Matt

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

We're thrilled to announce that Invision Community 4.4 is available to download now.
After months of development, over 1650 separate code commits and quite a few mugs of questionable coffee you can now get your hands on the beta release from the client centre.

Not our office
Invision Community 4.4 brings numerous new features, over 450 bug fixes and a lot of refinement.
We've been talking about the highlights since September on our blog.
Here's a recap of all that we've added.
We'd love to know which is your favourite feature so far!

Drop a line below and let us know!
 

We're thrilled to announce that Invision Community 4.4 is available to download now.
After months of development, over 1650 separate code commits and quite a few mugs of questionable coffee you can now get your hands on the beta release from the client centre.

Not our office
Invision Community 4.4 brings numerous new features, over 450 bug fixes and a lot of refinement.
We've been talking about the highlights since September on our blog.
Here's a recap of all that we've added.
We'd love to know which is your favourite feature so far!

Drop a line below and let us know!
 

Release parties at Invision Community are a fairly tame affair. You'd think after months of planning, coding and testing we'd want to cut loose and dance the night away.
The reality is we send each other a few amusing GIFs in Slack and then wait for support tickets to start appearing while our developers crack their knuckles and prepare for bug reports to be filed.

It's a nightmare trying to get a photo of our team, so here's a stock image. Just pretend it's us. That's me looking at a report of how much code Mark Wade has refused during reviews
I did manage to find five minutes to ask the team what their favourite feature of 4.4 was.

Here's what they said.
Marc S
Support, Guides and Keen Cyclist @Marc Stridgen
I'm going to go with 'Post before registering', because it allows for more effective onboarding of new members on your site. People are much more likely to register after just having written a topic, then they are if they have to register before getting started. It also gives you the opportunity to see how many people are not actually registering, and maybe address that on the site.

Ryan
Developer, T3 support and reluctant AWS wrangler @Ryan Ashbrook
My favorite 4.4 feature is the progressive web app settings. I now have our site pinned to my phones home screen for quick access, and use our site on mobile even more now that I can just hit the icon to pull up our site.

Mark H
Support, Beta Tester and remembers this when it was fields @Mark H
While this isn’t “a” favorite feature, I most like the steady small improvements to Gallery in the 4.x series. Photography-centric sites should especially like the additions to extended EXIF data in 4.4 so that authors can provide the most detail about their submitted photos…. where it was taken, what camera, which lens, shutter speed and aperture, etc.

Daniel
Developer, T2 support and airport security fan @Daniel F
As IPS4 consumer, I'm going to say that Lazy Loading and mobile create menu are my favorite enhancement.
As community owner, I'm most excited about post before register and email advertisements.. That's going to bring the $$$

Brandon
Developer, Enterprise Support and proud of his thorough code reviews @bfarber
My favorite change in 4.4 (besides the overall performance improvements, as I'm a geek for that sort of thing) is the overhauled Conversion experience (which we haven't even blogged about). We took converters and flipped them on their head for 4.4, so you now choose what software you want to convert from, what applications from that software you want to convert, fill in any required details, and the conversion process just launches and runs from beginning to end right then and there. You no longer need to convert each application and each type of data within each application individually, making for an easier and overall smoother experience.

Stuart
Developer, Conversion Specialist and PC enthusiast @Stuart Silvester
This is actually hard to answer than it seems, there are so many great changes and features in 4.4. The combined performance improvements including HTTP/2 Push, More aggressive caching, SVG letter photos, lazy loading are definitely some of my favourites. After all, time is money. (A smaller favourite is the browser notification prompt change, especially with visiting as many customer sites as I do in Tier 2).

Jim
Support, Beta Tester and suspiciously quiet in staff chat @Jim M
The communities I run are about cars and very heavily image based. Whether it's "I have an issue" or simple sharing of car builds, topics get image heavy very quickly and doing anything to improve moving throughout that topic more quickly is going to go far. I feel a lot of communities can relate and why lazy load of images is my favorite 4.4 feature.

Jennifer
Designer, Enterprise Theme Specialist, owner of several super powers @Jennifer M
There are so many changes with 4.4 it's actually really hard to choose just one change that is my absolutely favorite. I would probably say a lot of the more micro features are my favorites. Colored usernames everywhere, lazy load for images, improved notifications experience, text or URLs for announcements, reordering of club tabs, ability to hide widgets/blocks from mobile etc. They are all quality of life improvements that I love and appreciate on so many levels.

We're Steve Ballmer levels of excited about 4.4.

It looks like Rikki's lazy loading is a clear winner. I'm not surprised, it's a real boost for page speed and reduces hosting costs. Personally I'm a fan of the progressive web app settings which, like Ryan, enables me to have our community on my phone's home page.

Let us know what your favourites are below! 

Release parties at Invision Community are a fairly tame affair. You'd think after months of planning, coding and testing we'd want to cut loose and dance the night away.
The reality is we send each other a few amusing GIFs in Slack and then wait for support tickets to start appearing while our developers crack their knuckles and prepare for bug reports to be filed.

It's a nightmare trying to get a photo of our team, so here's a stock image. Just pretend it's us. That's me looking at a report of how much code Mark Wade has refused during reviews
I did manage to find five minutes to ask the team what their favourite feature of 4.4 was.

Here's what they said.
Marc S
Support, Guides and Keen Cyclist @Marc Stridgen
I'm going to go with 'Post before registering', because it allows for more effective onboarding of new members on your site. People are much more likely to register after just having written a topic, then they are if they have to register before getting started. It also gives you the opportunity to see how many people are not actually registering, and maybe address that on the site.

Ryan
Developer, T3 support and reluctant AWS wrangler @Ryan Ashbrook
My favorite 4.4 feature is the progressive web app settings. I now have our site pinned to my phones home screen for quick access, and use our site on mobile even more now that I can just hit the icon to pull up our site.

Mark H
Support, Beta Tester and remembers this when it was fields @Mark H
While this isn’t “a” favorite feature, I most like the steady small improvements to Gallery in the 4.x series. Photography-centric sites should especially like the additions to extended EXIF data in 4.4 so that authors can provide the most detail about their submitted photos…. where it was taken, what camera, which lens, shutter speed and aperture, etc.

Daniel
Developer, T2 support and airport security fan @Daniel F
As IPS4 consumer, I'm going to say that Lazy Loading and mobile create menu are my favorite enhancement.
As community owner, I'm most excited about post before register and email advertisements.. That's going to bring the $$$

Brandon
Developer, Enterprise Support and proud of his thorough code reviews @bfarber
My favorite change in 4.4 (besides the overall performance improvements, as I'm a geek for that sort of thing) is the overhauled Conversion experience (which we haven't even blogged about). We took converters and flipped them on their head for 4.4, so you now choose what software you want to convert from, what applications from that software you want to convert, fill in any required details, and the conversion process just launches and runs from beginning to end right then and there. You no longer need to convert each application and each type of data within each application individually, making for an easier and overall smoother experience.

Stuart
Developer, Conversion Specialist and PC enthusiast @Stuart Silvester
This is actually hard to answer than it seems, there are so many great changes and features in 4.4. The combined performance improvements including HTTP/2 Push, More aggressive caching, SVG letter photos, lazy loading are definitely some of my favourites. After all, time is money. (A smaller favourite is the browser notification prompt change, especially with visiting as many customer sites as I do in Tier 2).

Jim
Support, Beta Tester and suspiciously quiet in staff chat @Jim M
The communities I run are about cars and very heavily image based. Whether it's "I have an issue" or simple sharing of car builds, topics get image heavy very quickly and doing anything to improve moving throughout that topic more quickly is going to go far. I feel a lot of communities can relate and why lazy load of images is my favorite 4.4 feature.

Jennifer
Designer, Enterprise Theme Specialist, owner of several super powers @Jennifer M
There are so many changes with 4.4 it's actually really hard to choose just one change that is my absolutely favorite. I would probably say a lot of the more micro features are my favorites. Colored usernames everywhere, lazy load for images, improved notifications experience, text or URLs for announcements, reordering of club tabs, ability to hide widgets/blocks from mobile etc. They are all quality of life improvements that I love and appreciate on so many levels.

We're Steve Ballmer levels of excited about 4.4.

It looks like Rikki's lazy loading is a clear winner. I'm not surprised, it's a real boost for page speed and reduces hosting costs. Personally I'm a fan of the progressive web app settings which, like Ryan, enables me to have our community on my phone's home page.

Let us know what your favourites are below! 

Release parties at Invision Community are a fairly tame affair. You'd think after months of planning, coding and testing we'd want to cut loose and dance the night away.
The reality is we send each other a few amusing GIFs in Slack and then wait for support tickets to start appearing while our developers crack their knuckles and prepare for bug reports to be filed.

It's a nightmare trying to get a photo of our team, so here's a stock image. Just pretend it's us. That's me looking at a report of how much code Mark Wade has refused during reviews
I did manage to find five minutes to ask the team what their favourite feature of 4.4 was.

Here's what they said.
Marc S
Support, Guides and Keen Cyclist @Marc Stridgen
I'm going to go with 'Post before registering', because it allows for more effective onboarding of new members on your site. People are much more likely to register after just having written a topic, then they are if they have to register before getting started. It also gives you the opportunity to see how many people are not actually registering, and maybe address that on the site.

Ryan
Developer, T3 support and reluctant AWS wrangler @Ryan Ashbrook
My favorite 4.4 feature is the progressive web app settings. I now have our site pinned to my phones home screen for quick access, and use our site on mobile even more now that I can just hit the icon to pull up our site.

Mark H
Support, Beta Tester and remembers this when it was fields @Mark H
While this isn’t “a” favorite feature, I most like the steady small improvements to Gallery in the 4.x series. Photography-centric sites should especially like the additions to extended EXIF data in 4.4 so that authors can provide the most detail about their submitted photos…. where it was taken, what camera, which lens, shutter speed and aperture, etc.

Daniel
Developer, T2 support and airport security fan @Daniel F
As IPS4 consumer, I'm going to say that Lazy Loading and mobile create menu are my favorite enhancement.
As community owner, I'm most excited about post before register and email advertisements.. That's going to bring the $$$

Brandon
Developer, Enterprise Support and proud of his thorough code reviews @bfarber
My favorite change in 4.4 (besides the overall performance improvements, as I'm a geek for that sort of thing) is the overhauled Conversion experience (which we haven't even blogged about). We took converters and flipped them on their head for 4.4, so you now choose what software you want to convert from, what applications from that software you want to convert, fill in any required details, and the conversion process just launches and runs from beginning to end right then and there. You no longer need to convert each application and each type of data within each application individually, making for an easier and overall smoother experience.

Stuart
Developer, Conversion Specialist and PC enthusiast @Stuart Silvester
This is actually hard to answer than it seems, there are so many great changes and features in 4.4. The combined performance improvements including HTTP/2 Push, More aggressive caching, SVG letter photos, lazy loading are definitely some of my favourites. After all, time is money. (A smaller favourite is the browser notification prompt change, especially with visiting as many customer sites as I do in Tier 2).

Jim
Support, Beta Tester and suspiciously quiet in staff chat @Jim M
The communities I run are about cars and very heavily image based. Whether it's "I have an issue" or simple sharing of car builds, topics get image heavy very quickly and doing anything to improve moving throughout that topic more quickly is going to go far. I feel a lot of communities can relate and why lazy load of images is my favorite 4.4 feature.

Jennifer
Designer, Enterprise Theme Specialist, owner of several super powers @Jennifer M
There are so many changes with 4.4 it's actually really hard to choose just one change that is my absolutely favorite. I would probably say a lot of the more micro features are my favorites. Colored usernames everywhere, lazy load for images, improved notifications experience, text or URLs for announcements, reordering of club tabs, ability to hide widgets/blocks from mobile etc. They are all quality of life improvements that I love and appreciate on so many levels.

We're Steve Ballmer levels of excited about 4.4.

It looks like Rikki's lazy loading is a clear winner. I'm not surprised, it's a real boost for page speed and reduces hosting costs. Personally I'm a fan of the progressive web app settings which, like Ryan, enables me to have our community on my phone's home page.

Let us know what your favourites are below! 

Release parties at Invision Community are a fairly tame affair. You'd think after months of planning, coding and testing we'd want to cut loose and dance the night away.
The reality is we send each other a few amusing GIFs in Slack and then wait for support tickets to start appearing while our developers crack their knuckles and prepare for bug reports to be filed.

It's a nightmare trying to get a photo of our team, so here's a stock image. Just pretend it's us. That's me looking at a report of how much code Mark Wade has refused during reviews
I did manage to find five minutes to ask the team what their favourite feature of 4.4 was.

Here's what they said.
Marc S
Support, Guides and Keen Cyclist @Marc Stridgen
I'm going to go with 'Post before registering', because it allows for more effective onboarding of new members on your site. People are much more likely to register after just having written a topic, then they are if they have to register before getting started. It also gives you the opportunity to see how many people are not actually registering, and maybe address that on the site.

Ryan
Developer, T3 support and reluctant AWS wrangler @Ryan Ashbrook
My favorite 4.4 feature is the progressive web app settings. I now have our site pinned to my phones home screen for quick access, and use our site on mobile even more now that I can just hit the icon to pull up our site.

Mark H
Support, Beta Tester and remembers this when it was fields @Mark H
While this isn’t “a” favorite feature, I most like the steady small improvements to Gallery in the 4.x series. Photography-centric sites should especially like the additions to extended EXIF data in 4.4 so that authors can provide the most detail about their submitted photos…. where it was taken, what camera, which lens, shutter speed and aperture, etc.

Daniel
Developer, T2 support and airport security fan @Daniel F
As IPS4 consumer, I'm going to say that Lazy Loading and mobile create menu are my favorite enhancement.
As community owner, I'm most excited about post before register and email advertisements.. That's going to bring the $$$

Brandon
Developer, Enterprise Support and proud of his thorough code reviews @bfarber
My favorite change in 4.4 (besides the overall performance improvements, as I'm a geek for that sort of thing) is the overhauled Conversion experience (which we haven't even blogged about). We took converters and flipped them on their head for 4.4, so you now choose what software you want to convert from, what applications from that software you want to convert, fill in any required details, and the conversion process just launches and runs from beginning to end right then and there. You no longer need to convert each application and each type of data within each application individually, making for an easier and overall smoother experience.

Stuart
Developer, Conversion Specialist and PC enthusiast @Stuart Silvester
This is actually hard to answer than it seems, there are so many great changes and features in 4.4. The combined performance improvements including HTTP/2 Push, More aggressive caching, SVG letter photos, lazy loading are definitely some of my favourites. After all, time is money. (A smaller favourite is the browser notification prompt change, especially with visiting as many customer sites as I do in Tier 2).

Jim
Support, Beta Tester and suspiciously quiet in staff chat @Jim M
The communities I run are about cars and very heavily image based. Whether it's "I have an issue" or simple sharing of car builds, topics get image heavy very quickly and doing anything to improve moving throughout that topic more quickly is going to go far. I feel a lot of communities can relate and why lazy load of images is my favorite 4.4 feature.

Jennifer
Designer, Enterprise Theme Specialist, owner of several super powers @Jennifer M
There are so many changes with 4.4 it's actually really hard to choose just one change that is my absolutely favorite. I would probably say a lot of the more micro features are my favorites. Colored usernames everywhere, lazy load for images, improved notifications experience, text or URLs for announcements, reordering of club tabs, ability to hide widgets/blocks from mobile etc. They are all quality of life improvements that I love and appreciate on so many levels.

We're Steve Ballmer levels of excited about 4.4.

It looks like Rikki's lazy loading is a clear winner. I'm not surprised, it's a real boost for page speed and reduces hosting costs. Personally I'm a fan of the progressive web app settings which, like Ryan, enables me to have our community on my phone's home page.

Let us know what your favourites are below! 

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

We're thrilled to announce that Invision Community 4.4 is available to download now.
After months of development, over 1650 separate code commits and quite a few mugs of questionable coffee you can now get your hands on the beta release from the client centre.

Not our office
Invision Community 4.4 brings numerous new features, over 450 bug fixes and a lot of refinement.
We've been talking about the highlights since September on our blog.
Here's a recap of all that we've added.
We'd love to know which is your favourite feature so far!

Drop a line below and let us know!
 

We're thrilled to announce that Invision Community 4.4 is available to download now.
After months of development, over 1650 separate code commits and quite a few mugs of questionable coffee you can now get your hands on the beta release from the client centre.

Not our office
Invision Community 4.4 brings numerous new features, over 450 bug fixes and a lot of refinement.
We've been talking about the highlights since September on our blog.
Here's a recap of all that we've added.
We'd love to know which is your favourite feature so far!

Drop a line below and let us know!
 

Release parties at Invision Community are a fairly tame affair. You'd think after months of planning, coding and testing we'd want to cut loose and dance the night away.
The reality is we send each other a few amusing GIFs in Slack and then wait for support tickets to start appearing while our developers crack their knuckles and prepare for bug reports to be filed.

It's a nightmare trying to get a photo of our team, so here's a stock image. Just pretend it's us. That's me looking at a report of how much code Mark Wade has refused during reviews
I did manage to find five minutes to ask the team what their favourite feature of 4.4 was.

Here's what they said.
Marc S
Support, Guides and Keen Cyclist @Marc Stridgen
I'm going to go with 'Post before registering', because it allows for more effective onboarding of new members on your site. People are much more likely to register after just having written a topic, then they are if they have to register before getting started. It also gives you the opportunity to see how many people are not actually registering, and maybe address that on the site.

Ryan
Developer, T3 support and reluctant AWS wrangler @Ryan Ashbrook
My favorite 4.4 feature is the progressive web app settings. I now have our site pinned to my phones home screen for quick access, and use our site on mobile even more now that I can just hit the icon to pull up our site.

Mark H
Support, Beta Tester and remembers this when it was fields @Mark H
While this isn’t “a” favorite feature, I most like the steady small improvements to Gallery in the 4.x series. Photography-centric sites should especially like the additions to extended EXIF data in 4.4 so that authors can provide the most detail about their submitted photos…. where it was taken, what camera, which lens, shutter speed and aperture, etc.

Daniel
Developer, T2 support and airport security fan @Daniel F
As IPS4 consumer, I'm going to say that Lazy Loading and mobile create menu are my favorite enhancement.
As community owner, I'm most excited about post before register and email advertisements.. That's going to bring the $$$

Brandon
Developer, Enterprise Support and proud of his thorough code reviews @bfarber
My favorite change in 4.4 (besides the overall performance improvements, as I'm a geek for that sort of thing) is the overhauled Conversion experience (which we haven't even blogged about). We took converters and flipped them on their head for 4.4, so you now choose what software you want to convert from, what applications from that software you want to convert, fill in any required details, and the conversion process just launches and runs from beginning to end right then and there. You no longer need to convert each application and each type of data within each application individually, making for an easier and overall smoother experience.

Stuart
Developer, Conversion Specialist and PC enthusiast @Stuart Silvester
This is actually hard to answer than it seems, there are so many great changes and features in 4.4. The combined performance improvements including HTTP/2 Push, More aggressive caching, SVG letter photos, lazy loading are definitely some of my favourites. After all, time is money. (A smaller favourite is the browser notification prompt change, especially with visiting as many customer sites as I do in Tier 2).

Jim
Support, Beta Tester and suspiciously quiet in staff chat @Jim M
The communities I run are about cars and very heavily image based. Whether it's "I have an issue" or simple sharing of car builds, topics get image heavy very quickly and doing anything to improve moving throughout that topic more quickly is going to go far. I feel a lot of communities can relate and why lazy load of images is my favorite 4.4 feature.

Jennifer
Designer, Enterprise Theme Specialist, owner of several super powers @Jennifer M
There are so many changes with 4.4 it's actually really hard to choose just one change that is my absolutely favorite. I would probably say a lot of the more micro features are my favorites. Colored usernames everywhere, lazy load for images, improved notifications experience, text or URLs for announcements, reordering of club tabs, ability to hide widgets/blocks from mobile etc. They are all quality of life improvements that I love and appreciate on so many levels.

We're Steve Ballmer levels of excited about 4.4.

It looks like Rikki's lazy loading is a clear winner. I'm not surprised, it's a real boost for page speed and reduces hosting costs. Personally I'm a fan of the progressive web app settings which, like Ryan, enables me to have our community on my phone's home page.

Let us know what your favourites are below! 

We attach a significant amount of personally identifiable data to our social media profiles daily.
I regularly use social media to share photos of my kids and holidays. I post my personal thoughts on products I've used and TV shows I've watched. I'm even tagged in location-based check-ins.
It's all there in my news feed for anyone to see.
I'm not alone. More and more of us live our lives through the prism of social media. We share things we love, things we loathe and things that make us laugh.
With just a few clicks, you can discover a lot of information about a person. More often than not, you can see where they work, where they live and what school they went to.
Scrolling through their timeline often reveals their stance on hot topics such as gun control, the current President and other recent headline news items.
This information follows you when you join a Facebook Group. Your past Tweets are always available to trawl through.

 
Indeed, there may be some groups that you decide you cannot post in as people would be able to identify you. 
This is particularly true for stigmatised conditions, such as financial help, illness and mental health.
After all, if you were seeking help with a large amount of debt or managing an embarrassing medical condition, you wouldn't feel comfortable knowing that work colleagues, friends and family could read your posts.
The benefit of anonymity for stigmatised topics
"Forums can all offer some initial anonymity, a community, and information that geographically proximate others may not have. What stigma-related forums uniquely offer is that the anonymity protects those who are not ready to be publicly associated with sensitive topics; the community helps to neutralise the “spoilage” of identity that accompanies stigma." (1)
Unlike social media where reams of personal data is willingly added, and which can identify you to other online users, forums allow you to add as much information as you are comfortable with.
Support communities for mental health and illness flourish using forums for this reason. An individual may feel devalued in society and unwilling to share their condition over social media.

 
"Nowadays people can both avoid and proactively cope with this devaluation by turning to online forums populated by others who share the same devalued group membership." (1)
Forums offer a safe space for these individuals to seek and receive support from others without disclosing large amounts of identifiable data.
Allowing a level of anonymity encourages more people to register and over time, they will develop ties with other users.
For an individual with a stigmatized condition, a forum may be a real life-line in coping with the condition as face-to-face support is often limited.
Adrial Dale, who owns Herpes Opportunity agrees.
"In order for us to truly be able to work through the shame that stigma can trigger, it's absolutely vital for us to feel safe to open up and tell all. Through opening up, we not only get to share with an understanding and compassionate community (which normalizes our shared experiences), but we're also able to begin to release what has felt like our own solitary burden to bear. 
Then a magical thing can happen ... an alchemical process that transforms shame into an opportunity for connection. An opportunity for us to be accepted for who we are *behind* the thick wall of shame. And ultimately, an opportunity to accept ourselves.
Especially in these days of the internet not feeling so private (even in places where it absolutely should be), having true privacy and anonymity is paramount for communities like Herpes Opportunity. Anything other than that is grounds for paranoia and holding back from sharing ourselves. (In fact, just the other day someone messaged me asking "Are private messages really private?") Fear can lead to closing ourselves off, which can lead to isolation and paranoia, which can lead to a downward spiral of self-loathing and depression. On the other hand, safety, connection and compassion creates an an okayness with the nitty-grittiness of what it means to be human."
The benefit of expressing a new identity
"People may strategically express identities when they think they will not be punished, and/or connect them to an audience that is valued." (1)
It is arguably true that not so many years ago, tech-related communities were very much male-dominated, with female contributions valued less.
Forums allow a way to create a new identity that is either gender-neutral thus allowing the male users to assume a gender, or overtly male to ensure their contributions are evaluated on merit, and not with any gender bias.

 
Christopher Marks who owns Nano-Reef has seen this first hand.
"During a discussion with a women’s group in our generally male dominant hobby, a number of women had expressed the benefit of having an anonymous username and profile when asking for help and advice on forums, they receive equal help without the unfortunate gender bias or belittling that can sometimes happen in real life when seeking the same help in person."
Invision Community's Jennifer has also experience of this on her own community; RPG Initiative.
"RPG Initiative is a community for all roleplayers. We focus on all text-based roleplaying forms that are hosted on the internet. We encourage roleplayers to find each other, discuss roleplay and grow as collaborative writers here at the Initiative in a safe environment."
Jennifer relies on, and encourages anonymity. She knows that because her site is predominately female, some female users identify as male to increase the chances of getting others to collaborate with them.
"Male players are rare, in fact, I recently ran a poll on my site and of those that responded to it less than 15% of them are male (or identify as such). So this gets them more attention and in turn, more people that want to write with them."
Jennifer explains how anonymity is critical to her site's growth.
"Anonymity is a difficult thing to accomplish in a small niche like mine, but it's sort of like a small town where everyone knows everyone, and they likely know all of your secrets. So enforcing rules to preserve anonymity is really important to my community and me. This includes prohibiting the "naming of names" or the "site" that the drama is coming from when seeking for advice or help. This doesn't negate that people may know the existing situation or people involved because they are also involved or know some of the people involved, but it helps cut down on the drama and the spread of negativity and false information about people."
With a forum community, you can truly be who you want to be.
This is not so with social media where others can create bias based on your gender, looks or topical preferences.
Together, together
"In her early work, Turkle argued that the internet provided myriad positive opportunities for self-transformation, but more recently, she argues that the explosion in social media options has led us to develop superficial, emotionally lazy but instantly available virtual relationships." (1)
It's hard to argue against this statement when you consider the content that predominates social media. And often an endless stream of self-focused content.
"Indeed, we provide clear evidence that online forums afford users a way of being genuinely “together, together”, as opposed to what Turkle calls “alone together.”(1)
The bottom line is that it has been proven that allowing a degree on anonymity increases engagement across all niches, but especially those that are built to support those with stigmatised conditions. These forums have a greater sense of community and depth than those built on social media.
When you allow your members to take back control of their privacy, you are empowering them to make decisions about what to share.
Given how eroded our privacy is in our modern always-connected world, this is a precious gift.
If you are looking to create a new community then consider this before choosing your community platform.
References:
1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756321500268X
2: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10410236.2017.1339370

Release parties at Invision Community are a fairly tame affair. You'd think after months of planning, coding and testing we'd want to cut loose and dance the night away.
The reality is we send each other a few amusing GIFs in Slack and then wait for support tickets to start appearing while our developers crack their knuckles and prepare for bug reports to be filed.

It's a nightmare trying to get a photo of our team, so here's a stock image. Just pretend it's us. That's me looking at a report of how much code Mark Wade has refused during reviews
I did manage to find five minutes to ask the team what their favourite feature of 4.4 was.

Here's what they said.
Marc S
Support, Guides and Keen Cyclist @Marc Stridgen
I'm going to go with 'Post before registering', because it allows for more effective onboarding of new members on your site. People are much more likely to register after just having written a topic, then they are if they have to register before getting started. It also gives you the opportunity to see how many people are not actually registering, and maybe address that on the site.

Ryan
Developer, T3 support and reluctant AWS wrangler @Ryan Ashbrook
My favorite 4.4 feature is the progressive web app settings. I now have our site pinned to my phones home screen for quick access, and use our site on mobile even more now that I can just hit the icon to pull up our site.

Mark H
Support, Beta Tester and remembers this when it was fields @Mark H
While this isn’t “a” favorite feature, I most like the steady small improvements to Gallery in the 4.x series. Photography-centric sites should especially like the additions to extended EXIF data in 4.4 so that authors can provide the most detail about their submitted photos…. where it was taken, what camera, which lens, shutter speed and aperture, etc.

Daniel
Developer, T2 support and airport security fan @Daniel F
As IPS4 consumer, I'm going to say that Lazy Loading and mobile create menu are my favorite enhancement.
As community owner, I'm most excited about post before register and email advertisements.. That's going to bring the $$$

Brandon
Developer, Enterprise Support and proud of his thorough code reviews @bfarber
My favorite change in 4.4 (besides the overall performance improvements, as I'm a geek for that sort of thing) is the overhauled Conversion experience (which we haven't even blogged about). We took converters and flipped them on their head for 4.4, so you now choose what software you want to convert from, what applications from that software you want to convert, fill in any required details, and the conversion process just launches and runs from beginning to end right then and there. You no longer need to convert each application and each type of data within each application individually, making for an easier and overall smoother experience.

Stuart
Developer, Conversion Specialist and PC enthusiast @Stuart Silvester
This is actually hard to answer than it seems, there are so many great changes and features in 4.4. The combined performance improvements including HTTP/2 Push, More aggressive caching, SVG letter photos, lazy loading are definitely some of my favourites. After all, time is money. (A smaller favourite is the browser notification prompt change, especially with visiting as many customer sites as I do in Tier 2).

Jim
Support, Beta Tester and suspiciously quiet in staff chat @Jim M
The communities I run are about cars and very heavily image based. Whether it's "I have an issue" or simple sharing of car builds, topics get image heavy very quickly and doing anything to improve moving throughout that topic more quickly is going to go far. I feel a lot of communities can relate and why lazy load of images is my favorite 4.4 feature.

Jennifer
Designer, Enterprise Theme Specialist, owner of several super powers @Jennifer M
There are so many changes with 4.4 it's actually really hard to choose just one change that is my absolutely favorite. I would probably say a lot of the more micro features are my favorites. Colored usernames everywhere, lazy load for images, improved notifications experience, text or URLs for announcements, reordering of club tabs, ability to hide widgets/blocks from mobile etc. They are all quality of life improvements that I love and appreciate on so many levels.

We're Steve Ballmer levels of excited about 4.4.

It looks like Rikki's lazy loading is a clear winner. I'm not surprised, it's a real boost for page speed and reduces hosting costs. Personally I'm a fan of the progressive web app settings which, like Ryan, enables me to have our community on my phone's home page.

Let us know what your favourites are below! 

We're thrilled to announce that Invision Community 4.4 is available to download now.
After months of development, over 1650 separate code commits and quite a few mugs of questionable coffee you can now get your hands on the beta release from the client centre.

Not our office
Invision Community 4.4 brings numerous new features, over 450 bug fixes and a lot of refinement.
We've been talking about the highlights since September on our blog.
Here's a recap of all that we've added.
We'd love to know which is your favourite feature so far!

Drop a line below and let us know!
 

Release parties at Invision Community are a fairly tame affair. You'd think after months of planning, coding and testing we'd want to cut loose and dance the night away.
The reality is we send each other a few amusing GIFs in Slack and then wait for support tickets to start appearing while our developers crack their knuckles and prepare for bug reports to be filed.

It's a nightmare trying to get a photo of our team, so here's a stock image. Just pretend it's us. That's me looking at a report of how much code Mark Wade has refused during reviews
I did manage to find five minutes to ask the team what their favourite feature of 4.4 was.

Here's what they said.
Marc S
Support, Guides and Keen Cyclist @Marc Stridgen
I'm going to go with 'Post before registering', because it allows for more effective onboarding of new members on your site. People are much more likely to register after just having written a topic, then they are if they have to register before getting started. It also gives you the opportunity to see how many people are not actually registering, and maybe address that on the site.

Ryan
Developer, T3 support and reluctant AWS wrangler @Ryan Ashbrook
My favorite 4.4 feature is the progressive web app settings. I now have our site pinned to my phones home screen for quick access, and use our site on mobile even more now that I can just hit the icon to pull up our site.

Mark H
Support, Beta Tester and remembers this when it was fields @Mark H
While this isn’t “a” favorite feature, I most like the steady small improvements to Gallery in the 4.x series. Photography-centric sites should especially like the additions to extended EXIF data in 4.4 so that authors can provide the most detail about their submitted photos…. where it was taken, what camera, which lens, shutter speed and aperture, etc.

Daniel
Developer, T2 support and airport security fan @Daniel F
As IPS4 consumer, I'm going to say that Lazy Loading and mobile create menu are my favorite enhancement.
As community owner, I'm most excited about post before register and email advertisements.. That's going to bring the $$$

Brandon
Developer, Enterprise Support and proud of his thorough code reviews @bfarber
My favorite change in 4.4 (besides the overall performance improvements, as I'm a geek for that sort of thing) is the overhauled Conversion experience (which we haven't even blogged about). We took converters and flipped them on their head for 4.4, so you now choose what software you want to convert from, what applications from that software you want to convert, fill in any required details, and the conversion process just launches and runs from beginning to end right then and there. You no longer need to convert each application and each type of data within each application individually, making for an easier and overall smoother experience.

Stuart
Developer, Conversion Specialist and PC enthusiast @Stuart Silvester
This is actually hard to answer than it seems, there are so many great changes and features in 4.4. The combined performance improvements including HTTP/2 Push, More aggressive caching, SVG letter photos, lazy loading are definitely some of my favourites. After all, time is money. (A smaller favourite is the browser notification prompt change, especially with visiting as many customer sites as I do in Tier 2).

Jim
Support, Beta Tester and suspiciously quiet in staff chat @Jim M
The communities I run are about cars and very heavily image based. Whether it's "I have an issue" or simple sharing of car builds, topics get image heavy very quickly and doing anything to improve moving throughout that topic more quickly is going to go far. I feel a lot of communities can relate and why lazy load of images is my favorite 4.4 feature.

Jennifer
Designer, Enterprise Theme Specialist, owner of several super powers @Jennifer M
There are so many changes with 4.4 it's actually really hard to choose just one change that is my absolutely favorite. I would probably say a lot of the more micro features are my favorites. Colored usernames everywhere, lazy load for images, improved notifications experience, text or URLs for announcements, reordering of club tabs, ability to hide widgets/blocks from mobile etc. They are all quality of life improvements that I love and appreciate on so many levels.

We're Steve Ballmer levels of excited about 4.4.

It looks like Rikki's lazy loading is a clear winner. I'm not surprised, it's a real boost for page speed and reduces hosting costs. Personally I'm a fan of the progressive web app settings which, like Ryan, enables me to have our community on my phone's home page.

Let us know what your favourites are below! 

We're thrilled to announce that Invision Community 4.4 is available to download now.
After months of development, over 1650 separate code commits and quite a few mugs of questionable coffee you can now get your hands on the beta release from the client centre.

Not our office
Invision Community 4.4 brings numerous new features, over 450 bug fixes and a lot of refinement.
We've been talking about the highlights since September on our blog.
Here's a recap of all that we've added.
We'd love to know which is your favourite feature so far!

Drop a line below and let us know!
 

We're thrilled to announce that Invision Community 4.4 is available to download now.
After months of development, over 1650 separate code commits and quite a few mugs of questionable coffee you can now get your hands on the beta release from the client centre.

Not our office
Invision Community 4.4 brings numerous new features, over 450 bug fixes and a lot of refinement.
We've been talking about the highlights since September on our blog.
Here's a recap of all that we've added.
We'd love to know which is your favourite feature so far!

Drop a line below and let us know!
 

Release parties at Invision Community are a fairly tame affair. You'd think after months of planning, coding and testing we'd want to cut loose and dance the night away.
The reality is we send each other a few amusing GIFs in Slack and then wait for support tickets to start appearing while our developers crack their knuckles and prepare for bug reports to be filed.

It's a nightmare trying to get a photo of our team, so here's a stock image. Just pretend it's us. That's me looking at a report of how much code Mark Wade has refused during reviews
I did manage to find five minutes to ask the team what their favourite feature of 4.4 was.

Here's what they said.
Marc S
Support, Guides and Keen Cyclist @Marc Stridgen
I'm going to go with 'Post before registering', because it allows for more effective onboarding of new members on your site. People are much more likely to register after just having written a topic, then they are if they have to register before getting started. It also gives you the opportunity to see how many people are not actually registering, and maybe address that on the site.

Ryan
Developer, T3 support and reluctant AWS wrangler @Ryan Ashbrook
My favorite 4.4 feature is the progressive web app settings. I now have our site pinned to my phones home screen for quick access, and use our site on mobile even more now that I can just hit the icon to pull up our site.

Mark H
Support, Beta Tester and remembers this when it was fields @Mark H
While this isn’t “a” favorite feature, I most like the steady small improvements to Gallery in the 4.x series. Photography-centric sites should especially like the additions to extended EXIF data in 4.4 so that authors can provide the most detail about their submitted photos…. where it was taken, what camera, which lens, shutter speed and aperture, etc.

Daniel
Developer, T2 support and airport security fan @Daniel F
As IPS4 consumer, I'm going to say that Lazy Loading and mobile create menu are my favorite enhancement.
As community owner, I'm most excited about post before register and email advertisements.. That's going to bring the $$$

Brandon
Developer, Enterprise Support and proud of his thorough code reviews @bfarber
My favorite change in 4.4 (besides the overall performance improvements, as I'm a geek for that sort of thing) is the overhauled Conversion experience (which we haven't even blogged about). We took converters and flipped them on their head for 4.4, so you now choose what software you want to convert from, what applications from that software you want to convert, fill in any required details, and the conversion process just launches and runs from beginning to end right then and there. You no longer need to convert each application and each type of data within each application individually, making for an easier and overall smoother experience.

Stuart
Developer, Conversion Specialist and PC enthusiast @Stuart Silvester
This is actually hard to answer than it seems, there are so many great changes and features in 4.4. The combined performance improvements including HTTP/2 Push, More aggressive caching, SVG letter photos, lazy loading are definitely some of my favourites. After all, time is money. (A smaller favourite is the browser notification prompt change, especially with visiting as many customer sites as I do in Tier 2).

Jim
Support, Beta Tester and suspiciously quiet in staff chat @Jim M
The communities I run are about cars and very heavily image based. Whether it's "I have an issue" or simple sharing of car builds, topics get image heavy very quickly and doing anything to improve moving throughout that topic more quickly is going to go far. I feel a lot of communities can relate and why lazy load of images is my favorite 4.4 feature.

Jennifer
Designer, Enterprise Theme Specialist, owner of several super powers @Jennifer M
There are so many changes with 4.4 it's actually really hard to choose just one change that is my absolutely favorite. I would probably say a lot of the more micro features are my favorites. Colored usernames everywhere, lazy load for images, improved notifications experience, text or URLs for announcements, reordering of club tabs, ability to hide widgets/blocks from mobile etc. They are all quality of life improvements that I love and appreciate on so many levels.

We're Steve Ballmer levels of excited about 4.4.

It looks like Rikki's lazy loading is a clear winner. I'm not surprised, it's a real boost for page speed and reduces hosting costs. Personally I'm a fan of the progressive web app settings which, like Ryan, enables me to have our community on my phone's home page.

Let us know what your favourites are below! 

We're thrilled to announce that Invision Community 4.4 is available to download now.
After months of development, over 1650 separate code commits and quite a few mugs of questionable coffee you can now get your hands on the beta release from the client centre.

Not our office
Invision Community 4.4 brings numerous new features, over 450 bug fixes and a lot of refinement.
We've been talking about the highlights since September on our blog.
Here's a recap of all that we've added.
We'd love to know which is your favourite feature so far!

Drop a line below and let us know!
 

We're thrilled to announce that Invision Community 4.4 is available to download now.
After months of development, over 1650 separate code commits and quite a few mugs of questionable coffee you can now get your hands on the beta release from the client centre.

Not our office
Invision Community 4.4 brings numerous new features, over 450 bug fixes and a lot of refinement.
We've been talking about the highlights since September on our blog.
Here's a recap of all that we've added.
We'd love to know which is your favourite feature so far!

Drop a line below and let us know!
 

We're thrilled to announce that Invision Community 4.4 is available to download now.
After months of development, over 1650 separate code commits and quite a few mugs of questionable coffee you can now get your hands on the beta release from the client centre.

Not our office
Invision Community 4.4 brings numerous new features, over 450 bug fixes and a lot of refinement.
We've been talking about the highlights since September on our blog.
Here's a recap of all that we've added.
We'd love to know which is your favourite feature so far!

Drop a line below and let us know!
 

We're thrilled to announce that Invision Community 4.4 is available to download now.
After months of development, over 1650 separate code commits and quite a few mugs of questionable coffee you can now get your hands on the beta release from the client centre.

Not our office
Invision Community 4.4 brings numerous new features, over 450 bug fixes and a lot of refinement.
We've been talking about the highlights since September on our blog.
Here's a recap of all that we've added.
We'd love to know which is your favourite feature so far!

Drop a line below and let us know!
 

Release parties at Invision Community are a fairly tame affair. You'd think after months of planning, coding and testing we'd want to cut loose and dance the night away.
The reality is we send each other a few amusing GIFs in Slack and then wait for support tickets to start appearing while our developers crack their knuckles and prepare for bug reports to be filed.

It's a nightmare trying to get a photo of our team, so here's a stock image. Just pretend it's us. That's me looking at a report of how much code Mark Wade has refused during reviews
I did manage to find five minutes to ask the team what their favourite feature of 4.4 was.

Here's what they said.
Marc S
Support, Guides and Keen Cyclist @Marc Stridgen
I'm going to go with 'Post before registering', because it allows for more effective onboarding of new members on your site. People are much more likely to register after just having written a topic, then they are if they have to register before getting started. It also gives you the opportunity to see how many people are not actually registering, and maybe address that on the site.

Ryan
Developer, T3 support and reluctant AWS wrangler @Ryan Ashbrook
My favorite 4.4 feature is the progressive web app settings. I now have our site pinned to my phones home screen for quick access, and use our site on mobile even more now that I can just hit the icon to pull up our site.

Mark H
Support, Beta Tester and remembers this when it was fields @Mark H
While this isn’t “a” favorite feature, I most like the steady small improvements to Gallery in the 4.x series. Photography-centric sites should especially like the additions to extended EXIF data in 4.4 so that authors can provide the most detail about their submitted photos…. where it was taken, what camera, which lens, shutter speed and aperture, etc.

Daniel
Developer, T2 support and airport security fan @Daniel F
As IPS4 consumer, I'm going to say that Lazy Loading and mobile create menu are my favorite enhancement.
As community owner, I'm most excited about post before register and email advertisements.. That's going to bring the $$$

Brandon
Developer, Enterprise Support and proud of his thorough code reviews @bfarber
My favorite change in 4.4 (besides the overall performance improvements, as I'm a geek for that sort of thing) is the overhauled Conversion experience (which we haven't even blogged about). We took converters and flipped them on their head for 4.4, so you now choose what software you want to convert from, what applications from that software you want to convert, fill in any required details, and the conversion process just launches and runs from beginning to end right then and there. You no longer need to convert each application and each type of data within each application individually, making for an easier and overall smoother experience.

Stuart
Developer, Conversion Specialist and PC enthusiast @Stuart Silvester
This is actually hard to answer than it seems, there are so many great changes and features in 4.4. The combined performance improvements including HTTP/2 Push, More aggressive caching, SVG letter photos, lazy loading are definitely some of my favourites. After all, time is money. (A smaller favourite is the browser notification prompt change, especially with visiting as many customer sites as I do in Tier 2).

Jim
Support, Beta Tester and suspiciously quiet in staff chat @Jim M
The communities I run are about cars and very heavily image based. Whether it's "I have an issue" or simple sharing of car builds, topics get image heavy very quickly and doing anything to improve moving throughout that topic more quickly is going to go far. I feel a lot of communities can relate and why lazy load of images is my favorite 4.4 feature.

Jennifer
Designer, Enterprise Theme Specialist, owner of several super powers @Jennifer M
There are so many changes with 4.4 it's actually really hard to choose just one change that is my absolutely favorite. I would probably say a lot of the more micro features are my favorites. Colored usernames everywhere, lazy load for images, improved notifications experience, text or URLs for announcements, reordering of club tabs, ability to hide widgets/blocks from mobile etc. They are all quality of life improvements that I love and appreciate on so many levels.

We're Steve Ballmer levels of excited about 4.4.

It looks like Rikki's lazy loading is a clear winner. I'm not surprised, it's a real boost for page speed and reduces hosting costs. Personally I'm a fan of the progressive web app settings which, like Ryan, enables me to have our community on my phone's home page.

Let us know what your favourites are below! 

We're thrilled to announce that Invision Community 4.4 is available to download now.
After months of development, over 1650 separate code commits and quite a few mugs of questionable coffee you can now get your hands on the beta release from the client centre.

Not our office
Invision Community 4.4 brings numerous new features, over 450 bug fixes and a lot of refinement.
We've been talking about the highlights since September on our blog.
Here's a recap of all that we've added.
We'd love to know which is your favourite feature so far!

Drop a line below and let us know!
 

Release parties at Invision Community are a fairly tame affair. You'd think after months of planning, coding and testing we'd want to cut loose and dance the night away.
The reality is we send each other a few amusing GIFs in Slack and then wait for support tickets to start appearing while our developers crack their knuckles and prepare for bug reports to be filed.

It's a nightmare trying to get a photo of our team, so here's a stock image. Just pretend it's us. That's me looking at a report of how much code Mark Wade has refused during reviews
I did manage to find five minutes to ask the team what their favourite feature of 4.4 was.

Here's what they said.
Marc S
Support, Guides and Keen Cyclist @Marc Stridgen
I'm going to go with 'Post before registering', because it allows for more effective onboarding of new members on your site. People are much more likely to register after just having written a topic, then they are if they have to register before getting started. It also gives you the opportunity to see how many people are not actually registering, and maybe address that on the site.

Ryan
Developer, T3 support and reluctant AWS wrangler @Ryan Ashbrook
My favorite 4.4 feature is the progressive web app settings. I now have our site pinned to my phones home screen for quick access, and use our site on mobile even more now that I can just hit the icon to pull up our site.

Mark H
Support, Beta Tester and remembers this when it was fields @Mark H
While this isn’t “a” favorite feature, I most like the steady small improvements to Gallery in the 4.x series. Photography-centric sites should especially like the additions to extended EXIF data in 4.4 so that authors can provide the most detail about their submitted photos…. where it was taken, what camera, which lens, shutter speed and aperture, etc.

Daniel
Developer, T2 support and airport security fan @Daniel F
As IPS4 consumer, I'm going to say that Lazy Loading and mobile create menu are my favorite enhancement.
As community owner, I'm most excited about post before register and email advertisements.. That's going to bring the $$$

Brandon
Developer, Enterprise Support and proud of his thorough code reviews @bfarber
My favorite change in 4.4 (besides the overall performance improvements, as I'm a geek for that sort of thing) is the overhauled Conversion experience (which we haven't even blogged about). We took converters and flipped them on their head for 4.4, so you now choose what software you want to convert from, what applications from that software you want to convert, fill in any required details, and the conversion process just launches and runs from beginning to end right then and there. You no longer need to convert each application and each type of data within each application individually, making for an easier and overall smoother experience.

Stuart
Developer, Conversion Specialist and PC enthusiast @Stuart Silvester
This is actually hard to answer than it seems, there are so many great changes and features in 4.4. The combined performance improvements including HTTP/2 Push, More aggressive caching, SVG letter photos, lazy loading are definitely some of my favourites. After all, time is money. (A smaller favourite is the browser notification prompt change, especially with visiting as many customer sites as I do in Tier 2).

Jim
Support, Beta Tester and suspiciously quiet in staff chat @Jim M
The communities I run are about cars and very heavily image based. Whether it's "I have an issue" or simple sharing of car builds, topics get image heavy very quickly and doing anything to improve moving throughout that topic more quickly is going to go far. I feel a lot of communities can relate and why lazy load of images is my favorite 4.4 feature.

Jennifer
Designer, Enterprise Theme Specialist, owner of several super powers @Jennifer M
There are so many changes with 4.4 it's actually really hard to choose just one change that is my absolutely favorite. I would probably say a lot of the more micro features are my favorites. Colored usernames everywhere, lazy load for images, improved notifications experience, text or URLs for announcements, reordering of club tabs, ability to hide widgets/blocks from mobile etc. They are all quality of life improvements that I love and appreciate on so many levels.

We're Steve Ballmer levels of excited about 4.4.

It looks like Rikki's lazy loading is a clear winner. I'm not surprised, it's a real boost for page speed and reduces hosting costs. Personally I'm a fan of the progressive web app settings which, like Ryan, enables me to have our community on my phone's home page.

Let us know what your favourites are below! 

We're thrilled to announce that Invision Community 4.4 is available to download now.
After months of development, over 1650 separate code commits and quite a few mugs of questionable coffee you can now get your hands on the beta release from the client centre.

Not our office
Invision Community 4.4 brings numerous new features, over 450 bug fixes and a lot of refinement.
We've been talking about the highlights since September on our blog.
Here's a recap of all that we've added.
We'd love to know which is your favourite feature so far!

Drop a line below and let us know!
 

Release parties at Invision Community are a fairly tame affair. You'd think after months of planning, coding and testing we'd want to cut loose and dance the night away.
The reality is we send each other a few amusing GIFs in Slack and then wait for support tickets to start appearing while our developers crack their knuckles and prepare for bug reports to be filed.

It's a nightmare trying to get a photo of our team, so here's a stock image. Just pretend it's us. That's me looking at a report of how much code Mark Wade has refused during reviews
I did manage to find five minutes to ask the team what their favourite feature of 4.4 was.

Here's what they said.
Marc S
Support, Guides and Keen Cyclist @Marc Stridgen
I'm going to go with 'Post before registering', because it allows for more effective onboarding of new members on your site. People are much more likely to register after just having written a topic, then they are if they have to register before getting started. It also gives you the opportunity to see how many people are not actually registering, and maybe address that on the site.

Ryan
Developer, T3 support and reluctant AWS wrangler @Ryan Ashbrook
My favorite 4.4 feature is the progressive web app settings. I now have our site pinned to my phones home screen for quick access, and use our site on mobile even more now that I can just hit the icon to pull up our site.

Mark H
Support, Beta Tester and remembers this when it was fields @Mark H
While this isn’t “a” favorite feature, I most like the steady small improvements to Gallery in the 4.x series. Photography-centric sites should especially like the additions to extended EXIF data in 4.4 so that authors can provide the most detail about their submitted photos…. where it was taken, what camera, which lens, shutter speed and aperture, etc.

Daniel
Developer, T2 support and airport security fan @Daniel F
As IPS4 consumer, I'm going to say that Lazy Loading and mobile create menu are my favorite enhancement.
As community owner, I'm most excited about post before register and email advertisements.. That's going to bring the $$$

Brandon
Developer, Enterprise Support and proud of his thorough code reviews @bfarber
My favorite change in 4.4 (besides the overall performance improvements, as I'm a geek for that sort of thing) is the overhauled Conversion experience (which we haven't even blogged about). We took converters and flipped them on their head for 4.4, so you now choose what software you want to convert from, what applications from that software you want to convert, fill in any required details, and the conversion process just launches and runs from beginning to end right then and there. You no longer need to convert each application and each type of data within each application individually, making for an easier and overall smoother experience.

Stuart
Developer, Conversion Specialist and PC enthusiast @Stuart Silvester
This is actually hard to answer than it seems, there are so many great changes and features in 4.4. The combined performance improvements including HTTP/2 Push, More aggressive caching, SVG letter photos, lazy loading are definitely some of my favourites. After all, time is money. (A smaller favourite is the browser notification prompt change, especially with visiting as many customer sites as I do in Tier 2).

Jim
Support, Beta Tester and suspiciously quiet in staff chat @Jim M
The communities I run are about cars and very heavily image based. Whether it's "I have an issue" or simple sharing of car builds, topics get image heavy very quickly and doing anything to improve moving throughout that topic more quickly is going to go far. I feel a lot of communities can relate and why lazy load of images is my favorite 4.4 feature.

Jennifer
Designer, Enterprise Theme Specialist, owner of several super powers @Jennifer M
There are so many changes with 4.4 it's actually really hard to choose just one change that is my absolutely favorite. I would probably say a lot of the more micro features are my favorites. Colored usernames everywhere, lazy load for images, improved notifications experience, text or URLs for announcements, reordering of club tabs, ability to hide widgets/blocks from mobile etc. They are all quality of life improvements that I love and appreciate on so many levels.

We're Steve Ballmer levels of excited about 4.4.

It looks like Rikki's lazy loading is a clear winner. I'm not surprised, it's a real boost for page speed and reduces hosting costs. Personally I'm a fan of the progressive web app settings which, like Ryan, enables me to have our community on my phone's home page.

Let us know what your favourites are below! 

We're thrilled to announce that Invision Community 4.4 is available to download now.
After months of development, over 1650 separate code commits and quite a few mugs of questionable coffee you can now get your hands on the beta release from the client centre.

Not our office
Invision Community 4.4 brings numerous new features, over 450 bug fixes and a lot of refinement.
We've been talking about the highlights since September on our blog.
Here's a recap of all that we've added.
We'd love to know which is your favourite feature so far!

Drop a line below and let us know!
 

Release parties at Invision Community are a fairly tame affair. You'd think after months of planning, coding and testing we'd want to cut loose and dance the night away.
The reality is we send each other a few amusing GIFs in Slack and then wait for support tickets to start appearing while our developers crack their knuckles and prepare for bug reports to be filed.

It's a nightmare trying to get a photo of our team, so here's a stock image. Just pretend it's us. That's me looking at a report of how much code Mark Wade has refused during reviews
I did manage to find five minutes to ask the team what their favourite feature of 4.4 was.

Here's what they said.
Marc S
Support, Guides and Keen Cyclist @Marc Stridgen
I'm going to go with 'Post before registering', because it allows for more effective onboarding of new members on your site. People are much more likely to register after just having written a topic, then they are if they have to register before getting started. It also gives you the opportunity to see how many people are not actually registering, and maybe address that on the site.

Ryan
Developer, T3 support and reluctant AWS wrangler @Ryan Ashbrook
My favorite 4.4 feature is the progressive web app settings. I now have our site pinned to my phones home screen for quick access, and use our site on mobile even more now that I can just hit the icon to pull up our site.

Mark H
Support, Beta Tester and remembers this when it was fields @Mark H
While this isn’t “a” favorite feature, I most like the steady small improvements to Gallery in the 4.x series. Photography-centric sites should especially like the additions to extended EXIF data in 4.4 so that authors can provide the most detail about their submitted photos…. where it was taken, what camera, which lens, shutter speed and aperture, etc.

Daniel
Developer, T2 support and airport security fan @Daniel F
As IPS4 consumer, I'm going to say that Lazy Loading and mobile create menu are my favorite enhancement.
As community owner, I'm most excited about post before register and email advertisements.. That's going to bring the $$$

Brandon
Developer, Enterprise Support and proud of his thorough code reviews @bfarber
My favorite change in 4.4 (besides the overall performance improvements, as I'm a geek for that sort of thing) is the overhauled Conversion experience (which we haven't even blogged about). We took converters and flipped them on their head for 4.4, so you now choose what software you want to convert from, what applications from that software you want to convert, fill in any required details, and the conversion process just launches and runs from beginning to end right then and there. You no longer need to convert each application and each type of data within each application individually, making for an easier and overall smoother experience.

Stuart
Developer, Conversion Specialist and PC enthusiast @Stuart Silvester
This is actually hard to answer than it seems, there are so many great changes and features in 4.4. The combined performance improvements including HTTP/2 Push, More aggressive caching, SVG letter photos, lazy loading are definitely some of my favourites. After all, time is money. (A smaller favourite is the browser notification prompt change, especially with visiting as many customer sites as I do in Tier 2).

Jim
Support, Beta Tester and suspiciously quiet in staff chat @Jim M
The communities I run are about cars and very heavily image based. Whether it's "I have an issue" or simple sharing of car builds, topics get image heavy very quickly and doing anything to improve moving throughout that topic more quickly is going to go far. I feel a lot of communities can relate and why lazy load of images is my favorite 4.4 feature.

Jennifer
Designer, Enterprise Theme Specialist, owner of several super powers @Jennifer M
There are so many changes with 4.4 it's actually really hard to choose just one change that is my absolutely favorite. I would probably say a lot of the more micro features are my favorites. Colored usernames everywhere, lazy load for images, improved notifications experience, text or URLs for announcements, reordering of club tabs, ability to hide widgets/blocks from mobile etc. They are all quality of life improvements that I love and appreciate on so many levels.

We're Steve Ballmer levels of excited about 4.4.

It looks like Rikki's lazy loading is a clear winner. I'm not surprised, it's a real boost for page speed and reduces hosting costs. Personally I'm a fan of the progressive web app settings which, like Ryan, enables me to have our community on my phone's home page.

Let us know what your favourites are below! 

Release parties at Invision Community are a fairly tame affair. You'd think after months of planning, coding and testing we'd want to cut loose and dance the night away.
The reality is we send each other a few amusing GIFs in Slack and then wait for support tickets to start appearing while our developers crack their knuckles and prepare for bug reports to be filed.

It's a nightmare trying to get a photo of our team, so here's a stock image. Just pretend it's us. That's me looking at a report of how much code Mark Wade has refused during reviews
I did manage to find five minutes to ask the team what their favourite feature of 4.4 was.

Here's what they said.
Marc S
Support, Guides and Keen Cyclist @Marc Stridgen
I'm going to go with 'Post before registering', because it allows for more effective onboarding of new members on your site. People are much more likely to register after just having written a topic, then they are if they have to register before getting started. It also gives you the opportunity to see how many people are not actually registering, and maybe address that on the site.

Ryan
Developer, T3 support and reluctant AWS wrangler @Ryan Ashbrook
My favorite 4.4 feature is the progressive web app settings. I now have our site pinned to my phones home screen for quick access, and use our site on mobile even more now that I can just hit the icon to pull up our site.

Mark H
Support, Beta Tester and remembers this when it was fields @Mark H
While this isn’t “a” favorite feature, I most like the steady small improvements to Gallery in the 4.x series. Photography-centric sites should especially like the additions to extended EXIF data in 4.4 so that authors can provide the most detail about their submitted photos…. where it was taken, what camera, which lens, shutter speed and aperture, etc.

Daniel
Developer, T2 support and airport security fan @Daniel F
As IPS4 consumer, I'm going to say that Lazy Loading and mobile create menu are my favorite enhancement.
As community owner, I'm most excited about post before register and email advertisements.. That's going to bring the $$$

Brandon
Developer, Enterprise Support and proud of his thorough code reviews @bfarber
My favorite change in 4.4 (besides the overall performance improvements, as I'm a geek for that sort of thing) is the overhauled Conversion experience (which we haven't even blogged about). We took converters and flipped them on their head for 4.4, so you now choose what software you want to convert from, what applications from that software you want to convert, fill in any required details, and the conversion process just launches and runs from beginning to end right then and there. You no longer need to convert each application and each type of data within each application individually, making for an easier and overall smoother experience.

Stuart
Developer, Conversion Specialist and PC enthusiast @Stuart Silvester
This is actually hard to answer than it seems, there are so many great changes and features in 4.4. The combined performance improvements including HTTP/2 Push, More aggressive caching, SVG letter photos, lazy loading are definitely some of my favourites. After all, time is money. (A smaller favourite is the browser notification prompt change, especially with visiting as many customer sites as I do in Tier 2).

Jim
Support, Beta Tester and suspiciously quiet in staff chat @Jim M
The communities I run are about cars and very heavily image based. Whether it's "I have an issue" or simple sharing of car builds, topics get image heavy very quickly and doing anything to improve moving throughout that topic more quickly is going to go far. I feel a lot of communities can relate and why lazy load of images is my favorite 4.4 feature.

Jennifer
Designer, Enterprise Theme Specialist, owner of several super powers @Jennifer M
There are so many changes with 4.4 it's actually really hard to choose just one change that is my absolutely favorite. I would probably say a lot of the more micro features are my favorites. Colored usernames everywhere, lazy load for images, improved notifications experience, text or URLs for announcements, reordering of club tabs, ability to hide widgets/blocks from mobile etc. They are all quality of life improvements that I love and appreciate on so many levels.

We're Steve Ballmer levels of excited about 4.4.

It looks like Rikki's lazy loading is a clear winner. I'm not surprised, it's a real boost for page speed and reduces hosting costs. Personally I'm a fan of the progressive web app settings which, like Ryan, enables me to have our community on my phone's home page.

Let us know what your favourites are below! 

Release parties at Invision Community are a fairly tame affair. You'd think after months of planning, coding and testing we'd want to cut loose and dance the night away.
The reality is we send each other a few amusing GIFs in Slack and then wait for support tickets to start appearing while our developers crack their knuckles and prepare for bug reports to be filed.

It's a nightmare trying to get a photo of our team, so here's a stock image. Just pretend it's us. That's me looking at a report of how much code Mark Wade has refused during reviews
I did manage to find five minutes to ask the team what their favourite feature of 4.4 was.

Here's what they said.
Marc S
Support, Guides and Keen Cyclist @Marc Stridgen
I'm going to go with 'Post before registering', because it allows for more effective onboarding of new members on your site. People are much more likely to register after just having written a topic, then they are if they have to register before getting started. It also gives you the opportunity to see how many people are not actually registering, and maybe address that on the site.

Ryan
Developer, T3 support and reluctant AWS wrangler @Ryan Ashbrook
My favorite 4.4 feature is the progressive web app settings. I now have our site pinned to my phones home screen for quick access, and use our site on mobile even more now that I can just hit the icon to pull up our site.

Mark H
Support, Beta Tester and remembers this when it was fields @Mark H
While this isn’t “a” favorite feature, I most like the steady small improvements to Gallery in the 4.x series. Photography-centric sites should especially like the additions to extended EXIF data in 4.4 so that authors can provide the most detail about their submitted photos…. where it was taken, what camera, which lens, shutter speed and aperture, etc.

Daniel
Developer, T2 support and airport security fan @Daniel F
As IPS4 consumer, I'm going to say that Lazy Loading and mobile create menu are my favorite enhancement.
As community owner, I'm most excited about post before register and email advertisements.. That's going to bring the $$$

Brandon
Developer, Enterprise Support and proud of his thorough code reviews @bfarber
My favorite change in 4.4 (besides the overall performance improvements, as I'm a geek for that sort of thing) is the overhauled Conversion experience (which we haven't even blogged about). We took converters and flipped them on their head for 4.4, so you now choose what software you want to convert from, what applications from that software you want to convert, fill in any required details, and the conversion process just launches and runs from beginning to end right then and there. You no longer need to convert each application and each type of data within each application individually, making for an easier and overall smoother experience.

Stuart
Developer, Conversion Specialist and PC enthusiast @Stuart Silvester
This is actually hard to answer than it seems, there are so many great changes and features in 4.4. The combined performance improvements including HTTP/2 Push, More aggressive caching, SVG letter photos, lazy loading are definitely some of my favourites. After all, time is money. (A smaller favourite is the browser notification prompt change, especially with visiting as many customer sites as I do in Tier 2).

Jim
Support, Beta Tester and suspiciously quiet in staff chat @Jim M
The communities I run are about cars and very heavily image based. Whether it's "I have an issue" or simple sharing of car builds, topics get image heavy very quickly and doing anything to improve moving throughout that topic more quickly is going to go far. I feel a lot of communities can relate and why lazy load of images is my favorite 4.4 feature.

Jennifer
Designer, Enterprise Theme Specialist, owner of several super powers @Jennifer M
There are so many changes with 4.4 it's actually really hard to choose just one change that is my absolutely favorite. I would probably say a lot of the more micro features are my favorites. Colored usernames everywhere, lazy load for images, improved notifications experience, text or URLs for announcements, reordering of club tabs, ability to hide widgets/blocks from mobile etc. They are all quality of life improvements that I love and appreciate on so many levels.

We're Steve Ballmer levels of excited about 4.4.

It looks like Rikki's lazy loading is a clear winner. I'm not surprised, it's a real boost for page speed and reduces hosting costs. Personally I'm a fan of the progressive web app settings which, like Ryan, enables me to have our community on my phone's home page.

Let us know what your favourites are below! 

Release parties at Invision Community are a fairly tame affair. You'd think after months of planning, coding and testing we'd want to cut loose and dance the night away.
The reality is we send each other a few amusing GIFs in Slack and then wait for support tickets to start appearing while our developers crack their knuckles and prepare for bug reports to be filed.

It's a nightmare trying to get a photo of our team, so here's a stock image. Just pretend it's us. That's me looking at a report of how much code Mark Wade has refused during reviews
I did manage to find five minutes to ask the team what their favourite feature of 4.4 was.

Here's what they said.
Marc S
Support, Guides and Keen Cyclist @Marc Stridgen
I'm going to go with 'Post before registering', because it allows for more effective onboarding of new members on your site. People are much more likely to register after just having written a topic, then they are if they have to register before getting started. It also gives you the opportunity to see how many people are not actually registering, and maybe address that on the site.

Ryan
Developer, T3 support and reluctant AWS wrangler @Ryan Ashbrook
My favorite 4.4 feature is the progressive web app settings. I now have our site pinned to my phones home screen for quick access, and use our site on mobile even more now that I can just hit the icon to pull up our site.

Mark H
Support, Beta Tester and remembers this when it was fields @Mark H
While this isn’t “a” favorite feature, I most like the steady small improvements to Gallery in the 4.x series. Photography-centric sites should especially like the additions to extended EXIF data in 4.4 so that authors can provide the most detail about their submitted photos…. where it was taken, what camera, which lens, shutter speed and aperture, etc.

Daniel
Developer, T2 support and airport security fan @Daniel F
As IPS4 consumer, I'm going to say that Lazy Loading and mobile create menu are my favorite enhancement.
As community owner, I'm most excited about post before register and email advertisements.. That's going to bring the $$$

Brandon
Developer, Enterprise Support and proud of his thorough code reviews @bfarber
My favorite change in 4.4 (besides the overall performance improvements, as I'm a geek for that sort of thing) is the overhauled Conversion experience (which we haven't even blogged about). We took converters and flipped them on their head for 4.4, so you now choose what software you want to convert from, what applications from that software you want to convert, fill in any required details, and the conversion process just launches and runs from beginning to end right then and there. You no longer need to convert each application and each type of data within each application individually, making for an easier and overall smoother experience.

Stuart
Developer, Conversion Specialist and PC enthusiast @Stuart Silvester
This is actually hard to answer than it seems, there are so many great changes and features in 4.4. The combined performance improvements including HTTP/2 Push, More aggressive caching, SVG letter photos, lazy loading are definitely some of my favourites. After all, time is money. (A smaller favourite is the browser notification prompt change, especially with visiting as many customer sites as I do in Tier 2).

Jim
Support, Beta Tester and suspiciously quiet in staff chat @Jim M
The communities I run are about cars and very heavily image based. Whether it's "I have an issue" or simple sharing of car builds, topics get image heavy very quickly and doing anything to improve moving throughout that topic more quickly is going to go far. I feel a lot of communities can relate and why lazy load of images is my favorite 4.4 feature.

Jennifer
Designer, Enterprise Theme Specialist, owner of several super powers @Jennifer M
There are so many changes with 4.4 it's actually really hard to choose just one change that is my absolutely favorite. I would probably say a lot of the more micro features are my favorites. Colored usernames everywhere, lazy load for images, improved notifications experience, text or URLs for announcements, reordering of club tabs, ability to hide widgets/blocks from mobile etc. They are all quality of life improvements that I love and appreciate on so many levels.

We're Steve Ballmer levels of excited about 4.4.

It looks like Rikki's lazy loading is a clear winner. I'm not surprised, it's a real boost for page speed and reduces hosting costs. Personally I'm a fan of the progressive web app settings which, like Ryan, enables me to have our community on my phone's home page.

Let us know what your favourites are below! 

We're thrilled to announce that Invision Community 4.4 is available to download now.
After months of development, over 1650 separate code commits and quite a few mugs of questionable coffee you can now get your hands on the beta release from the client centre.

Not our office
Invision Community 4.4 brings numerous new features, over 450 bug fixes and a lot of refinement.
We've been talking about the highlights since September on our blog.
Here's a recap of all that we've added.
We'd love to know which is your favourite feature so far!

Drop a line below and let us know!
 

We're thrilled to announce that Invision Community 4.4 is available to download now.
After months of development, over 1650 separate code commits and quite a few mugs of questionable coffee you can now get your hands on the beta release from the client centre.

Not our office
Invision Community 4.4 brings numerous new features, over 450 bug fixes and a lot of refinement.
We've been talking about the highlights since September on our blog.
Here's a recap of all that we've added.
We'd love to know which is your favourite feature so far!

Drop a line below and let us know!
 

We're thrilled to announce that Invision Community 4.4 is available to download now.
After months of development, over 1650 separate code commits and quite a few mugs of questionable coffee you can now get your hands on the beta release from the client centre.

Not our office
Invision Community 4.4 brings numerous new features, over 450 bug fixes and a lot of refinement.
We've been talking about the highlights since September on our blog.
Here's a recap of all that we've added.
We'd love to know which is your favourite feature so far!

Drop a line below and let us know!
 

We're thrilled to announce that Invision Community 4.4 is available to download now.
After months of development, over 1650 separate code commits and quite a few mugs of questionable coffee you can now get your hands on the beta release from the client centre.

Not our office
Invision Community 4.4 brings numerous new features, over 450 bug fixes and a lot of refinement.
We've been talking about the highlights since September on our blog.
Here's a recap of all that we've added.
We'd love to know which is your favourite feature so far!

Drop a line below and let us know!
 

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

We attach a significant amount of personally identifiable data to our social media profiles daily.
I regularly use social media to share photos of my kids and holidays. I post my personal thoughts on products I've used and TV shows I've watched. I'm even tagged in location-based check-ins.
It's all there in my news feed for anyone to see.
I'm not alone. More and more of us live our lives through the prism of social media. We share things we love, things we loathe and things that make us laugh.
With just a few clicks, you can discover a lot of information about a person. More often than not, you can see where they work, where they live and what school they went to.
Scrolling through their timeline often reveals their stance on hot topics such as gun control, the current President and other recent headline news items.
This information follows you when you join a Facebook Group. Your past Tweets are always available to trawl through.

 
Indeed, there may be some groups that you decide you cannot post in as people would be able to identify you. 
This is particularly true for stigmatised conditions, such as financial help, illness and mental health.
After all, if you were seeking help with a large amount of debt or managing an embarrassing medical condition, you wouldn't feel comfortable knowing that work colleagues, friends and family could read your posts.
The benefit of anonymity for stigmatised topics
"Forums can all offer some initial anonymity, a community, and information that geographically proximate others may not have. What stigma-related forums uniquely offer is that the anonymity protects those who are not ready to be publicly associated with sensitive topics; the community helps to neutralise the “spoilage” of identity that accompanies stigma." (1)
Unlike social media where reams of personal data is willingly added, and which can identify you to other online users, forums allow you to add as much information as you are comfortable with.
Support communities for mental health and illness flourish using forums for this reason. An individual may feel devalued in society and unwilling to share their condition over social media.

 
"Nowadays people can both avoid and proactively cope with this devaluation by turning to online forums populated by others who share the same devalued group membership." (1)
Forums offer a safe space for these individuals to seek and receive support from others without disclosing large amounts of identifiable data.
Allowing a level of anonymity encourages more people to register and over time, they will develop ties with other users.
For an individual with a stigmatized condition, a forum may be a real life-line in coping with the condition as face-to-face support is often limited.
Adrial Dale, who owns Herpes Opportunity agrees.
"In order for us to truly be able to work through the shame that stigma can trigger, it's absolutely vital for us to feel safe to open up and tell all. Through opening up, we not only get to share with an understanding and compassionate community (which normalizes our shared experiences), but we're also able to begin to release what has felt like our own solitary burden to bear. 
Then a magical thing can happen ... an alchemical process that transforms shame into an opportunity for connection. An opportunity for us to be accepted for who we are *behind* the thick wall of shame. And ultimately, an opportunity to accept ourselves.
Especially in these days of the internet not feeling so private (even in places where it absolutely should be), having true privacy and anonymity is paramount for communities like Herpes Opportunity. Anything other than that is grounds for paranoia and holding back from sharing ourselves. (In fact, just the other day someone messaged me asking "Are private messages really private?") Fear can lead to closing ourselves off, which can lead to isolation and paranoia, which can lead to a downward spiral of self-loathing and depression. On the other hand, safety, connection and compassion creates an an okayness with the nitty-grittiness of what it means to be human."
The benefit of expressing a new identity
"People may strategically express identities when they think they will not be punished, and/or connect them to an audience that is valued." (1)
It is arguably true that not so many years ago, tech-related communities were very much male-dominated, with female contributions valued less.
Forums allow a way to create a new identity that is either gender-neutral thus allowing the male users to assume a gender, or overtly male to ensure their contributions are evaluated on merit, and not with any gender bias.

 
Christopher Marks who owns Nano-Reef has seen this first hand.
"During a discussion with a women’s group in our generally male dominant hobby, a number of women had expressed the benefit of having an anonymous username and profile when asking for help and advice on forums, they receive equal help without the unfortunate gender bias or belittling that can sometimes happen in real life when seeking the same help in person."
Invision Community's Jennifer has also experience of this on her own community; RPG Initiative.
"RPG Initiative is a community for all roleplayers. We focus on all text-based roleplaying forms that are hosted on the internet. We encourage roleplayers to find each other, discuss roleplay and grow as collaborative writers here at the Initiative in a safe environment."
Jennifer relies on, and encourages anonymity. She knows that because her site is predominately female, some female users identify as male to increase the chances of getting others to collaborate with them.
"Male players are rare, in fact, I recently ran a poll on my site and of those that responded to it less than 15% of them are male (or identify as such). So this gets them more attention and in turn, more people that want to write with them."
Jennifer explains how anonymity is critical to her site's growth.
"Anonymity is a difficult thing to accomplish in a small niche like mine, but it's sort of like a small town where everyone knows everyone, and they likely know all of your secrets. So enforcing rules to preserve anonymity is really important to my community and me. This includes prohibiting the "naming of names" or the "site" that the drama is coming from when seeking for advice or help. This doesn't negate that people may know the existing situation or people involved because they are also involved or know some of the people involved, but it helps cut down on the drama and the spread of negativity and false information about people."
With a forum community, you can truly be who you want to be.
This is not so with social media where others can create bias based on your gender, looks or topical preferences.
Together, together
"In her early work, Turkle argued that the internet provided myriad positive opportunities for self-transformation, but more recently, she argues that the explosion in social media options has led us to develop superficial, emotionally lazy but instantly available virtual relationships." (1)
It's hard to argue against this statement when you consider the content that predominates social media. And often an endless stream of self-focused content.
"Indeed, we provide clear evidence that online forums afford users a way of being genuinely “together, together”, as opposed to what Turkle calls “alone together.”(1)
The bottom line is that it has been proven that allowing a degree on anonymity increases engagement across all niches, but especially those that are built to support those with stigmatised conditions. These forums have a greater sense of community and depth than those built on social media.
When you allow your members to take back control of their privacy, you are empowering them to make decisions about what to share.
Given how eroded our privacy is in our modern always-connected world, this is a precious gift.
If you are looking to create a new community then consider this before choosing your community platform.
References:
1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756321500268X
2: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10410236.2017.1339370

We attach a significant amount of personally identifiable data to our social media profiles daily.
I regularly use social media to share photos of my kids and holidays. I post my personal thoughts on products I've used and TV shows I've watched. I'm even tagged in location-based check-ins.
It's all there in my news feed for anyone to see.
I'm not alone. More and more of us live our lives through the prism of social media. We share things we love, things we loathe and things that make us laugh.
With just a few clicks, you can discover a lot of information about a person. More often than not, you can see where they work, where they live and what school they went to.
Scrolling through their timeline often reveals their stance on hot topics such as gun control, the current President and other recent headline news items.
This information follows you when you join a Facebook Group. Your past Tweets are always available to trawl through.

 
Indeed, there may be some groups that you decide you cannot post in as people would be able to identify you. 
This is particularly true for stigmatised conditions, such as financial help, illness and mental health.
After all, if you were seeking help with a large amount of debt or managing an embarrassing medical condition, you wouldn't feel comfortable knowing that work colleagues, friends and family could read your posts.
The benefit of anonymity for stigmatised topics
"Forums can all offer some initial anonymity, a community, and information that geographically proximate others may not have. What stigma-related forums uniquely offer is that the anonymity protects those who are not ready to be publicly associated with sensitive topics; the community helps to neutralise the “spoilage” of identity that accompanies stigma." (1)
Unlike social media where reams of personal data is willingly added, and which can identify you to other online users, forums allow you to add as much information as you are comfortable with.
Support communities for mental health and illness flourish using forums for this reason. An individual may feel devalued in society and unwilling to share their condition over social media.

 
"Nowadays people can both avoid and proactively cope with this devaluation by turning to online forums populated by others who share the same devalued group membership." (1)
Forums offer a safe space for these individuals to seek and receive support from others without disclosing large amounts of identifiable data.
Allowing a level of anonymity encourages more people to register and over time, they will develop ties with other users.
For an individual with a stigmatized condition, a forum may be a real life-line in coping with the condition as face-to-face support is often limited.
Adrial Dale, who owns Herpes Opportunity agrees.
"In order for us to truly be able to work through the shame that stigma can trigger, it's absolutely vital for us to feel safe to open up and tell all. Through opening up, we not only get to share with an understanding and compassionate community (which normalizes our shared experiences), but we're also able to begin to release what has felt like our own solitary burden to bear. 
Then a magical thing can happen ... an alchemical process that transforms shame into an opportunity for connection. An opportunity for us to be accepted for who we are *behind* the thick wall of shame. And ultimately, an opportunity to accept ourselves.
Especially in these days of the internet not feeling so private (even in places where it absolutely should be), having true privacy and anonymity is paramount for communities like Herpes Opportunity. Anything other than that is grounds for paranoia and holding back from sharing ourselves. (In fact, just the other day someone messaged me asking "Are private messages really private?") Fear can lead to closing ourselves off, which can lead to isolation and paranoia, which can lead to a downward spiral of self-loathing and depression. On the other hand, safety, connection and compassion creates an an okayness with the nitty-grittiness of what it means to be human."
The benefit of expressing a new identity
"People may strategically express identities when they think they will not be punished, and/or connect them to an audience that is valued." (1)
It is arguably true that not so many years ago, tech-related communities were very much male-dominated, with female contributions valued less.
Forums allow a way to create a new identity that is either gender-neutral thus allowing the male users to assume a gender, or overtly male to ensure their contributions are evaluated on merit, and not with any gender bias.

 
Christopher Marks who owns Nano-Reef has seen this first hand.
"During a discussion with a women’s group in our generally male dominant hobby, a number of women had expressed the benefit of having an anonymous username and profile when asking for help and advice on forums, they receive equal help without the unfortunate gender bias or belittling that can sometimes happen in real life when seeking the same help in person."
Invision Community's Jennifer has also experience of this on her own community; RPG Initiative.
"RPG Initiative is a community for all roleplayers. We focus on all text-based roleplaying forms that are hosted on the internet. We encourage roleplayers to find each other, discuss roleplay and grow as collaborative writers here at the Initiative in a safe environment."
Jennifer relies on, and encourages anonymity. She knows that because her site is predominately female, some female users identify as male to increase the chances of getting others to collaborate with them.
"Male players are rare, in fact, I recently ran a poll on my site and of those that responded to it less than 15% of them are male (or identify as such). So this gets them more attention and in turn, more people that want to write with them."
Jennifer explains how anonymity is critical to her site's growth.
"Anonymity is a difficult thing to accomplish in a small niche like mine, but it's sort of like a small town where everyone knows everyone, and they likely know all of your secrets. So enforcing rules to preserve anonymity is really important to my community and me. This includes prohibiting the "naming of names" or the "site" that the drama is coming from when seeking for advice or help. This doesn't negate that people may know the existing situation or people involved because they are also involved or know some of the people involved, but it helps cut down on the drama and the spread of negativity and false information about people."
With a forum community, you can truly be who you want to be.
This is not so with social media where others can create bias based on your gender, looks or topical preferences.
Together, together
"In her early work, Turkle argued that the internet provided myriad positive opportunities for self-transformation, but more recently, she argues that the explosion in social media options has led us to develop superficial, emotionally lazy but instantly available virtual relationships." (1)
It's hard to argue against this statement when you consider the content that predominates social media. And often an endless stream of self-focused content.
"Indeed, we provide clear evidence that online forums afford users a way of being genuinely “together, together”, as opposed to what Turkle calls “alone together.”(1)
The bottom line is that it has been proven that allowing a degree on anonymity increases engagement across all niches, but especially those that are built to support those with stigmatised conditions. These forums have a greater sense of community and depth than those built on social media.
When you allow your members to take back control of their privacy, you are empowering them to make decisions about what to share.
Given how eroded our privacy is in our modern always-connected world, this is a precious gift.
If you are looking to create a new community then consider this before choosing your community platform.
References:
1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756321500268X
2: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10410236.2017.1339370

We attach a significant amount of personally identifiable data to our social media profiles daily.
I regularly use social media to share photos of my kids and holidays. I post my personal thoughts on products I've used and TV shows I've watched. I'm even tagged in location-based check-ins.
It's all there in my news feed for anyone to see.
I'm not alone. More and more of us live our lives through the prism of social media. We share things we love, things we loathe and things that make us laugh.
With just a few clicks, you can discover a lot of information about a person. More often than not, you can see where they work, where they live and what school they went to.
Scrolling through their timeline often reveals their stance on hot topics such as gun control, the current President and other recent headline news items.
This information follows you when you join a Facebook Group. Your past Tweets are always available to trawl through.

 
Indeed, there may be some groups that you decide you cannot post in as people would be able to identify you. 
This is particularly true for stigmatised conditions, such as financial help, illness and mental health.
After all, if you were seeking help with a large amount of debt or managing an embarrassing medical condition, you wouldn't feel comfortable knowing that work colleagues, friends and family could read your posts.
The benefit of anonymity for stigmatised topics
"Forums can all offer some initial anonymity, a community, and information that geographically proximate others may not have. What stigma-related forums uniquely offer is that the anonymity protects those who are not ready to be publicly associated with sensitive topics; the community helps to neutralise the “spoilage” of identity that accompanies stigma." (1)
Unlike social media where reams of personal data is willingly added, and which can identify you to other online users, forums allow you to add as much information as you are comfortable with.
Support communities for mental health and illness flourish using forums for this reason. An individual may feel devalued in society and unwilling to share their condition over social media.

 
"Nowadays people can both avoid and proactively cope with this devaluation by turning to online forums populated by others who share the same devalued group membership." (1)
Forums offer a safe space for these individuals to seek and receive support from others without disclosing large amounts of identifiable data.
Allowing a level of anonymity encourages more people to register and over time, they will develop ties with other users.
For an individual with a stigmatized condition, a forum may be a real life-line in coping with the condition as face-to-face support is often limited.
Adrial Dale, who owns Herpes Opportunity agrees.
"In order for us to truly be able to work through the shame that stigma can trigger, it's absolutely vital for us to feel safe to open up and tell all. Through opening up, we not only get to share with an understanding and compassionate community (which normalizes our shared experiences), but we're also able to begin to release what has felt like our own solitary burden to bear. 
Then a magical thing can happen ... an alchemical process that transforms shame into an opportunity for connection. An opportunity for us to be accepted for who we are *behind* the thick wall of shame. And ultimately, an opportunity to accept ourselves.
Especially in these days of the internet not feeling so private (even in places where it absolutely should be), having true privacy and anonymity is paramount for communities like Herpes Opportunity. Anything other than that is grounds for paranoia and holding back from sharing ourselves. (In fact, just the other day someone messaged me asking "Are private messages really private?") Fear can lead to closing ourselves off, which can lead to isolation and paranoia, which can lead to a downward spiral of self-loathing and depression. On the other hand, safety, connection and compassion creates an an okayness with the nitty-grittiness of what it means to be human."
The benefit of expressing a new identity
"People may strategically express identities when they think they will not be punished, and/or connect them to an audience that is valued." (1)
It is arguably true that not so many years ago, tech-related communities were very much male-dominated, with female contributions valued less.
Forums allow a way to create a new identity that is either gender-neutral thus allowing the male users to assume a gender, or overtly male to ensure their contributions are evaluated on merit, and not with any gender bias.

 
Christopher Marks who owns Nano-Reef has seen this first hand.
"During a discussion with a women’s group in our generally male dominant hobby, a number of women had expressed the benefit of having an anonymous username and profile when asking for help and advice on forums, they receive equal help without the unfortunate gender bias or belittling that can sometimes happen in real life when seeking the same help in person."
Invision Community's Jennifer has also experience of this on her own community; RPG Initiative.
"RPG Initiative is a community for all roleplayers. We focus on all text-based roleplaying forms that are hosted on the internet. We encourage roleplayers to find each other, discuss roleplay and grow as collaborative writers here at the Initiative in a safe environment."
Jennifer relies on, and encourages anonymity. She knows that because her site is predominately female, some female users identify as male to increase the chances of getting others to collaborate with them.
"Male players are rare, in fact, I recently ran a poll on my site and of those that responded to it less than 15% of them are male (or identify as such). So this gets them more attention and in turn, more people that want to write with them."
Jennifer explains how anonymity is critical to her site's growth.
"Anonymity is a difficult thing to accomplish in a small niche like mine, but it's sort of like a small town where everyone knows everyone, and they likely know all of your secrets. So enforcing rules to preserve anonymity is really important to my community and me. This includes prohibiting the "naming of names" or the "site" that the drama is coming from when seeking for advice or help. This doesn't negate that people may know the existing situation or people involved because they are also involved or know some of the people involved, but it helps cut down on the drama and the spread of negativity and false information about people."
With a forum community, you can truly be who you want to be.
This is not so with social media where others can create bias based on your gender, looks or topical preferences.
Together, together
"In her early work, Turkle argued that the internet provided myriad positive opportunities for self-transformation, but more recently, she argues that the explosion in social media options has led us to develop superficial, emotionally lazy but instantly available virtual relationships." (1)
It's hard to argue against this statement when you consider the content that predominates social media. And often an endless stream of self-focused content.
"Indeed, we provide clear evidence that online forums afford users a way of being genuinely “together, together”, as opposed to what Turkle calls “alone together.”(1)
The bottom line is that it has been proven that allowing a degree on anonymity increases engagement across all niches, but especially those that are built to support those with stigmatised conditions. These forums have a greater sense of community and depth than those built on social media.
When you allow your members to take back control of their privacy, you are empowering them to make decisions about what to share.
Given how eroded our privacy is in our modern always-connected world, this is a precious gift.
If you are looking to create a new community then consider this before choosing your community platform.
References:
1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756321500268X
2: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10410236.2017.1339370

We attach a significant amount of personally identifiable data to our social media profiles daily.
I regularly use social media to share photos of my kids and holidays. I post my personal thoughts on products I've used and TV shows I've watched. I'm even tagged in location-based check-ins.
It's all there in my news feed for anyone to see.
I'm not alone. More and more of us live our lives through the prism of social media. We share things we love, things we loathe and things that make us laugh.
With just a few clicks, you can discover a lot of information about a person. More often than not, you can see where they work, where they live and what school they went to.
Scrolling through their timeline often reveals their stance on hot topics such as gun control, the current President and other recent headline news items.
This information follows you when you join a Facebook Group. Your past Tweets are always available to trawl through.

 
Indeed, there may be some groups that you decide you cannot post in as people would be able to identify you. 
This is particularly true for stigmatised conditions, such as financial help, illness and mental health.
After all, if you were seeking help with a large amount of debt or managing an embarrassing medical condition, you wouldn't feel comfortable knowing that work colleagues, friends and family could read your posts.
The benefit of anonymity for stigmatised topics
"Forums can all offer some initial anonymity, a community, and information that geographically proximate others may not have. What stigma-related forums uniquely offer is that the anonymity protects those who are not ready to be publicly associated with sensitive topics; the community helps to neutralise the “spoilage” of identity that accompanies stigma." (1)
Unlike social media where reams of personal data is willingly added, and which can identify you to other online users, forums allow you to add as much information as you are comfortable with.
Support communities for mental health and illness flourish using forums for this reason. An individual may feel devalued in society and unwilling to share their condition over social media.

 
"Nowadays people can both avoid and proactively cope with this devaluation by turning to online forums populated by others who share the same devalued group membership." (1)
Forums offer a safe space for these individuals to seek and receive support from others without disclosing large amounts of identifiable data.
Allowing a level of anonymity encourages more people to register and over time, they will develop ties with other users.
For an individual with a stigmatized condition, a forum may be a real life-line in coping with the condition as face-to-face support is often limited.
Adrial Dale, who owns Herpes Opportunity agrees.
"In order for us to truly be able to work through the shame that stigma can trigger, it's absolutely vital for us to feel safe to open up and tell all. Through opening up, we not only get to share with an understanding and compassionate community (which normalizes our shared experiences), but we're also able to begin to release what has felt like our own solitary burden to bear. 
Then a magical thing can happen ... an alchemical process that transforms shame into an opportunity for connection. An opportunity for us to be accepted for who we are *behind* the thick wall of shame. And ultimately, an opportunity to accept ourselves.
Especially in these days of the internet not feeling so private (even in places where it absolutely should be), having true privacy and anonymity is paramount for communities like Herpes Opportunity. Anything other than that is grounds for paranoia and holding back from sharing ourselves. (In fact, just the other day someone messaged me asking "Are private messages really private?") Fear can lead to closing ourselves off, which can lead to isolation and paranoia, which can lead to a downward spiral of self-loathing and depression. On the other hand, safety, connection and compassion creates an an okayness with the nitty-grittiness of what it means to be human."
The benefit of expressing a new identity
"People may strategically express identities when they think they will not be punished, and/or connect them to an audience that is valued." (1)
It is arguably true that not so many years ago, tech-related communities were very much male-dominated, with female contributions valued less.
Forums allow a way to create a new identity that is either gender-neutral thus allowing the male users to assume a gender, or overtly male to ensure their contributions are evaluated on merit, and not with any gender bias.

 
Christopher Marks who owns Nano-Reef has seen this first hand.
"During a discussion with a women’s group in our generally male dominant hobby, a number of women had expressed the benefit of having an anonymous username and profile when asking for help and advice on forums, they receive equal help without the unfortunate gender bias or belittling that can sometimes happen in real life when seeking the same help in person."
Invision Community's Jennifer has also experience of this on her own community; RPG Initiative.
"RPG Initiative is a community for all roleplayers. We focus on all text-based roleplaying forms that are hosted on the internet. We encourage roleplayers to find each other, discuss roleplay and grow as collaborative writers here at the Initiative in a safe environment."
Jennifer relies on, and encourages anonymity. She knows that because her site is predominately female, some female users identify as male to increase the chances of getting others to collaborate with them.
"Male players are rare, in fact, I recently ran a poll on my site and of those that responded to it less than 15% of them are male (or identify as such). So this gets them more attention and in turn, more people that want to write with them."
Jennifer explains how anonymity is critical to her site's growth.
"Anonymity is a difficult thing to accomplish in a small niche like mine, but it's sort of like a small town where everyone knows everyone, and they likely know all of your secrets. So enforcing rules to preserve anonymity is really important to my community and me. This includes prohibiting the "naming of names" or the "site" that the drama is coming from when seeking for advice or help. This doesn't negate that people may know the existing situation or people involved because they are also involved or know some of the people involved, but it helps cut down on the drama and the spread of negativity and false information about people."
With a forum community, you can truly be who you want to be.
This is not so with social media where others can create bias based on your gender, looks or topical preferences.
Together, together
"In her early work, Turkle argued that the internet provided myriad positive opportunities for self-transformation, but more recently, she argues that the explosion in social media options has led us to develop superficial, emotionally lazy but instantly available virtual relationships." (1)
It's hard to argue against this statement when you consider the content that predominates social media. And often an endless stream of self-focused content.
"Indeed, we provide clear evidence that online forums afford users a way of being genuinely “together, together”, as opposed to what Turkle calls “alone together.”(1)
The bottom line is that it has been proven that allowing a degree on anonymity increases engagement across all niches, but especially those that are built to support those with stigmatised conditions. These forums have a greater sense of community and depth than those built on social media.
When you allow your members to take back control of their privacy, you are empowering them to make decisions about what to share.
Given how eroded our privacy is in our modern always-connected world, this is a precious gift.
If you are looking to create a new community then consider this before choosing your community platform.
References:
1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756321500268X
2: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10410236.2017.1339370

We attach a significant amount of personally identifiable data to our social media profiles daily.
I regularly use social media to share photos of my kids and holidays. I post my personal thoughts on products I've used and TV shows I've watched. I'm even tagged in location-based check-ins.
It's all there in my news feed for anyone to see.
I'm not alone. More and more of us live our lives through the prism of social media. We share things we love, things we loathe and things that make us laugh.
With just a few clicks, you can discover a lot of information about a person. More often than not, you can see where they work, where they live and what school they went to.
Scrolling through their timeline often reveals their stance on hot topics such as gun control, the current President and other recent headline news items.
This information follows you when you join a Facebook Group. Your past Tweets are always available to trawl through.

 
Indeed, there may be some groups that you decide you cannot post in as people would be able to identify you. 
This is particularly true for stigmatised conditions, such as financial help, illness and mental health.
After all, if you were seeking help with a large amount of debt or managing an embarrassing medical condition, you wouldn't feel comfortable knowing that work colleagues, friends and family could read your posts.
The benefit of anonymity for stigmatised topics
"Forums can all offer some initial anonymity, a community, and information that geographically proximate others may not have. What stigma-related forums uniquely offer is that the anonymity protects those who are not ready to be publicly associated with sensitive topics; the community helps to neutralise the “spoilage” of identity that accompanies stigma." (1)
Unlike social media where reams of personal data is willingly added, and which can identify you to other online users, forums allow you to add as much information as you are comfortable with.
Support communities for mental health and illness flourish using forums for this reason. An individual may feel devalued in society and unwilling to share their condition over social media.

 
"Nowadays people can both avoid and proactively cope with this devaluation by turning to online forums populated by others who share the same devalued group membership." (1)
Forums offer a safe space for these individuals to seek and receive support from others without disclosing large amounts of identifiable data.
Allowing a level of anonymity encourages more people to register and over time, they will develop ties with other users.
For an individual with a stigmatized condition, a forum may be a real life-line in coping with the condition as face-to-face support is often limited.
Adrial Dale, who owns Herpes Opportunity agrees.
"In order for us to truly be able to work through the shame that stigma can trigger, it's absolutely vital for us to feel safe to open up and tell all. Through opening up, we not only get to share with an understanding and compassionate community (which normalizes our shared experiences), but we're also able to begin to release what has felt like our own solitary burden to bear. 
Then a magical thing can happen ... an alchemical process that transforms shame into an opportunity for connection. An opportunity for us to be accepted for who we are *behind* the thick wall of shame. And ultimately, an opportunity to accept ourselves.
Especially in these days of the internet not feeling so private (even in places where it absolutely should be), having true privacy and anonymity is paramount for communities like Herpes Opportunity. Anything other than that is grounds for paranoia and holding back from sharing ourselves. (In fact, just the other day someone messaged me asking "Are private messages really private?") Fear can lead to closing ourselves off, which can lead to isolation and paranoia, which can lead to a downward spiral of self-loathing and depression. On the other hand, safety, connection and compassion creates an an okayness with the nitty-grittiness of what it means to be human."
The benefit of expressing a new identity
"People may strategically express identities when they think they will not be punished, and/or connect them to an audience that is valued." (1)
It is arguably true that not so many years ago, tech-related communities were very much male-dominated, with female contributions valued less.
Forums allow a way to create a new identity that is either gender-neutral thus allowing the male users to assume a gender, or overtly male to ensure their contributions are evaluated on merit, and not with any gender bias.

 
Christopher Marks who owns Nano-Reef has seen this first hand.
"During a discussion with a women’s group in our generally male dominant hobby, a number of women had expressed the benefit of having an anonymous username and profile when asking for help and advice on forums, they receive equal help without the unfortunate gender bias or belittling that can sometimes happen in real life when seeking the same help in person."
Invision Community's Jennifer has also experience of this on her own community; RPG Initiative.
"RPG Initiative is a community for all roleplayers. We focus on all text-based roleplaying forms that are hosted on the internet. We encourage roleplayers to find each other, discuss roleplay and grow as collaborative writers here at the Initiative in a safe environment."
Jennifer relies on, and encourages anonymity. She knows that because her site is predominately female, some female users identify as male to increase the chances of getting others to collaborate with them.
"Male players are rare, in fact, I recently ran a poll on my site and of those that responded to it less than 15% of them are male (or identify as such). So this gets them more attention and in turn, more people that want to write with them."
Jennifer explains how anonymity is critical to her site's growth.
"Anonymity is a difficult thing to accomplish in a small niche like mine, but it's sort of like a small town where everyone knows everyone, and they likely know all of your secrets. So enforcing rules to preserve anonymity is really important to my community and me. This includes prohibiting the "naming of names" or the "site" that the drama is coming from when seeking for advice or help. This doesn't negate that people may know the existing situation or people involved because they are also involved or know some of the people involved, but it helps cut down on the drama and the spread of negativity and false information about people."
With a forum community, you can truly be who you want to be.
This is not so with social media where others can create bias based on your gender, looks or topical preferences.
Together, together
"In her early work, Turkle argued that the internet provided myriad positive opportunities for self-transformation, but more recently, she argues that the explosion in social media options has led us to develop superficial, emotionally lazy but instantly available virtual relationships." (1)
It's hard to argue against this statement when you consider the content that predominates social media. And often an endless stream of self-focused content.
"Indeed, we provide clear evidence that online forums afford users a way of being genuinely “together, together”, as opposed to what Turkle calls “alone together.”(1)
The bottom line is that it has been proven that allowing a degree on anonymity increases engagement across all niches, but especially those that are built to support those with stigmatised conditions. These forums have a greater sense of community and depth than those built on social media.
When you allow your members to take back control of their privacy, you are empowering them to make decisions about what to share.
Given how eroded our privacy is in our modern always-connected world, this is a precious gift.
If you are looking to create a new community then consider this before choosing your community platform.
References:
1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756321500268X
2: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10410236.2017.1339370

We attach a significant amount of personally identifiable data to our social media profiles daily.
I regularly use social media to share photos of my kids and holidays. I post my personal thoughts on products I've used and TV shows I've watched. I'm even tagged in location-based check-ins.
It's all there in my news feed for anyone to see.
I'm not alone. More and more of us live our lives through the prism of social media. We share things we love, things we loathe and things that make us laugh.
With just a few clicks, you can discover a lot of information about a person. More often than not, you can see where they work, where they live and what school they went to.
Scrolling through their timeline often reveals their stance on hot topics such as gun control, the current President and other recent headline news items.
This information follows you when you join a Facebook Group. Your past Tweets are always available to trawl through.

 
Indeed, there may be some groups that you decide you cannot post in as people would be able to identify you. 
This is particularly true for stigmatised conditions, such as financial help, illness and mental health.
After all, if you were seeking help with a large amount of debt or managing an embarrassing medical condition, you wouldn't feel comfortable knowing that work colleagues, friends and family could read your posts.
The benefit of anonymity for stigmatised topics
"Forums can all offer some initial anonymity, a community, and information that geographically proximate others may not have. What stigma-related forums uniquely offer is that the anonymity protects those who are not ready to be publicly associated with sensitive topics; the community helps to neutralise the “spoilage” of identity that accompanies stigma." (1)
Unlike social media where reams of personal data is willingly added, and which can identify you to other online users, forums allow you to add as much information as you are comfortable with.
Support communities for mental health and illness flourish using forums for this reason. An individual may feel devalued in society and unwilling to share their condition over social media.

 
"Nowadays people can both avoid and proactively cope with this devaluation by turning to online forums populated by others who share the same devalued group membership." (1)
Forums offer a safe space for these individuals to seek and receive support from others without disclosing large amounts of identifiable data.
Allowing a level of anonymity encourages more people to register and over time, they will develop ties with other users.
For an individual with a stigmatized condition, a forum may be a real life-line in coping with the condition as face-to-face support is often limited.
Adrial Dale, who owns Herpes Opportunity agrees.
"In order for us to truly be able to work through the shame that stigma can trigger, it's absolutely vital for us to feel safe to open up and tell all. Through opening up, we not only get to share with an understanding and compassionate community (which normalizes our shared experiences), but we're also able to begin to release what has felt like our own solitary burden to bear. 
Then a magical thing can happen ... an alchemical process that transforms shame into an opportunity for connection. An opportunity for us to be accepted for who we are *behind* the thick wall of shame. And ultimately, an opportunity to accept ourselves.
Especially in these days of the internet not feeling so private (even in places where it absolutely should be), having true privacy and anonymity is paramount for communities like Herpes Opportunity. Anything other than that is grounds for paranoia and holding back from sharing ourselves. (In fact, just the other day someone messaged me asking "Are private messages really private?") Fear can lead to closing ourselves off, which can lead to isolation and paranoia, which can lead to a downward spiral of self-loathing and depression. On the other hand, safety, connection and compassion creates an an okayness with the nitty-grittiness of what it means to be human."
The benefit of expressing a new identity
"People may strategically express identities when they think they will not be punished, and/or connect them to an audience that is valued." (1)
It is arguably true that not so many years ago, tech-related communities were very much male-dominated, with female contributions valued less.
Forums allow a way to create a new identity that is either gender-neutral thus allowing the male users to assume a gender, or overtly male to ensure their contributions are evaluated on merit, and not with any gender bias.

 
Christopher Marks who owns Nano-Reef has seen this first hand.
"During a discussion with a women’s group in our generally male dominant hobby, a number of women had expressed the benefit of having an anonymous username and profile when asking for help and advice on forums, they receive equal help without the unfortunate gender bias or belittling that can sometimes happen in real life when seeking the same help in person."
Invision Community's Jennifer has also experience of this on her own community; RPG Initiative.
"RPG Initiative is a community for all roleplayers. We focus on all text-based roleplaying forms that are hosted on the internet. We encourage roleplayers to find each other, discuss roleplay and grow as collaborative writers here at the Initiative in a safe environment."
Jennifer relies on, and encourages anonymity. She knows that because her site is predominately female, some female users identify as male to increase the chances of getting others to collaborate with them.
"Male players are rare, in fact, I recently ran a poll on my site and of those that responded to it less than 15% of them are male (or identify as such). So this gets them more attention and in turn, more people that want to write with them."
Jennifer explains how anonymity is critical to her site's growth.
"Anonymity is a difficult thing to accomplish in a small niche like mine, but it's sort of like a small town where everyone knows everyone, and they likely know all of your secrets. So enforcing rules to preserve anonymity is really important to my community and me. This includes prohibiting the "naming of names" or the "site" that the drama is coming from when seeking for advice or help. This doesn't negate that people may know the existing situation or people involved because they are also involved or know some of the people involved, but it helps cut down on the drama and the spread of negativity and false information about people."
With a forum community, you can truly be who you want to be.
This is not so with social media where others can create bias based on your gender, looks or topical preferences.
Together, together
"In her early work, Turkle argued that the internet provided myriad positive opportunities for self-transformation, but more recently, she argues that the explosion in social media options has led us to develop superficial, emotionally lazy but instantly available virtual relationships." (1)
It's hard to argue against this statement when you consider the content that predominates social media. And often an endless stream of self-focused content.
"Indeed, we provide clear evidence that online forums afford users a way of being genuinely “together, together”, as opposed to what Turkle calls “alone together.”(1)
The bottom line is that it has been proven that allowing a degree on anonymity increases engagement across all niches, but especially those that are built to support those with stigmatised conditions. These forums have a greater sense of community and depth than those built on social media.
When you allow your members to take back control of their privacy, you are empowering them to make decisions about what to share.
Given how eroded our privacy is in our modern always-connected world, this is a precious gift.
If you are looking to create a new community then consider this before choosing your community platform.
References:
1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756321500268X
2: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10410236.2017.1339370

We attach a significant amount of personally identifiable data to our social media profiles daily.
I regularly use social media to share photos of my kids and holidays. I post my personal thoughts on products I've used and TV shows I've watched. I'm even tagged in location-based check-ins.
It's all there in my news feed for anyone to see.
I'm not alone. More and more of us live our lives through the prism of social media. We share things we love, things we loathe and things that make us laugh.
With just a few clicks, you can discover a lot of information about a person. More often than not, you can see where they work, where they live and what school they went to.
Scrolling through their timeline often reveals their stance on hot topics such as gun control, the current President and other recent headline news items.
This information follows you when you join a Facebook Group. Your past Tweets are always available to trawl through.

 
Indeed, there may be some groups that you decide you cannot post in as people would be able to identify you. 
This is particularly true for stigmatised conditions, such as financial help, illness and mental health.
After all, if you were seeking help with a large amount of debt or managing an embarrassing medical condition, you wouldn't feel comfortable knowing that work colleagues, friends and family could read your posts.
The benefit of anonymity for stigmatised topics
"Forums can all offer some initial anonymity, a community, and information that geographically proximate others may not have. What stigma-related forums uniquely offer is that the anonymity protects those who are not ready to be publicly associated with sensitive topics; the community helps to neutralise the “spoilage” of identity that accompanies stigma." (1)
Unlike social media where reams of personal data is willingly added, and which can identify you to other online users, forums allow you to add as much information as you are comfortable with.
Support communities for mental health and illness flourish using forums for this reason. An individual may feel devalued in society and unwilling to share their condition over social media.

 
"Nowadays people can both avoid and proactively cope with this devaluation by turning to online forums populated by others who share the same devalued group membership." (1)
Forums offer a safe space for these individuals to seek and receive support from others without disclosing large amounts of identifiable data.
Allowing a level of anonymity encourages more people to register and over time, they will develop ties with other users.
For an individual with a stigmatized condition, a forum may be a real life-line in coping with the condition as face-to-face support is often limited.
Adrial Dale, who owns Herpes Opportunity agrees.
"In order for us to truly be able to work through the shame that stigma can trigger, it's absolutely vital for us to feel safe to open up and tell all. Through opening up, we not only get to share with an understanding and compassionate community (which normalizes our shared experiences), but we're also able to begin to release what has felt like our own solitary burden to bear. 
Then a magical thing can happen ... an alchemical process that transforms shame into an opportunity for connection. An opportunity for us to be accepted for who we are *behind* the thick wall of shame. And ultimately, an opportunity to accept ourselves.
Especially in these days of the internet not feeling so private (even in places where it absolutely should be), having true privacy and anonymity is paramount for communities like Herpes Opportunity. Anything other than that is grounds for paranoia and holding back from sharing ourselves. (In fact, just the other day someone messaged me asking "Are private messages really private?") Fear can lead to closing ourselves off, which can lead to isolation and paranoia, which can lead to a downward spiral of self-loathing and depression. On the other hand, safety, connection and compassion creates an an okayness with the nitty-grittiness of what it means to be human."
The benefit of expressing a new identity
"People may strategically express identities when they think they will not be punished, and/or connect them to an audience that is valued." (1)
It is arguably true that not so many years ago, tech-related communities were very much male-dominated, with female contributions valued less.
Forums allow a way to create a new identity that is either gender-neutral thus allowing the male users to assume a gender, or overtly male to ensure their contributions are evaluated on merit, and not with any gender bias.

 
Christopher Marks who owns Nano-Reef has seen this first hand.
"During a discussion with a women’s group in our generally male dominant hobby, a number of women had expressed the benefit of having an anonymous username and profile when asking for help and advice on forums, they receive equal help without the unfortunate gender bias or belittling that can sometimes happen in real life when seeking the same help in person."
Invision Community's Jennifer has also experience of this on her own community; RPG Initiative.
"RPG Initiative is a community for all roleplayers. We focus on all text-based roleplaying forms that are hosted on the internet. We encourage roleplayers to find each other, discuss roleplay and grow as collaborative writers here at the Initiative in a safe environment."
Jennifer relies on, and encourages anonymity. She knows that because her site is predominately female, some female users identify as male to increase the chances of getting others to collaborate with them.
"Male players are rare, in fact, I recently ran a poll on my site and of those that responded to it less than 15% of them are male (or identify as such). So this gets them more attention and in turn, more people that want to write with them."
Jennifer explains how anonymity is critical to her site's growth.
"Anonymity is a difficult thing to accomplish in a small niche like mine, but it's sort of like a small town where everyone knows everyone, and they likely know all of your secrets. So enforcing rules to preserve anonymity is really important to my community and me. This includes prohibiting the "naming of names" or the "site" that the drama is coming from when seeking for advice or help. This doesn't negate that people may know the existing situation or people involved because they are also involved or know some of the people involved, but it helps cut down on the drama and the spread of negativity and false information about people."
With a forum community, you can truly be who you want to be.
This is not so with social media where others can create bias based on your gender, looks or topical preferences.
Together, together
"In her early work, Turkle argued that the internet provided myriad positive opportunities for self-transformation, but more recently, she argues that the explosion in social media options has led us to develop superficial, emotionally lazy but instantly available virtual relationships." (1)
It's hard to argue against this statement when you consider the content that predominates social media. And often an endless stream of self-focused content.
"Indeed, we provide clear evidence that online forums afford users a way of being genuinely “together, together”, as opposed to what Turkle calls “alone together.”(1)
The bottom line is that it has been proven that allowing a degree on anonymity increases engagement across all niches, but especially those that are built to support those with stigmatised conditions. These forums have a greater sense of community and depth than those built on social media.
When you allow your members to take back control of their privacy, you are empowering them to make decisions about what to share.
Given how eroded our privacy is in our modern always-connected world, this is a precious gift.
If you are looking to create a new community then consider this before choosing your community platform.
References:
1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756321500268X
2: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10410236.2017.1339370

We attach a significant amount of personally identifiable data to our social media profiles daily.
I regularly use social media to share photos of my kids and holidays. I post my personal thoughts on products I've used and TV shows I've watched. I'm even tagged in location-based check-ins.
It's all there in my news feed for anyone to see.
I'm not alone. More and more of us live our lives through the prism of social media. We share things we love, things we loathe and things that make us laugh.
With just a few clicks, you can discover a lot of information about a person. More often than not, you can see where they work, where they live and what school they went to.
Scrolling through their timeline often reveals their stance on hot topics such as gun control, the current President and other recent headline news items.
This information follows you when you join a Facebook Group. Your past Tweets are always available to trawl through.

 
Indeed, there may be some groups that you decide you cannot post in as people would be able to identify you. 
This is particularly true for stigmatised conditions, such as financial help, illness and mental health.
After all, if you were seeking help with a large amount of debt or managing an embarrassing medical condition, you wouldn't feel comfortable knowing that work colleagues, friends and family could read your posts.
The benefit of anonymity for stigmatised topics
"Forums can all offer some initial anonymity, a community, and information that geographically proximate others may not have. What stigma-related forums uniquely offer is that the anonymity protects those who are not ready to be publicly associated with sensitive topics; the community helps to neutralise the “spoilage” of identity that accompanies stigma." (1)
Unlike social media where reams of personal data is willingly added, and which can identify you to other online users, forums allow you to add as much information as you are comfortable with.
Support communities for mental health and illness flourish using forums for this reason. An individual may feel devalued in society and unwilling to share their condition over social media.

 
"Nowadays people can both avoid and proactively cope with this devaluation by turning to online forums populated by others who share the same devalued group membership." (1)
Forums offer a safe space for these individuals to seek and receive support from others without disclosing large amounts of identifiable data.
Allowing a level of anonymity encourages more people to register and over time, they will develop ties with other users.
For an individual with a stigmatized condition, a forum may be a real life-line in coping with the condition as face-to-face support is often limited.
Adrial Dale, who owns Herpes Opportunity agrees.
"In order for us to truly be able to work through the shame that stigma can trigger, it's absolutely vital for us to feel safe to open up and tell all. Through opening up, we not only get to share with an understanding and compassionate community (which normalizes our shared experiences), but we're also able to begin to release what has felt like our own solitary burden to bear. 
Then a magical thing can happen ... an alchemical process that transforms shame into an opportunity for connection. An opportunity for us to be accepted for who we are *behind* the thick wall of shame. And ultimately, an opportunity to accept ourselves.
Especially in these days of the internet not feeling so private (even in places where it absolutely should be), having true privacy and anonymity is paramount for communities like Herpes Opportunity. Anything other than that is grounds for paranoia and holding back from sharing ourselves. (In fact, just the other day someone messaged me asking "Are private messages really private?") Fear can lead to closing ourselves off, which can lead to isolation and paranoia, which can lead to a downward spiral of self-loathing and depression. On the other hand, safety, connection and compassion creates an an okayness with the nitty-grittiness of what it means to be human."
The benefit of expressing a new identity
"People may strategically express identities when they think they will not be punished, and/or connect them to an audience that is valued." (1)
It is arguably true that not so many years ago, tech-related communities were very much male-dominated, with female contributions valued less.
Forums allow a way to create a new identity that is either gender-neutral thus allowing the male users to assume a gender, or overtly male to ensure their contributions are evaluated on merit, and not with any gender bias.

 
Christopher Marks who owns Nano-Reef has seen this first hand.
"During a discussion with a women’s group in our generally male dominant hobby, a number of women had expressed the benefit of having an anonymous username and profile when asking for help and advice on forums, they receive equal help without the unfortunate gender bias or belittling that can sometimes happen in real life when seeking the same help in person."
Invision Community's Jennifer has also experience of this on her own community; RPG Initiative.
"RPG Initiative is a community for all roleplayers. We focus on all text-based roleplaying forms that are hosted on the internet. We encourage roleplayers to find each other, discuss roleplay and grow as collaborative writers here at the Initiative in a safe environment."
Jennifer relies on, and encourages anonymity. She knows that because her site is predominately female, some female users identify as male to increase the chances of getting others to collaborate with them.
"Male players are rare, in fact, I recently ran a poll on my site and of those that responded to it less than 15% of them are male (or identify as such). So this gets them more attention and in turn, more people that want to write with them."
Jennifer explains how anonymity is critical to her site's growth.
"Anonymity is a difficult thing to accomplish in a small niche like mine, but it's sort of like a small town where everyone knows everyone, and they likely know all of your secrets. So enforcing rules to preserve anonymity is really important to my community and me. This includes prohibiting the "naming of names" or the "site" that the drama is coming from when seeking for advice or help. This doesn't negate that people may know the existing situation or people involved because they are also involved or know some of the people involved, but it helps cut down on the drama and the spread of negativity and false information about people."
With a forum community, you can truly be who you want to be.
This is not so with social media where others can create bias based on your gender, looks or topical preferences.
Together, together
"In her early work, Turkle argued that the internet provided myriad positive opportunities for self-transformation, but more recently, she argues that the explosion in social media options has led us to develop superficial, emotionally lazy but instantly available virtual relationships." (1)
It's hard to argue against this statement when you consider the content that predominates social media. And often an endless stream of self-focused content.
"Indeed, we provide clear evidence that online forums afford users a way of being genuinely “together, together”, as opposed to what Turkle calls “alone together.”(1)
The bottom line is that it has been proven that allowing a degree on anonymity increases engagement across all niches, but especially those that are built to support those with stigmatised conditions. These forums have a greater sense of community and depth than those built on social media.
When you allow your members to take back control of their privacy, you are empowering them to make decisions about what to share.
Given how eroded our privacy is in our modern always-connected world, this is a precious gift.
If you are looking to create a new community then consider this before choosing your community platform.
References:
1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756321500268X
2: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10410236.2017.1339370

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!

It's easy to think that email is a relic from the past; from simpler times long before social media and the rise of phone apps.
And it's reasonable to think that way. Your phone constantly pings at you, and your laptop OS constantly pings at you, so why bother with email?
Because it's still a hugely powerful medium to get and retain attention.
In 2017, over 269 billion emails were sent and received per day. Of those, 3,360,250,000 are opened, read, and a link clicked.
Email is still very much a critical tool in your quest for retention.
Invision Community knows this. We have options to notify members of replies by email, weekly or monthly digests by email and members can opt-in for bulk emails sent from your community team.
Given how important email is, it was only fair that we invested in some love for our email system for 4.4.
Email Statistics
Just above, I mention that 269 billion emails are sent, and 3.4 billion are opened, read and clicked.
How many emails are sent from your Invision Community daily?
(No cheating and checking with SendGrid)
You probably have no idea as we didn't record email statistics.
As of Invision Community 4.4 we do!

Chart showing the number of emails sent daily
We now track emails sent, and the number of link clicks inside those emails.
Email Advertisements
Email notifications are a powerful way to get your members to revisit your community. The member welcomes these emails as it means they have new replies to topics they are interested in reading.

While you have your member's attention, you have an opportunity to show them a banner-style advertisement.


The new email advertisement form
When creating a new email advert, you can choose to limit the advert to specific areas such as topics, blogs, etc. - and even which forums to limit by.


Subliminal messages
This is a new way to reach your audience with your promotions.
Unfollow without logging in
Despite spending most of this blog entry shouting the virtues of email, it's inevitable that one or two members may wish to stop receiving notification emails.
In previous versions, the unfollow link would have taken you to a login page if you were signed out. For members that haven't been back in a while, this may cause some annoyance if they do not recall their login details.
Invision Community 4.4 allows non-logged in members to unfollow the item they received an email about or all followed items without the need to log in.

You no longer need to log in to unfollow items
Respecting your member's inbox is vital to keep on good terms with them and to keep them engaged in your community.
We'd love to know which of these features you're most keen to try in 4.4. Please drop a comment below and let us know!