Housekeeping: Tweaking the Model

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Jan 07, 2010

We strongly encourage users to register for two reasons. First, when you register you can sign up to receive Phil Lawler’s daily news headlines by email, my bi-weekly Insights message which highlight key Catholic themes and the other new materials on the site, and (coming soon) a weekly message which provides a two-week look-ahead at the liturgical year. Second, by far the most effective way to make our case for financial support is through email.

But in 2009, we received quite a few comments to the effect that we were soliciting registered users too often. We take that concern seriously, and we want to avoid that problem if we can. Therefore, for 2010 we’re trying an experiment. We’ve divided our entire mailing list into six parts of equal size, randomly assigning each person a group number from one to six. To reduce the frequency of solicitation, we’re going to write to each group in just two months of the year, at six-month intervals. I sent an email to each registered user today indicating the group number. The number is also indicated in each user's account area here on the site.

If you’re assigned to Group 1, you’ll receive solicitations only in January and July; for Group 2, it will be February and August; and so on up to Group 6 in June and December. The purpose of this experiment is to see if we can increase our users’ comfort level with registration without substantially decreasing the amount of support we receive.

If you have other ideas on how we can improve the user experience at CatholicCulture.org, don’t hesitate to let me know. Meanwhile, we’re giving this a try—and we’ll find out soon enough whether it works!