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

[Michael Thorne]

Thanks Tim...

So ... when you say collect it on newsletter signup, you mean that the user
would be presented with checkboxes (or some form element) that has regional
data, and the user would select which one(s) they are interested in, the
same way the user would sign up for different interest categories, right?

Here's my situation.  The site is for a band that will have fans signing up
from different parts of the world, mostly UK and US.

I think this method works well for selecting the country or even large
geographical regions like "mid west", but it already becomes more difficult
to manage when we get to the state level of geography, and ideally for a
site like this, we would want to be able to send out notifications if the
band goes to a specific city.

and thanks Trevor ...

I was thinking that using geo and location module would solve this problem,
but I haven't worked with it before and think that it's probably way out of
the budget alloted for this project.  Perhaps it's easier to do that I
think.  The other catch with this method is that if I'm using Drupal to
produce lists of users to send newsletter items to, what would be the best
way to pass that custom list into a third-party provider like mailchimp or
constant contact?  I guess something like *Views Mail* -
http://drupal.org/project/views_mail would work well for this, but I
definitely want to use a third-party vendor for email management unless
there are *really* good reasons not to.  I just feel that the benefits of
the reporting, standards compliance and strong servers are too compelling.

Thanks again.

MikeyLikesIt




On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 12:08 PM, Tim Deeson <timd at deeson.co.uk> wrote:

> Hi Michael
>
> My KISS answer would be to collect this information on newsletter sign-
> up, services like www.mailchimp.com do this very well. You can then do
> targeted mailing to list sub-sets. Obviously this isn't well
> integrated into the user profile, so it depends on your exact
> requirements.
>
> I'm a little bit of the mind that things like newsletter subscriptions
> should be kept separate as it allows you to keep email newsletter best
> practice and etiquette under better control, but every situation is
> different.
>
> The added benefit of the above method is that there is no custom
> development to do, just integrate the subscribe/unsubscribe forms into
> the site.
>
> Thanks
>
> Tim
> www.deeson.co.uk/emedia/
>
> > Does anyone know what the best/simplest way to target newsletters to
> > a specific geographical area is?
> >
> > Do I need to collect the geogrphical data in user profile fields and
> > then create the lists from that?
> >
> > Or is there a simpler method - perhaps a newsletter listserver
> > provider who can capture this location information when a user signs
> > up and can later send to those users in a designated geographical
> > area.
> >
> > Any thoughts will be much appreciated.  Thanks
> >
>
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