Add daily emails for every bot

[mlissner]

Why hasn't anybody suggested this before? Email is basically free and there's like a billion people that use email and don't use Twitter/Masto/etc.

This issue is for us to extend our reach with the ease of email.

Architecturally, we need a few things:

1. A place where we store the alerts for the day so that the emails have the data they need.
2. A script to send the daily emails.
3. A table to hold people's subscriptions.
4. A webpage to sign up to each bot (these should be distinct so they can be shared)
5. A webpage to unsubscribe

Questions:

• How do people subscribe?
  • People put in their email address, we send an email, they click to confirm.
• Do we monitor bounces and auto-block email addresses?
  • We have a lot of clever stuff for this on CL that we could borrow, but I think SES has some tools for this too? Ideally, we keep this simpler than CL.
• Do you only do so many alerts per email or do you just cram them all in?
  • It's probably fine to cram them all in.
• How do people unsubscribe?
  • We can copy the way we do this in CourtListener by including unsubscribe links in every email, BUT we need to make sure that there's JavaScript in the webpage that the links load, so that mail scanners don't click the links.
• If you follow multiple bots, do you get one email or several each day?
  • I think it's better to get multiple emails, that's fine and works with mail filtering rules people might have.
• Is there a way to monetize this so it's paid for and maybe even raises money?
  • Occasionally use the list of emails donation pleas
  • We can include a please donate blurb at the top and/or bottom
• Bots.law is where we do next-generation tech. Can we make these emails look good?
  • This needs research. CL alerts are mostly pretty bad. Let's see if we can do better, ensuring that our emails work on all screensizes

[mlissner]

@jeniferw, curious if you have further thoughts about ways to turn such a feature into donations.

Here's another idea: We could ask for donations at the time of sign up. Imagine a checkbox that says:

• [ ] Make donation after signing up

And then once they submit their info, we could redirect them to our donate or membership page.

What else?