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Hello,

I have a project in the air that is a bit different.

I have 3 Drupal websites that want to from an Alliance for combined scheduled events.

Here is the simple outline.

!) They each want their own mailing list

2) When an event is to be announced they want the email to go out to a "combined" email list of all websites participating.

3) The participating websites list could grow or shrink in number of participating websites. Currently we're looking at 3 websites.

What would be the best way to handle this?


thanks

One question that comes to my mind immediately is who will the e-mail be "from" when you send out the combined e-mail list?

If each website has their own site, and their own e-mail list, their members will be expecting e-mail from that organization.  Unless you educate them in advance, the recipients of the mailing may assume that the mailing is spam since they do not recognize who it is from.  So you have to be careful about that.

One option, I suppose, would be to create a mailing list group on each website for the alliance, and if they want e-mails from the alliance, then they check a box, and then you combine the lists at the time of mailing.  But then that may leave a significant portion of members not on that list.

Another option would be to create a fourth website about the alliance and then import the lists from the other websites into that one, and then e-mail from there.  So that you do not compete with members of your alliance, you may want to prohibit people from registering on the alliance website, and instead direct them to an alliance member to register (i.e. being a member of an alliance website automatically makes you a member of the alliance).  If you use this option, you can combine the lists and remove duplicates in one place: the alliance website, without messing with the member lists of the other 3 alliance websites.  You would, as I mentioned earlier, have to educate people that by being a member of one of the 3 websites will also put them on the e-mail list of the alliance.

If you know and have someone who is good at programming, you could automate some of this.

One question that comes to my mind immediately is who will the e-mail be "from" when you send out the combined e-mail list?

Scott, thank you. This could be a huge issue. A Spam complaint would be hard to defend to a host.

Your idea is good.

An Allaince website, for sign-up. The member sites could advertize a block to Allaince site (sign-up). Perhaps even a credit based system, based on leads provided to Alliance. Some sites will produce more leads than others. A site producing 1,000 leads per week, would get more credits than a site produsing 10 leads per week.

Credit system would add a bit more more... but should even things out.

thanks (its good to think out loud)