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

Tue Feb 5 02:23:47 UTC 2008

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/simplenewsfor 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
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > consulting mailing list
> > consulting at drupal.org
> > http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/consulting
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/consulting
>
>

-- 
--
Roshan Shah
Toll Free : 1-888-378-7259 x 521
Direct     : 1-604-630-4292

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