Steven Clift EDem writes:

Figuring out how to raise money to cover server costs without selling out our members with targeted social media advertising, was a continuous challenge.

I understand why you object to the kinds of advertising you might see via Google, Amazon, or Facebook, but targeted advertising is the way to go if you want to minimize annoyance and still get revenue. You just want to target something different (don't ask me for specifics, you know your business, but basically you want advertisements your customers / clients / members find informative and useful rather than targeting revenue from advertising).

So here is the question - do you think a Mailman add-on/plugin/module/whatever you'd call it that allowed list admins to reward their new subscribers to email lists with custom themed "for good" discounts would be of interest to many???

Mailman 3 allows you to provide custom templates for both Postorius (how new subscribers sign up by web) and for various emails. It would be easy to provide custom templates for each list for your purpose, for example if all users get the same "coupon code", or get a random code. There isn't really an opportunity for a "plug in" here, though, because presumably you really want carefully designed templates for *your* business (or NPO), and probably with some attention paid to the group your business is affiliated with. Once you have the template, and maybe a little custom code, you're done, nothing left for the "plug in" to do.

If you're thinking of something more dynamic, eg, checking profiles of existing Mailman users who sign up for new subscriptions, again, I don't see an opportunity for plugins, because Mailman's current profiles are not going to support personalized rewards. So you'll need to design your own database for that, and unless there's a standard database for that (ie, with the kinds of market share that PostgreSQL and MySQL have with Mailman systems), that's all going to be custom code that nobody else uses.

Normally, we (GoodCarts) reward people post-checkout with discounts in reciprocity powered circles of online stores.

As I understand that, you (GoodCarts) are providing the user database services at least to the extent of ordering and billing records. So you'll be eating your own dogfood here, but probably similar services do their own thing, so your code would be unlikely to be of use to them, right?

The way I could see working with email list providers is basically adding an affiliate marketing style commission where purchases with post-subscription rewards would go to the partner based on results.

I think Mailman provides a good platform for that kind of thing, but it's going to require a ton of additional APIs to do well.

Our view is that exclusive discounts as rewards post transaction (purchase, email list subscription, volunteer sign-up, event registration, online petition signature, etc.) is far better than plastering ads everywhere.

If there's a dominant database application for keeping track of these things, a plug-in architecture might work. But if not, every such business is going to need to make its own extensive customizations, and it's really going to be more of a direct-mail application than a mailing list manager, which is fundamentally for mass mailings, maybe with a bit of personalization of mailings. Stock Mailman only does direct mail for the email verification dance and subscription welcome messages. You could easily use the latter for this one event of subscription. But Mailman doesn't know anything about "volunteer signups" or "event registration", etc, and teaching it to do that part is likely to be painful and make maintenance of the software difficult.

My recommendation would be to use a separate application to manage the rewards system, and add only a couple of additional rules or handlers to trigger rewards (by messaging the rewards manager) on specific events that Mailman tracks anyway.

Steve