How are forum owners dealing with replies to Private Message Emails?

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  • mark.hs
    Senior Member
    • Dec 2016
    • 197
    • 5.7.0

    How are forum owners dealing with replies to Private Message Emails?

    There are a significant number of forum users who think they can reply to a private message notification email by simply clicking the REPLY button in their email program. When a user does this, the email is only going to the forum webmaster email account (the sender of the private message notification email) and not the original sender of the PM. I am curious how forum owners are coping with this issue. Are you putting text in the email template to say "do not reply" or are you using a noreply@XXX email as the sender? Obviously when the email recipient clicks the "view full message" link in the notification email there are no issues, but I was shocked to realize how many people simply click REPLY in their email program.

    Please share your thoughts and best practices
    Admin for hobbysquawk.com
    VB 5.74
    PHP 8.2
    Maria DB 10.6
  • glennrocksvb
    Former vBulletin Developer
    • Mar 2011
    • 4011
    • 5.7.X

    #2
    On my forum, I put "do not reply" text at the top of the email message.

    Code:
    ============================
    NOTE: Please do not reply to this email. Or else, the admin would see your private message. To reply to this message, please click the link provided below to open the message in the forum.
    ============================

    Flag Icon Postbit Insert GIPHY Impersonate User BETTER INITIALS AVATAR Better Name Card Quote Selected Text Bookmark Posts Post Footer Translate Stop Links in Posts +MORE!

    Comment


    • OrganForum
      OrganForum commented
      Editing a comment
      I do the same and place the message at the top and bottom of the email. Still, the number of people who completely ignore the message and reply anyway is more than I would imagine.
  • mark.hs
    Senior Member
    • Dec 2016
    • 197
    • 5.7.0

    #3
    I've studied this more and I think I know a solution. I believe the reason people are replying to the message is because they can see a preview of the message in the email, and sometimes the preview is the entire message. So the user doesn't really need to return to the forums, they just click reply, likely out of habit, and write a message back. I am going to test this theory by editing the email template to exclude the preview text. This way the user is forced to go to the forum to retrieve the private message. It's a bit annoying, but it "should" eliminate the issue and it will get people back to the forum which could encourage them to look around, post, etc.
    Admin for hobbysquawk.com
    VB 5.74
    PHP 8.2
    Maria DB 10.6

    Comment

    • Mrs.T
      Senior Member
      • Nov 2007
      • 1210
      • 6.0.X

      #4
      We removed the content of the message so it does not go in the email.

      They just get a notification that they have a message and must then log in to read it

      Problem solved.

      Comment

      • Mrs.T
        Senior Member
        • Nov 2007
        • 1210
        • 6.0.X

        #5
        We were replying at the same time mark.hs that is exactly what we did

        Comment

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