGeo
servers that will allow us to do the same without depending on an
external provider?

Cheers,
María.
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