Rekindling this thread seeking an update from @JeffSp on whether we'll have real data on utilization of this feature any time soon? Very interested to get a sense of just how frequently this is used, and which types of users are most likely to embrace email engagement. Although we'd generally prefer to have community members spending time on site, discovering content, and getting to know each other, we also want to give them the option to respond immediately to a post that's relevant to them and keep the conversation going. In my opinion, that means highlighting the reply by email option. We've been using this feature on our community since launch and know that it was popular from day one because we initially sent Community Notifications from a live, managed inbox and educated a decent number of people every day on how to properly use the functionality (click "reply," don't hit "reply" 🙂 ) when they replied back with a comment meant for the forums. We went through multiple email template design changes to make the Reply link pop and even inserted some explainer text at the top reminding to click the link in the email, not the button on the email client. All that intervention went a long way, but as the community grew we found we didn't have the humanpower to monitor the inbox so we switched over to a friendly auto-reply. Now, it's clearly still a popular option because we spot (and remove) email signatures with some frequency. Initially, we tried to use regex to wipe the personally identifiable data, but it was not reliable and would sometimes blank out emails or phone numbers we wanted to display (like those to our sales or support lines). So instead, we're using content filters to flag the PII to our moderation team who can help to protect member privacy by editing out erroneously submitted email addresses, job titles, phone numbers, etc. Even with little pain points like taking care with users' email signatures, the feature is worth it. Would be fabulous to know how often those links are clicked and email replies successfully submitted -- and to what types of threads, how much faster on average do users respond if they reply by email, etc. The type of insights and interesting research this data could spark is tantalizing...! Please say instrumentation on these links is coming 🙂 JeffSp wrote: Wow is right! Great topic and discussion -- this is something we've discussed across several interrelated areas at Lithium as well. One thing we'd like to do is add some more instrumentation to the whole notifications system so we can all start to see some numbers and trends about the use of notifications and the engagement they can drive. Another thing we've evaluated is how much "engagement context and features" should we deliver to the user's email inbox. Reply and kudos via the links in email are pretty prevalent. But how about accept as a solution, helpfulness ratings, etc? And what about important engagement context to the user's inbox -- the posting user's avatar, rank, badges, # of posts, the number/time of replies to the thread you are replying to... and how about the leaderboards, hot topics, and related content for the area from which the message came? Or how about including the recipient's "personal impact metrics" and some personalized content (e.g. "recent replies to conversations you started" "other threads you might be interested in"). These all raise questions about where the engagement is happening -- on site or in the inbox or can we blend this -- and what are the characteristics and value for each point of engagement. -- Jeff
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