Member Status / Security Levels / Opt In Levels
Your memberships can be allowed or limited, to certain site priviledges
Understanding what 'Members' are and how the different levels work, will make managing and keeping in contact whith your client base more effective. There are many member security levels and these affect access to password protected pages and emailing lists. They are explained in more detail here.
| Member Level | Meaning | Mailing List | API Level ID |
| Blocked Address / Spam | If you put a member in this status, then they will not get your newsletters, and they cannot post any information on your forums using this email address. Nor can they login to your website. | - | -100 |
| Opt Out - Do not contact |
If a member has specifically unsubscribed from your newsletter they will be in this status. They will still be able to login to your website to update their contact details, but they won't be able to access any authorised services. You should note to your authorised users that opting out of the newsletter will also opt them out of any webservices, and may affect their ability to post any forum messages. |
- | 0 |
| Email failure |
Our mail servers have indicated that the email address failed, ie not a real domain, not a real mailbox, or someother error that we are pretty sure the email address is no good... We do this to prevent pounding other email servers with potential spam, and being marked as a spam sender. It is quite possible that good email addresses do end up in the email failure area, so please do check this list to fix up any that are broken. Typically if someone logs in to your website, their status will be fixed back up to email confirmed. |
- | 25 |
| Inactive | Probably a spam address or an old email address not in use. Inactive means that we have not noted any further activity for this email address in a 2 year period. This means the member or email recipient has not clicked any links in their newsletters, they have not logged in, they have not further enquired, and they have not bought anything new using this email address. You can safely disregard these email addresses, however, you might have a look through the list from time to time to reactivate known good addresses to opt in status. | - | 50 |
| General Member | This is the default status of anyone who contacts you on a webform, purchases something, posts to a forum etc, but they have not clicked any opt in tick boxes. If they ever do click an opt in tick box, then they will be upgraded to the opt in status. |
- | 100 |
| Opt-In Mailing List Member (Unconfirmed) | This is similar to a general member, but they have specifically "Opted In" to your mailling list by ticking a box or on your mailling list subscription page. If customer logs in, or validates their email address then they would be confirmed. | Yes | 125 |
| Opt-In Mailing List Member (Cleaned) | A customer has opted in to your mailing list but has not yet logged in or validated their email address, and the 3rd party email list cleaning service considers the address is valid. | Yes | 135 |
| Email validated |
If a member posts a message on a forum, they will be asked to confirm their email address. Alternatively if they login, and they were previously a lower level member, then they will be upgraded to this status. This status level means that they are an active participating member of your website, and hence it is ok to send these people a newsletter. |
Yes | 150 |
| Authorisation Expired |
This means a member was once an Authorised User, but their membership access had an expiry date set. On or after the expiry date, they will be in this status at this time. If you reset their membership level, please remember to delete or update their expiry date. If your newsletter is only for Authorised Users and above, then you should use that filter when sending your emails. This level is higher than Email confirmed, but lower than Authorised Users. |
Yes | 175 |
| Authorised User |
User has purchased a membership and has paid for it. This means that they have special priviledges on your website, and so therefore you are entitled to communicate with your current customer base. Authorised status might give a member access to special pricing, there is also a pricing group that you can assign. The member would need be authorised and in the right group to get the special price. |
Yes | 200 |
| Authorised User Level 2 |
User has purchased a membership and has paid for it. This means that they have special priviledges on your website, and so therefore you are entitled to communicate with your current customer base. |
Yes | 300 |
| Authorised User Level 3 |
User has purchased a membership and has paid for it. This means that they have special priviledges on your website, and so are therefore entitled to communicate with your current customer base. |
Yes | 400 |
The member levels above are in a special order. When you send an email to all opt in members, then you are sending an email to all members below that level including Authorised Users. The levels are not exclusive. So when an authorised user unsubscribes from a newsletter, then they may also be losing access to several services.
You cannot send bulk emails to general members. You can technically upgrade general members to opt in members, but ethically this is not good. It's against the law if you don't have their express consent.
Don't want registered members to be in the mailing list?
Understanding Email Failure Detection
We use an AI engine of sorts, to identify which email addresses have failed. Generally speaking, a 550 response code from a mail server suggests that an email address is no longer valid. However, experience has taught us that some of these 550 errors are short lived. The exact implimentation of a 550 error depends on the implimentation of the mail server receiving email. Some mail servers do not even send error codes, and simply fail quietly. We have built an AI engine that attempts to guess if an email address is permanently invalid, and this reduces the amount of mail our system attempts to send multiple times, but also, it attempts to prevent false positives that would take real people off your mailing list.
Member Grouping
You can also put members in custom named groups. A member can belong to several groups. Grouping is another way to target newsletters, or limit access to certain pages to certain groups.