Mini Mods - Inactive Users Email Reminders For 3.7.x

Inactive reminder emails. This mod was designed to send out a reminder to inactive members to try and win them back. Earlier versions of this plugin have had great success, and has been installed on 1000's of forums.

This mod is a revised version of my 3.6 modification.
Someone pointed out that I needed to make a new thread in the right forum for this.

***1.2.7 Update***
Fixed the \ in the message.
Changed the way the mails are processed to try and stop duplicates
Made the bounce management monitor ALL outgoing emails
Added more stats
Added bounced email messaage viewing with management options.
***1.2.7 Update***
This update includes built in support for bouncing emails. The script will automatically detect the bounced mail, mark it as bounced so the user is not to be contacted again so as to avoid spam, and then move that user into a seperate usergroup. This plugin is still in it's testing stages, but I have addressed the bugs mentioned previously regarding the emailing side of things.

This is important so keep reading
To install this plugin and take advantage of the bounced email features you are going to need to follow these instructions very carefully. I can not gaurentee that they will work to the letter as this will be based on each persons individual hosting settings.

Step 1: Pre Install
Before you touch this product you need to do the following

• Create an "inactive" usergroup
• Set up a "bounce to" email address
  Pick an email address that you want to use as your bounced email address. Im using "bounce@icora.co.uk". feel free to use whatever you wish.
• Add a email message filter
  This is the hard part. You need to set up a filter that will 'pipe' an email sent to the above email address.
  I am using Cpanel 11 and this is how i have mine set up:
  Rules: 'To' 'Equals' 'bounce@icora.co.uk'
  Actions: 'Pipe to program' with the setting: |/usr/local/bin/php /home/icora/public_html/forum/bounce.php
  This will depend entirely on your settings and structure so you may have to do a little research. It would be very helfull if people who have to use diferent configurations would post them on here.
• Go into vBulletin options, and find the options for 'Emails'. there is a setting asking you if you want to use '-f'. set this to yes.
• While still inn the email options set the 'Bounce Email Address' to your above address.

Step 2: Install
Remove all previous trace of this modification, and upload all the files in the "upload" folder to your base directory of the server.
Go into your product management section and add a new product. upload the XML file with overwrite selected.
Refresh your admin CP to load the new menu items. Just under the "users" group you will find an "Inactive Reminders" group. open that up and click on settings.
Play with these settings and options to suit for the most part. when you come down to the bounce settings you MUST use the same email address as the one you created above.
Set to active and save.

I must re-iterate that this version has not been widely tested, but the simulations i have ran have worked. I look forward to your feedback!


Features:

• Select the period of time before a user is considered inactive.
• Select how many emails to send to each inactive user per inactivity period
• Choose weather inactivity is based on members "Last Post" or their "Last Visit"
• Specify how often followup emails are sent
• Specify alternative emails to send to reduce repetition
• Keep a log of all inactive users contacted

Planned Updates:

• More detail in reports
• ...such as
• Which useres returned
• Effectivness stats
• Email validity

**1.2.1 Update***
Added more detail to the reports section. You can now see the email address, and quickly indicate which emails were invalid. You can link directly to that user to edit as you wish.
I have fixed some errors which have been crashing people's database. Please post any problems if you can.

**1.2.3 Update***
Fixed several problems with escaping strings
Stopped database errors locking up site
***

**1.2.4 Update***
Added a "From Email" so you can specify your own email address to send the reminders from.
Fixed potential bug for people who do not use the mail queue.

Anyone having problems with sending emails out too fast, and multiple emails being sent need to consider changing their email settings in vbulletin options.
People with emails going out too fast - edit Number of Emails to Send Per Batch to a lower amount
People with multiple emails sending - edit Use Mailqueue System to "Yes, with locking"
***

**1.2.5 Update***
Added more stats in the reports page, also added a "Send test email" option so users can test the functionality of the mod
***

**1.2.6 Update***
Identical to 1.2.5, however EzBounce support added.
***

**Opps Update***
Sorry i somehow managed to not include the file in the zip. My bad.
***

[Gene Steinberg]

Yes. I double checked.

Peace,
Gene

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by genesteinberg

Yes. I double checked.

Peace,
Gene

okay - i tihnk i have it. and i cant believe i missed this out. in the email options where you enabled the "-f" option, just above that there is a "Bounce Email Address". set this to your bounce email address.

[turbosatan]

edited as i made a silly mistake which i figured out straight after

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by turbosatan

edited as i made a silly mistake which i figured out straight after

let me know if it's working okay? i still cant understand why you are getting the \ in your message...

[turbosatan]

Originally Posted by C Braithwaite

let me know if it's working okay? i still cant understand why you are getting the \ in your message...

it is working.

i had uploaded one of the files to the incorrect directory.

it does seem to have sent all emails successfully now according to the logs. i would be interested in furtherreporting to show tyhe success rate of the email etc.

is there any way of coparing the list of emailed users with next weeks visitors?

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by turbosatan

it is working.

i had uploaded one of the files to the incorrect directory.

it does seem to have sent all emails successfully now according to the logs. i would be interested in furtherreporting to show tyhe success rate of the email etc.

is there any way of coparing the list of emailed users with next weeks visitors?

is it still sending emails with the \ backslash?

I do plan to update the statistics shown so you can see which users are returning, % effectiveness rate etc etc. i just need to plan how im going to do it so as not to put too many queries on each page.

[turbosatan]

Originally Posted by C Braithwaite

is it still sending emails with the \ backslash?

I do plan to update the statistics shown so you can see which users are returning, % effectiveness rate etc etc. i just need to plan how im going to do it so as not to put too many queries on each page.

i think you may have me mixed up with someone else. i have never mentioned a backslash in any of my posts.

is there anything i can do to help get the additional reporting working?

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by turbosatan

i think you may have me mixed up with someone else. i have never mentioned a backslash in any of my posts.

is there anything i can do to help get the additional reporting working?

sorry, i did get mixed up lol


feel free to offer suggestions about the information that you might want to see displayed.

[turbosatan]

Originally Posted by C Braithwaite

feel free to offer suggestions about the information that you might want to see displayed.

I would ideally like to see on the reporting page additional fields to show the following

same basic setup as now showing username valid email bounced etc.

i would also like to see a date when the person was last emailed and a flag of some sort if they have visited since.

also possibly a php file which manages the link in the email. so for instance you have www.myforum.com/reminderparser.php which tracks when someone clicks on the link in the email to come back to the forum.

there may be an easier way of doign this which i dont understand.

perhaps colour coding the usernames to indicate different states such as

to be emailed
been emailed but not returned
been emailed multiple times and not returned
been emailed and clicked through link but not posted
been emailed and clicked through link and posted
been emailed and returned byu other means and posted.

etc etc

basically gather as much info about how effective a specific email has been so different types of email can be tried. was i more successful when i just said please come back or was i more successful when i did a newsletter style email giving them more details about whats happening on the forum?

[Moparx]

I tried to send myself a test email and received a Database Error.

Database error in vBulletin 3.7.2:

Invalid SQL:
INSERT INTO vb3_remindermail_log (username,userid,dateline,validemail,email) VALUES ('Test User','0','1219592330','1','EMAILREMOVED');

MySQL Error : Unknown column 'validemail' in 'field list'
Error Number : 1054

The test Email still went through though.