send recurring emails

Development Update – Continually Better

Development has been steadily continuing on Sendrecurring.com, allowing everyone to send free recurring emails to get their stuff done. Over the past months I have made continual tweaks to the email processing side of the service, when emails are sent after being edited, special circumstances for sending daily emails vs weekly and monthly emails. For example if you edit a daily email it should resend that same day, if you edit a weekly or monthly one it will not, keeping it in line with the desired level of reminding (I hope).

Updating the service has been fun and good, and I enjoy it. However what I have really enjoyed is seeing how many people are using SendRecurring. While the site doesn’t get a whole lot of visitors (only about 400 unique visitors a month), they seem to ALL create recurring emails, a huge percentage. The email traffic is HUGE.

There are regularly over 1000 emails sent every day via SendRecurring. And it is growing of course.

I love seeing it getting used!

What has also been great is that I have had the chance to help and assist people in adding people to emails, removing people, editing emails etc and they are always so thankful for both my assistance and the service in general.

So please, ask me for help, send me a email, let me know how it is going, it is great to hear from people using the service and it inspires me to continue development.

In the next few month, time permitting, I have a few updates planned:

  • a site overhaul using Twitter’s Bootstrap framework and some moving around of the interface. I am hoping to make it easier and easier to use the site.
  • Accounts, logging in and being able to see all of your distributions instead of solely email based
  • Easier addition and removal of contacts from new and scheduled emails
  • Open rates included in emails (this will be a rough implementation but I have some good ideas)

So there is a quick update for SendRecurring.com.

Recur on!

-Conrad

 

Why People Respond Negatively to Reminders and How to Avoid It

Hi all,

I don’t like to be nagged. I don’t think anyone likes to be nagged. I also don’t enjoy being the Nagger (I own this word now FYI). To nag is to essentially remind continually – often in an obnoxious fashion. Whether you are the reminder or the reminded,  it can be emotionally taxing, and is definitely not something to look forward to. This does not have to be the case, there are ways to get around it.

I think reminders are annoying for two main reasons:

  1. We know we should have done the thing they are nagging us about
  2. We take the nag as a personal assault on our ability to remember and perform tasks

Anytime I am reminded to do something, whether at work or at home, it is almost always something that I have previously committed to doing. It could be some spreadsheet I was assigned to complete at the office or a random chore that I agreed to do at home. The fact is that at one point or another, I agreed to do this thing.

You agreed to do this thing.

The fact that you are being reminded about it implies that you forgot to do it, or that the other person has some reason to suspect that it will not get done.

This hurts! Oh, geez, this person doesn’t think I am capable of remembering to do this. And maybe the fact is that they are correct. Ouch.

On the other hand, it can be stressful to be the Nagger/Reminder too. It can often feel like you are a barking boss, or that the person will be defensive when you remind them. And this can be true!

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could remind people, and still get all the positive outcomes without any of the negative feelings?

This is where SendRecurring shines. SendRecurring will allow you to setup a recurring email that will neutrally remind the recipient(s) of a task, upcoming appointment, or other message. People aren’t as intimidated by a request sent over email, because they can read it at their leisure, in their own mind/voice, and with a pleasant connotation. As the person setting up a reminder, you only have to write the message once, and set it on autopilot until the task is complete and the person no longer needs reminding. At that point, you simply turn off the message and it is done. No immediate response or action is required at the receipt of the email, which makes the recurring reminder less intimidating.

In short, use SendRecurring.com for all of your passive-reminding needs, and let your personal relationships with those you nag flourish!