Email Marketing Campaign

[stpaultim]

There has been some behind the scenes work being done on an email marketing campaign for Backdrop CMS targeted at Drupal 7 site owners. Opening this issue as a place to talk about that project, potentially get more people involved.

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Current status:

• Email text returned to PMC for quick sign-off

Decisions made:

• Send the first batch of 1,000 emails
• If nothing happens, we'll send a second batch of 10,000 emails

We'll consider this first 11,00 our "test" group, and after that we can send to the rest of the list (batch size and frequency TBD)

[bugfolder]

A few days ago, @jenlampton and I got a list of ~270K Drupal 7 site owner email addresses imported into CiviCRM on b.org, in the mailing list group "Drupal 7 users". So that's ready for the email, which, I gather, is being fine-tuned.

[docwilmot]

FYI this is the approved text for this campaign. It was agreed a while ago. Sharing so work can begin on this in earnest.

Hello from the Backdrop CMS community, we hope this email finds you well.

You are receiving this message because during a routine audit of sites you have been identified as having a Drupal 7 website. As you may already know, Drupal 7 will reach end-of-life on January 5th, 2025. After that date, your website may become vulnerable. We would like to invite you to evaluate Backdrop CMS, and its friendly and helpful community.

Backdrop CMS is free and open source software, just like Drupal. It's also built from the same code as Drupal 7. Backdrop offers a simple conversion process, and could offer an affordable future for your Drupal 7 site.

By upgrading your website to Backdrop, you can keep all the functionality you currently enjoy. You would also benefit from all the improvements that have been made to Backdrop over the past 10+ years. The people who work on your Drupal 7 site will not need to be retrained to work with your upgraded Backdrop site, they should feel right at home with Backdrop.

Come learn more about Backdrop CMS.

[bugfolder]

We also need a subject line. I'd suggested in Zulip "Upgrade from Drupal 7 to Backdrop CMS", but not particularly pushing that, just getting the conversation started.

[albanycomputers]

Subject line idea:

Drupal 7 End-of-life is fast approaching - are you ready? We may have just the solution!

[bugfolder]

I wonder if one of our participants would consider self-assigning this issue (i.e., become the "advocate") to perhaps keep things moving on it?

[docwilmot]

I would be happy to advocate but I usually miss the Thursday meetings for to work. But anyone is welcome to take this up.

[herbdool]

Here https://backdrop.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/352942-Marketing/topic/.5B3.2E4.5D.20Email.20marketing.20campaign/near/397275763, @cellear suggested: "I’d lose the “recent audit” language — it sounds fake, perhaps because it is 😄. Most mail doesn’t try to justify itself, at least not up front, so we don’t have to either."

His suggested revised text, with the first line removed:

Hello from the Backdrop CMS community, we hope this email finds you well.

As you may already know, Drupal 7 will reach end-of-life on January 5th, 2025. After that date, your website may become vulnerable. We would like to invite you to evaluate Backdrop CMS, and its friendly and helpful community.

Backdrop CMS is free and open source software, just like Drupal. It's also built from the same code as Drupal 7. Backdrop offers a simple conversion process, and could offer an affordable future for your Drupal 7 site.

By upgrading your website to Backdrop, you can keep all the functionality you currently enjoy. You would also benefit from all the improvements that have been made to Backdrop over the past 10+ years. The people who work on your Drupal 7 site will not need to be retrained to work with your upgraded Backdrop site, they should feel right at home with Backdrop.

Come learn more about Backdrop CMS.

[jenlampton]

I might also split the last sentence into two:

The people who work on your Drupal 7 site will not need to be retrained to work with your upgraded Backdrop site. They should feel right at home with Backdrop.

[izmeez]

This process is becoming fragmented. I posted a consolidated update on zulipchat this morning, followed by a few line edits. Doing document revisions in public or chat is tough. If we just had a controlled access node on backdropcms.org with joint editing and revisions enabled.

[jenlampton]

It seems like overkill to rebuild google docs, but I think we're almost done now?

[jenlampton]

In the meeting today we discussed a few of the issues that popped up in Zulip.

Subject: Still on Drupal 7? Upgrade to Backdrop CMS

Hello from the Backdrop CMS community, we hope this email finds you well.

Drupal 7 will reach end-of-life in just over a year on January 5th, 2025. After that date, your website may become vulnerable. We would like to invite you to evaluate Backdrop CMS and its helpful community.

Backdrop CMS is free and open source software, just like Drupal. It's also built from the same code as Drupal 7. Backdrop offers a simple conversion process, and could offer a bright and affordable future for your Drupal 7 site.

By upgrading your website to Backdrop, you can keep all the functionality you currently enjoy. You would also benefit from all the improvements that have been made to Backdrop over the past 10+ years. The people who work on your Drupal 7 site will not need to be retrained to work with your upgraded Backdrop site. They should feel right at home with Backdrop.

[Learn more about upgrading to Backdrop CMS](https://backdropcms.org/upgrade-from-drupal-7).

Changes include:

• Drafting a subject line
• adding in just over a year before on January 5th, 2025 - to prevent panic for people misreading 2025 as 2024.
• removing As you may already know, - to keep the "just over a year" paragraph short and simple
• removing friendly and - to prevent the brain-bending around using the word and twice: and its friendly and -- see Jen's note below.
• Moving the call to action to the bottom of the email (so that people are more likely to read the whole email, and if they don't want to read all of it they can still easily scan to find the link)

edit: Jen's note about using and twice -- if anyone feels that this should stay I'd rather put it back than delay things any longer. If there is an opportunity for a change, however, I thought I would see if others agreed this is an improvement?

We also decided to start sending the email in batches, starting with 1000 messages. Assuming that goes well enough, we'll move on to 10,000. We'll consider this first 11,00 our "test" group, and after that we can send to the rest of the list (batch size and frequency TBD)

[izmeez]

@jenlampton Thanks for the improvements and summary of changes and the meeting. Any thoughts on changing You would also benefit from to You will also benefit from ?

[izmeez]

I don't like the subject: Still on Drupal 7? It may come across condescending to some. I like the Drupal 7 upgrade to Backdrop CMS. part.

[jenlampton]

How about "Running on Drupal 7?" Removes the "still" that could be problematic.

…

On Thu, Oct 26, 2023, 5:05 PM izmeez ***@***.***> wrote: I don't like the subject: Still on Drupal 7? It may come across condescending to some. I like the Drupal 7 upgrade to Backdrop CMS. part. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#34 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AADBERYVYCFVIJIUVQTXQW3YBL3FHAVCNFSM6AAAAAA3TMEY6WVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMYTOOBSGA4TINBWGY> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[albanycomputers]

Are you doing an A/B split test?