Comments on: SMS to Email List

By: Vanessa

Vanessa — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:58:34 +0000

Great advice for getting people to add themselves to the mailing list! E-mail lists like these are incredibly valuable for disseminating information like concert dates, last minute deals, or shows etc.

By: Xarrion

Xarrion — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:24:53 +0000

Trick to remembering to tell the audience: Get a few ‘tour shirts’ made up with the number on the front – then it doesn’t matter if you forget to mention it out loud.

By: JoCo

JoCo — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:36:38 +0000

Not much to see, most of the backend stuff is handled by Hostbaby scripts that I didn’t write and don’t ever see. But the flow is like this.

On textmarks, I have the response set to http://www.jonathancoulton.com/smsemail.php?list_email=\0 (the \0 is a parameter that textmarks replaces with the email address from the text message)

smsemail.php is a page on my server that basically takes the list_email parameter and passes it to the Hostbaby mailing list signup script. The details of this page will be very different depending on your mailing list solution, but for me it’s as easy as requiring the Hostbaby script, which does all the work for me.

By: Khag

Khag — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 05:18:43 +0000

Anyplace to track down more technical details of what the backend process looked like? Just trying to copy the success!

By: Two-Memer

Two-Memer — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:58:38 +0000

Stupendous show in Ann Arbor, by the way!

By: JoCo

JoCo — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:10:34 +0000

I appreciate the praise for being forward-thinking about this sort of thing, but I’m pretty sure I got the idea from Obama.

By: Kirsten

Kirsten — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:25:14 +0000

Coincidentally, we were just looking for this exact same functionality recently, so it was exciting to read about you doing it… alas, Textmarks isn’t available here in Canada. Waah.

By: Jonnie

Jonnie — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:34:37 +0000

I subscribe to the Lefletz Letter, a music blog/email listserve generated by Bob Lefletz, who is a pretty well known music journalist. He actually had a posting on one of his recent emails about Jonathan Coulton’s use of this text function to add people to his email list at his concerts as a stroke of modern-music genius. Nicely done, JC!

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 04:37:40 +0000

Or mediafire.com…. unlimited storage, max file 100 MB (for the free account).

By: Colleenky

Colleenky — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 01:44:50 +0000

@Zach: Try box.net. Free account = 1 GB storage + 25 MB max file size.

By: Zach Totz

Zach Totz — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:22:56 +0000

I regret to inform that Murphy’s Law has struck and I’m gonna have to post the shows tomorrow since I need to re-do a lot of the edits. Also, the old free file hosting service I used to use is no longer online, anyone got a suggestion for a new one?

By: Ricky

Ricky — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 21:59:50 +0000

I tried sending you my e-mail address – ‘;DROP TABLE SUBSCRIBERS–@nowhere.com but it just doesn’t work. Why, JoCo? Why?

By: Steve Dembo

Steve Dembo — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 21:19:58 +0000

Dig it. Love TextMarks.

Would really love it if ya sent more out via the mailing list than just concert dates!