It’s been a minute, but I just got here, so hey…

This would be so great and I voted.

I’m fairly new to inSided, and I know this has been open a while, but wanted to share a workaround I’ve been using for this feature. It may not be viable for large communities, but it’s working for me at the moment.

First, I export a list of users. This might be the bottleneck for larger communities - I can’t see a way to only download an export of users with a certain role, it seems to be the entire list. This is most likely manageable still if you’re only contacting users who have been active recently.

I filter the data in the spreadsheet that’s generated, down to just the users with the role I want to target.

I copy that column, and paste it into a spreadsheet I have created that rearranges that data into a single, comma-separated line. It’s pretty quick and dirty, just a column full of the CONCATENATE function to add a new row to the sum of the previous rows.

I copy and paste that line into the Private Messages creation page in Control, and it auto-populates all the names.

Update: As we are currently developing our Email Campaigns feature, we will make it possible to mass email customers based on their (custom) role, last activity or registration date. Considering the email will allow for more styling and content, and a dedicated subject (as opposed to: You have a new private message), we feel emails are a better way of reaching out to your community members.

Question: If we implement this email campaigns feature and allow you to mass email customers with rich emails, would there still be a use case for mass Private Messages?

Sure there is. PMs bring them back to the community. Emails don’t. 

Thanks for putting it so succinctly, @Scott Baldwin - I agree. Emails are more promotional, and more likely to keep someone at arm’s length, engaging only in the content that’s been promoted rather than engaging in community discovery once they’re on-site. I’d love to be able to customise PM notifications in the way described, too. I’m sure I’d use the mass email feature, but it certainly wouldn’t supplant mass PMs.

Also, PMs are a very useful way to message members who are more selective about their email notifications. I certainly know members who would have opted out of email marketing, but opted in to a notification of a community private message, because it feels more personal - so they’d only receive the latter. And even if someone opts out of all email, the PM has an opportunity to engage them on their next organic visit.

Thanks @Scott Baldwin and @wtempleton. We came to this assumption after some customer interviews, where the common theme was that de PM feature was used as a workaround for things that could’ve better been done by email, for instance promoting an event, sending reactivation messages, etc. The biggest drawback to PMs for that was that it wouldn’t show any context in the email notification itself (apart from ‘You have a new Private Message’) and the layout options were limited. 

What are some specific use cases that you would prefer reaching out to users via PMs over emails? What kinds of messages would you prefer sending in bulk via PM? This would help us better understand the distinction. 

Here’s some examples @Sebastian 

Emails:

• post-event followups (so they can watch recordings)
• monthly digests

PMs

• notify a group of people, like our ambassadors, about a program change