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

[Michael Thorne]

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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