I hope this isn't irrelevant but i really wanted to say this...
during this last event i came across many old users who had come to check out mene because they got an email about the event and they stayed to chat and stuff... so i was wondering, does mene send out emails with updates to the site or when a CI is released and stuff???
if only a mene email would be sent out for every CI and other mennies items with a cute preview of it, it would at least make a few come to check it out...

Emails are sent out prior to events, yep, but the system is really rubbish. I mean, I take it you didn't get one? You should have, and that's a lot of the problem. Emails go out to all registered users, but a lot never arrive, for a multitude of reasons, I'm sure, I'm being mean laying all the blame at the feet of the system, it can't be entirely its fault ><

We have sent them out for CI releases in the past, but that would be mail every two weeks at least, and people start complaining if we send too many Any email we send up had links to various relevant threads and so on, but there's no way to format them, I can't even bold a word, that kind of code isn't supported. Years ago we used to send out a pretty newsletter; this was when Sizzla was on staff and this kind of thing was what she did for her day job, she put the newsletter together and Inso did whatever admin level voodoo he needed to do to get it sent out. But only he can make emails professional-looking, the rest of us don't have the required access.

Unless yanyan13: does...

Yan, think we could make the emails look a bit less like something sent by people with zero communication skills? I know Inso used to set the email title so it had the username in it. This is really important too, because it means we're not sending out 80k+ emails all with the exact same title. Because that gets us marked as spammers by many email providers (one of the reasons a lot of the mail never gets to its destination, I'm sure), but it's not something I know how/have any ability to do

I don't think I would want spammed about the latest CI. As much as I like e-mails from mene, it would be very redundant for active users.

I say any kind of e-mail works for me as long as it's not just one giant image. Those are really annoying since I have to click show image every time

On many occasions, I did not receive an email about the Mene event going on at the time (and they were not in my spam box). But, other times, I did receive an email. I am not sure why this is, but I am glad to come back to Mene whenever there is something fun going on :)

i did recieve an email about the event but i was already here so hehehe... and jelly are you sure people will complain with two emails in a month? i mean i have stopped going to gaia for years now and my inbox is spammed with emails from gaia left and right... i know i should do something about it but seriously we all love mene and a little email won't hurt plus the reason i even suggested this wasn't for those of us who live on mene but for those who haven't been in here just because they forgot...
salvete its more fun to have you back... i hope you stay

I actually unsubscribed like six times from Gaia email updates before emailing support to complain that they kept sending them to me... u_u; (Their customer support sucked on that. I won't go into it.)

Anyway, yeah. I'd personally be irritated to get two emails a month from Menewsha. Particularly considering my mule also gets the emails and both email addresses point to the same inbox. I really don't like hearing constantly from any service, even if I like them. Especially if I'm active there and they're not telling me anything different from what the Announcements/whatever does!

We can pick and choose who get's the mail, to a certain extent. One could be sent about updates and not go to people who's last activity was within the last x amount of time, and so on. But where do you draw that line? Someone might have logged in but not gone and read all the announcements they'd missed, and checked the CD too, you know? It's hard to know where that happy medium is.

Well in my experience, most websites will send you an e-mail weekly at the very least.

What if we had an option to sign up for monthly e-mails? I mean, us penpals are basically here to get emails. We'd be good guinea pigs for if it's annoying or not.

I like the idea of letting the user choose which option they want. For example, do they want a daily digest of Mene activity, e.g. in their subscribed threads? Or perhaps just the monthly newsletter about the contribution items? Or just the event emails? Letting everyone personalize their email subscription seems, in my opinion, to be a good idea.

Daily is a bit much I was thinking maybe weekly at the most.

You actually can get a "daily digest" of all your subscribed threads e-mailed to you every day. There is an option to be e-mailed about your subscriptions.
I don't know if this option works... but I've seen the option before.

Daily is also a bit much for me personally. :) and cool, I did not know that option existed.

What about a once monthly email? Send it after the second CI comes out with "This is what is available currently, these are updates on what has been happening, and the next event is in x amount of time." It could also highlight a particular user run contest thread, charity or hangout. Basically just condensing the month's worth of announcements into headlines, advertising for user interactions, and advertising for CIs as well.
I don't think monthly would be annoying, and even active users don't necessarily see every announcement, or know about contests/hangouts in areas they don't usually visit much.

Just my two cents.

@Bearzy - I agree with you about advertising for the contribution items. For example, I know that the new ones just came out today because I have been active on Mene for a bit after the last event ended. But, those who have been away might be interested to know about this new development, as well as about the double gold earning that might entice them to start posting again :)