[consulting] What do you use for your email newsletters?

Tue Feb 5 03:04:00 UTC 2008

Michael and All,

Despite the name "SIMPLEnews" -- you can get a lot content control with it
when you use it with the following modules:

Views: http://drupal.org/project/views
Insert View: http://drupal.org/project/insert_view
Node Queue: http://drupal.org/project/nodequeue

I had been frustrated that SimpleNews wasn't dynamic, that it was just a
node that that you sent out and it took the theme and formatted html for
email. Of course it does more than that with the subscriptions and editions
etc. But once I discovered the insert_view module, everything changed for
SimpleNews and it had the ability to then really be dynamic.

But then with Views, sometimes I had trouble filtering for precisely the
nodes I needed to be sent out in the e-newsletter. Node Queue comes to the
rescue. And it plays nice with Views. You can set a views filter to select
nodes based on the content of a node queue.

As for getting advertising blocks into a sidebar, hmmm, is there such a
thing as insert panel? I'm sure there is a way to do it. It would be really
easy to have the ads be in nodes that were interspersed with the other
content, Facebook stye.

Best of luck. Good topic. I'd love to hear more about the RoR backend.

Shai
content2zero <http://content2zero.com>

On 2/4/08, Roshan Shah <roshan.shah at bpocanada.com> wrote:
>
> Michael,
>
> Option 1)
>
> What you want can be done with ePublish -
> http://www.drupal.org/project/epublish
>
> Here are two examples of its usage
>
> http://www.la2day.com/epublish/1/23
> http://www.dmwmedia.com/epublish/1/269
>
> The mailings can be done via third party. We recommend MailerMailer or
> ConstantContact.
>
> Option 2)
> You can also use Drupal SimpleNews
> http://www.drupal.org/project/simplenews for newsletter mailings.
>
> Option 3)
> We have built our own Marketing Blast Application for our business use
> integrating Drupal with Ruby on Rails. All mailing/tracking, etc is handled
> in RoR.
>
> Roshan
>
> On 2/5/08, Michael Thorne <thorne.michael at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Interesting Conversation ...
> >
> > Tim,
> >
> > This sounds much like what I would like to set up for clients.  I have
> > been thinking about how I might do this but still have several points that
> > I'm not sure how to address.
> >
> > Newsletter Features
> >
> >    - Branding - handled by custom theme applied to the newsletter
> >    pages
> >    - Intro Message - An optional message at the top of the newsletter
> >    - Article Teasers - Teasers for each article featured in this
> >    newsletter.
> >    - In This Issue (TOC) - a simple list of the items featured in
> >    this newsletter
> >    - Ads/Promos - Display ads and promotions in the sidebar of the
> >    newsletter.
> >
> > Given this structure, I'd like for the process for sending out a
> > newsletter to be something like:
> >
> >    1. Publish Articles to website - content should be published to
> >    the website so that it has a permanent home.  The teasers in the newsletter
> >    will link to these articles.
> >    2. Create Newsletter
> >       - write intro message
> >       - specify which articles to include in the newsletter
> >       - specify which ads to include in the sidebar
> >        3. View the page in the browser.  Ideally, I'd like to
> >    provide a text area from which they could copy the source code.
> >    4. Paste the code into the email
> >
> > Do you have any tips on how to generate the HTML for the newsletters
> > using Drupal?  Specifically:
> >
> >    - Are you using a CCK type to define the newsletter?
> >    - How do items get added to a newsletter issue?
> >    - How do you specify the order of the articles in the newsletter?
> >    Is it easy to change the order?
> >    - How do you generate compliant HTML (so that it works in email
> >    clients)?  Obviously the theme takes care of some of it, but don't you have
> >    to modify the output of some of the teasers, or do you still make it work
> >    somehow with just a linked stylesheet (I haven't had success with that
> >    myself)?
> >
> > Thanks much for any tips.
> >
> > Michael Thorne
> > MikeyLikesIt at drupal.org
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Feb 4, 2008 4:40 AM, Tim Deeson <timd at deeson.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > > Hi Chris
> > >
> > > I'm of much the same opinion, there's more to running large scale mass
> > > email systems then just managing subscriptions and pumping emails into
> > > Sendmail.
> > >
> > > We've been using Drupal to manage and generate the HTML and the issues
> > > etc and then using MailChimp to do the actual emailing. We've embedded
> > > MailChimp subscribe and unsubscribe etc into the template.
> > >
> > > This has given us a CMS for non-techie staff to manage the newsletters
> > > without getting into all the complicated deliverability issues. I
> > > don't see that we can address the deliverability issues at a price
> > > that makes sense compared to MailChimp's (for example) rates.
> > >
> > > We also use their InBox Inspector (email program HTML proofer) and
> > > statistics which could be replicated but at their prices why re-invent
> > > the wheel?
> > >
> > > An example of this is www.green-places.co.uk (demonstrates principle
> > > although doesn't use MailChimp). This site was created specifically to
> > > house and manage an email newsletter.
> > >
> > > Thanks
> > >
> > > Tim
> > > www.deeson.co.uk/emedia/
> > >
> > > > Hi guys,
> > > >
> > > > I'm new to this list so please forgive if this has been addressed
> > > > before.
> > > >
> > > > I often get requests from clients for email newsletter facilities,
> > > and
> > > > i know Drupal has a module that handles this, but I've usually
> > > chosen
> > > > a third party solution like Mailbuild, or Mailchimp over it though.
> > > > I'm doing this because there seems to be way more to email marketing
> > > > than simply bolting a module onto a Drupal install, and I don't have
> > > > the resources to track white lists and spam filtering, and all the
> > > > other niggly things about sending bulk emails.
> > > >
> > > > Well, those are the reasons the third party solutions give in their
> > > > sales pitch anyway!
> > > >
> > > > Has anyone here had good/bad experiences with providing
> > > Drupal-related
> > > > newsletter services to clients here they would be prepared to share?
> > > >
> > > > Thanks,
> > > >
> > > > Chris
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > >
> >
> >
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> >
>
>
> --
> --
> Roshan Shah
> Toll Free : 1-888-378-7259 x 521
> Direct     : 1-604-630-4292
>
>
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