The USCF offers Email Blast services for tournament directors. Does this really come in handy? For our local tournament, we personally had 17 members who came to the last tournament. However, the USCF shows more than that, about 27 players within 25 miles of the tournament. Does that mean that all 27 are current with their memberships since I did not limit the date for memberships in the search criteria? And does that mean that all 27 players are not blocking emails officially from Email Blasts sent by the USCF?
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The membership system apparently has 47 players who are current active members within 25 miles of ZIP code 28403, so I’m guessing the count you got excludes those who don’t have an email address on file or have opted out of email blasts, but I wasn’t involved in the development of the new email blast system so I can’t be sure of that.
Just because we have an apparently valid email address doesn’t mean the member reads the email, it can be blocked silently (eg, no bounce message so we don’t know to remove the email address from that member record), routed to a spam folder or just ignored. The subject header needs to entice people to open the email, which is an exercise in both brevity and giving the key details.
Michael,
How did you know the more accurate zip code was 28403? I used 28412 with an extension in the zip code, 28412-####(numbers not shown). The zip code difference should not be that significant, 20 players?
You use 28403 on the tournament rating report, so it was visible on MUIR. No magic.
28412 gives 44 players, so not a big difference. Expanding to 50 miles gives 76 players. Cue the trombones!
Well, well, that is interesting that one zip code which is not far apart from the other could have 20 players difference in an Email Blast.
And as noted, I didn’t try to exclude members without an email address or who have opted out of email blasts, nor did I look at ages or for recent tournament activity.
I found when I was organizing events in Lincoln that I usually drew about a third of the field from Omaha, about 55 miles away, plus those from places like Grand Island and Kearney. I would occasionally get players from Iowa, Kansas, Missouri or South Dakota.
When I set parameters, the only things I set were 28412-####(numbers left out) and Wilmington, NC. I left everything else blank including the separate choosing of North Carolina in the text box by itself.
i would defer to those with more experience using the current email blast system as to what parameters work for them, but what works in Peoria might not work in Piscataway.
State web sites, club/affiliate websites, text messaging, social media, there are a lot of options for promoting events these days.