During the past few months, email junk (or spam) has become a huge issue and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have begun taking on the problem themselves, in many cases filtering legitimate email. Specifically for soccer tournament news, it is affecting the way we communicate to coaches and referees, such as you sending out from the Team Applications Module or the confirmations coaches receive when they apply.
Here are two examples of what many ISPs consider spam:
1) A coach has four teams she wants to enter into your soccer tournament. She completes the first application and gets a confirmation, no problem. Because the contact information is similar for the 2nd-4th teams, she hits the back button, changes the information and re-submits, generating a second, third and fourth application. While you will get the applications to the database, she may get the email confirmations as she is now receiving four emails that are coming from the same server, that have similar subject lines.. in short, her confirmations now look like spam to her ISP. They delete them without ever asking her if she wants them delivered. Gone.
2) You run a local soccer tournament and most of the teams buy their high speed cable from one provider, say rr.com (monopoly? maybe..). You send out a broadcast email, accepting teams. Since your messages to each team is similar to all the others, with the exception of the recipient, team name, teamID, etc… to the ISP, it looks like a couple hundred emails, all flooding into their users, from the same server, in a short period of time… MUST BE SPAM! They block the email and your coaches never see the emails.
In each case, the emails sent are clearly NOT spam. But, computers are basically very dumb and don’t know that. If you pair that up with frustrated, overworked ISP system administrators who have to deal with consumer expectations of being able to remove all spam (their marketing and sales people told you they could, right?) you have a system that makes email pretty useless.
A recent post by Media Post explains what consumers think happens when they report email as spam. Just for the record, as a responsible email provider, TourneyCentral is obligated to respond to each spam report or risk being black listed by the reporting ISP. Since we can’t risk that happening to your tournament, we are now spending dozens of hours a month replying to tech support departments at Roadrunner, Verizon, Coxnet, etc. .. after being on hold for dozens more hours….
Our Advice: Email as a sole source of communication to your teams is rapidly becoming obsolete. We suggest strongly that you now assume that your email will not get through and search for other ways to make sure your message does.
Do send email, but also post news on the front page, encourage your teams (and referees) to check their Message Center often, urge them to build and install the soccer tournament widget (available through their team application) on their team or club web site, call them after they make an application to confirm you received it (do this in weekly batches). You may even consider a small postcard sent via USPS, confirming the team’s application and TeamID. (Bet you can sell this as sponsorship!) All of this is a bit extra work, but it will result in a tighter connection of your teams to your tournament.
At TourneyCentral, we are looking at ways to work around email. In addition to email, applicants can now elect to have a confirmation of their application, along with their TeamID, sent to their mobile device, the Team Widget, your front page news and referee message now appears on the TourneyCentral Soccer Tournament Calendar and all messages sent from the Team Apps broadcast get written to the team Message Center. We are also close to some technology with OneCall Now to send a text to speech message to your teams.
The business of soccer tournaments never stands still and the ones that survive and thrive are those that continue to evolve as trends, technology and team needs change. TourneyCentral will be here to provide services that enable you to evolve ahead of the pack!