I want to hear your own views on this, do you think it really is that necessary to have a welcome PM from a member of staff or bot account on your forum? Do you think the members like getting one immediately when they sign up? Do you think theyre very useful? What are your general thoughts on these Personally I aint keen on them, I know I need to read the forums rules and I am pretty sure I can find an introductions forum if there is one too. I personally find them a nuisance. We dont have them enabled on our teen forum but my girlfriend does have one on her pregnancy forum. We found on teenforumz that we would get replies with thank you etc from people thinking we personally sent them it wanting a whole conversation/chat when sometimes we dont have the time to do so
Like you've already experienced it depends on the site. Sometimes they are useful for marketing and what mot and sometimes they serve no purpose One forum I recently joined to ask a question about their product sent a welcome PM that was just full of junk information, propaganda and useless crap that completely turned me off to their marketing efforts. If you properly implement the welcome PM, I beleive it can be an effective tool for any site. Even adding the line that its an automatically generated message and not to reply would be beneficial to some extent at the end. Welcoming new members, usually garners good long term results in your member base and gives the member an instant sense of gratification that they are part of the community. Its all about the implementation that makes the difference!
I use them and believe they are very important - for most sites. A business site? eh maybe. I did use them on Themes by Design. A community site? Absolutely! I've received many reply pm's thanking me for making them feel welcome. I always edit the default welcome pm to include a warm welcome, important links, etc. Yes they are very useful, at least in my experience.
When trying to create and foster a community I think it is very important to have a well crafted welcoming message that thanks the user for taking the time to sign up to your site. Mine includes links to a few different areas of the site so a new user sees right off the bat the feature set available. I don't mind getting a reply back and I make time to respond as soon as possible too. I want to make that new user feel as they are important part of the whole.
They work well for me. I think on a huge/large site it would not be as good, but we are still small and welcoming. They reply sometimes and occasionally with great enthusiasm! Occasionally people reply to the Happy Birthday email as well, some are quite funny! Like I said, on a larger site, maybe not. Or include a list of important links and re-stating the the important rules they did not read.
I think they are important if you want to start the friendly family like feeling on your community right from the get-go.
I think an automated PM is a-OK if it is informative; i.e., it includes URLs to important topics, makes suggestions on how to start, gives content information, and otherwise gives information that the new member may not be aware of. On the other hand, I don't care for the simple welcome message that simply says the community is glad you joined. I have a welcome header or notice that shows up for new members who haven't posted yet, anyway. In that same header, though, there is also the suggestion to introduce, and where to do so. All this reminds me that I wanted to customize my automatic registration email.
