How to send a Newsletter

by Caihlem January 24th 2009, 2:20 pm

How to write a newsletter

Go to your Administration panel  General  Newsletter - Write and send

Choice a method: text format or HTML format: Reserved for forums having the package, the HTML allows you to format your message as you wish: bold, italic, colors, images,... It is an enriched format composed of code, which you can write simply thanks to the integrated editor. On the contrary, the simple text format is plain text without any formatting. An email address or site URL will be automatically transformed into a link by the email client receiving the email in this text format.

The HTML format is generally preferred to allow advanced customization of email content, and make the recipient want to read it. Nevertheless, some webmails do not allow to receive HTML emails (it is however more and more rare). Also, most webmails block remote content to protect its users, so be sure to keep a clear and effective newsletter, even if the images are not displayed.

Attention, this field has to be selected before writing the newsletter: you shouldn't switch mode after having started the writing or you will loose the text!
Sender of the e-mail: allows you to choose which email address will be specified as sender. You have the choice between the email address of the founder, the email address of the administrator who sends the newsletter, or the address of Forumotion
Recipients : you can send a mass mail to all your users (All members) or only to some groups members
Delayed Sending : by default, sending is immediate ("no" option checked), which means that the email will be sent as soon as it is completed. You can choose to delay the sending of the email to a date later. This is a feature that allows you to schedule an email to be sent in advance. You can only schedule 3 newsletters per day
Subject : it will be the title of the email that users will receive. You should choose the good one, it will generally determine the choice that users will make between opening it, or delete it directly.
Message : this is the content of your email. For this content to be valid, your newsletter must contain a text (an image alone is not enough).

How to send the newsletter

Limits

You won't be able to send more than three newsletters per day,
An incompressible time of three minutes between each newsletter must be respected,
Forums in free packages can't send more than 2 newsletters per 30-day rolling period. This limit is increased to 4 newsletters per 30-day period for forums that have chosen the package and to 8 for forums that have subscribed to the package.

If you send the maximum number of newsletter that your package allows you, an error message will appear, and you will have to wait for the expiration of the period indicated before you can send a newsletter :

See illustration:

Preview and send

Once your email is ready to be sent, click on "Send the newsletter". If you have chosen HTML format, an intermediate step will then slip into the process, asking you to insert an equivalent of your newsletter in text format, in order to allow users who cannot display HTML in their mailbox to still have content.

Then, the newsletter will be sent a first time to the email address of the administrator who writes it in order to give him the possibility to return to the edition of this one if it does not appear correctly, or to validate the sending.

Finally, if the sending is validated, the email is sent to all users concerned according to the recipient's choice.
Note that receiving the newsletter may take more or less time depending on the number of newsletters to send (see next point in this tutorial).

Receiving newsletters

In order to avoid a blacklisting of forums by email providers when sending hundreds of thousands of emails, Forumotion creates waiting lists per server and processes them per packet according to their order of arrival.

Therefore, the sending and receiving of the newsletter may not be simultaneous. The sending depends on the waiting list on the server to which the forum belongs. The more newsletters the forums send, the longer the waiting list will be, as will be the time required to send/receive the newsletters. Thus, when the newsletter is sent, it is placed on a waiting list before being sent and does not appear in the archive folder until it is sent.

We understand the inconvenience that such a possible delay in the dispatch/receipt of these newsletters could cause. Nevertheless, it is the only way we have to protect the forums against total blacklisting by mail clients.

Delayed sending and archives

How delayed sending works

As indicated in the first part of this tutorial, it is possible for you to choose a delayed sending date for your newsletter. It will therefore not be sent before the recorded date.
Note that you will not be able to schedule more than three newsletters to be sent on the same day. You can schedule more than 3 newsletters only if you specify sending dates over several days (more explanations).

Go to your administration panel  General  Newsletter - Tracking and archives

You will find all of your scheduled newsletters in the "Delayed sending" box. You can change them at any time before the sending date by clicking  and preview them by clicking . It is also possible to delete them, which will cancel their sending.

How to send a Newsletter Newsle16

When a scheduled newsletter is definitively sent on the chosen date, you will find it in your archives. To avoid confusing it with immediate mailings, this one will have a small clock  as icon.

How to send a Newsletter Newsle15