Create newsletter. Please, need advice. Thank You

S

shapper

Hello,

I am need to send a newsletter to my web site subscribers.

1. I suppose sending images and complex layouts might be a problem
because of the different ways Outlook, and other programs read it ...
And maybe of size and security issues. Am I right?
So I am planning to send simple text with simple formating and links
to my web site.

2. What about CSS formated emails in HTML format?
Can I just change the email font, text background color and body
background color?
I suppose I should need to include the CSS code on the email head
tag.

3. What other considerations do I need for creating the email?
Doctype, etc?

4. Should I send the email to all users at once using BCC or one email
for each user?
Or maybe to groups of 10 (using BCC)?

5. I suppose that if I use only this small format if the user don't
accept emails in HTML format the email will be displayed in text
format ... Am I wrong? As far as I know I will only loose the text
format. Or will I also have problems with line breaks? <br/> ...

Could someone, please, advice me?

This is the first newsletter I created for a web site.

Thanks,
Miguel
 
D

dorayme

shapper said:
Hello,

I am need to send a newsletter to my web site subscribers.

1. I suppose sending images and complex layouts
Click to expand...

Make a web page on your site and send a plain text email to your
subscribers with the link.

The other alternative is make the newsletter in PDF and send them emails
with where to download it from your website.
 
S

shapper

Yes, spot-on.


Great idea.


You can, but see below.


That would be best IMHO.


Not everyone's email client supports HTML.


BCC can, in theory, be a little net-friendlier. Suppose you're sending 8
emails to various addresses at isp.invalid. If you include them all as
BCC, your own ISP could send a single message to the mail server at the
target ISP, which would then distribute the 8 copies to the intended users.

In practice, I don't know whether mail servers can "batch" transactions
in this manner. I suspect that they do, in order to minimize the use of
expensive bandwidth, but I have no hands-on experience in this area.


That depends on how you send it. If you simply send HTML in the body of
your email message, then clients that don't understand it will simply show
the "raw" unparsed HTML - probably not something your users will want
to see.

What you should do to avoid this is MIME encode the message body as
"multipart/alternative", with both plain text and HTML versions included.
That will give you the behavior you describe above, where users who don't
accept HTML email will see the text/plain version instead.

Have a look at: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME#Multipart_messages>

sherm--
Click to expand...

Sherm,

The multipart seems really interesting but in this case I can't use
CSS classes right?
But can I use all HTML tags like h1's, p's and apply styles inline?
For example:

<p style="background-color:red;float:right">Some text</p>

Thank You,
Miguel
 
S

shapper

Make a web page on your site and send a plain text email to your
subscribers with the link.

The other alternative is make the newsletter in PDF and send them emails
with where to download it from your website.
Click to expand...

Hi dorayme,

I understand your point but in this newsletter I am sending links to
the recently created or updated articles and on the web sites.

I think if I redirect the user to a page on my web site I loose the
purpose of the newsletter itself.

Thank You,
Miguel
 
D

dorayme

I understand your point but in this newsletter I am sending links to
the recently created or updated articles and on the web sites.

I think if I redirect the user to a page on my web site I loose the
purpose of the newsletter itself.
Click to expand...

You are wanting to draw attention to things on your website in a
newsletter as well as possible other things. Perhaps you are right and
the way your subscribers are alerted to this newsletter matters a lot?
Perhaps if a subscriber sees a plain text email to go to a URL to read a
'newletter' they might not be as interested?

If I got a nice short plain text email to let me know to see latest
'newsletter' to a site I had somehow actually subscribed to, I would be
tempted. If I got an HTML one, especially if it was long with many
links, I am not sure this would be any more convenient to me. In many
ways not in that I am not fussed about storing text emails but html ones
with pics and things can take up more disk space and feel like bloat to
me.

Anyway, I think it so much neater to send one small thing to a lot of
people to empower them to get a lot of things than to send them all a
lot of things which they might not utilise anyway.

But your needs may vary.
 
S

shapper

You are wanting to draw attention to things on your website in a
newsletter as well as possible other things. Perhaps you are right and  
the way your subscribers are alerted to this newsletter matters a lot?
Perhaps if a subscriber sees a plain text email to go to a URL to read a
'newletter' they might not be as interested?

If I got a nice short plain text email to let me know to see latest
'newsletter' to a site I had somehow actually subscribed to, I would be
tempted. If I got an HTML one, especially if it was long with many
links, I am not sure this would be any more convenient to me. In many
ways not in that I am not fussed about storing text emails but html ones
with pics and things can take up more disk space and feel like bloat to
me.

Anyway, I think it so much neater to send one small thing to a lot of
people to empower them to get a lot of things than to send them all a
lot of things which they might not utilise anyway.

But your needs may vary.
Click to expand...

Hi,

I read everything I could find about this. A few examples:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/cssemail/
http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=StyleInEmail

And I came up with the following:
http://bonsalunos.pt/Newsletter.htm

The only image I have is the logo and I am using "http://..." for the
image src. But I also defined the ALT attribute.

I tried to follow all the tips I found but obviously I might miss
something.

Any suggestion is very welcome ...

Thank You,
Miguel
 
A

Adrienne Boswell

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed shapper <[email protected]>
writing in (e-mail address removed):
Hello,

I am need to send a newsletter to my web site subscribers.

1. I suppose sending images and complex layouts might be a problem
because of the different ways Outlook, and other programs read it ...
And maybe of size and security issues. Am I right?
So I am planning to send simple text with simple formating and links
to my web site.
Click to expand...

As others have said, yes, much better.
2. What about CSS formated emails in HTML format?
Can I just change the email font, text background color and body
background color?
I suppose I should need to include the CSS code on the email head
tag.
Click to expand...

Some web based email will remove the CSS in the head, but if the content
is okay without the styling, no problem.
3. What other considerations do I need for creating the email?
Doctype, etc?

4. Should I send the email to all users at once using BCC or one email
for each user?
Or maybe to groups of 10 (using BCC)?
Click to expand...

You might want to look at GroupMail from http://infacta.com . I've used
it for years. It can send personal or BCC. I think BCC is better,
probably for reasons described elsewhere in this thread.
5. I suppose that if I use only this small format if the user don't
accept emails in HTML format the email will be displayed in text
format ... Am I wrong? As far as I know I will only loose the text
format. Or will I also have problems with line breaks? <br/> ...
Click to expand...

As others have said, multipart/alternative is the way to go. When I was
sending out the neighborhood buzz, I had an HTML version and plain text
version. Since URLs could get long, I created something similar to
tinyurl on our server, and used those URLs on the plain text version,
and regular URLs on the HTML version.
Could someone, please, advice me?
Click to expand...

The other advice I have is to make sure you keep a clean list.
GroupMail has a plugin that does an SMTP check of all the email
addresses in the group list. I always did this check before adding an
email to the list. When email is returned, be sure and remove the
address from your list right away. Of course, if someone requests
unsubscribe, remove them immediately, and send a nice aknowledgement
email saying they have been removed. I also added x-unsubscribe to the
header, as well as an unsubscribe email address within the body of the
newsletter.
This is the first newsletter I created for a web site.
Click to expand...

Good luck to you. You might also want to consider keeping an archive of
past newsletters in HTML format, in case the recipient deletes the email
and wants to read the contents at a future time. You could also set up
RSS with the contents of the newsletter, for those that prefer that.
 
S

shapper

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed shapper <[email protected]>
writing in (e-mail address removed):




As others have said, yes, much better.




Some web based email will remove the CSS in the head, but if the content
is okay without the styling, no problem.





You might want to look at GroupMail fromhttp://infacta.com.  I've used
it for years.  It can send personal or BCC.  I think BCC is better,
probably for reasons described elsewhere in this thread.




As others have said, multipart/alternative is the way to go.  When I was
sending out the neighborhood buzz, I had an HTML version and plain text
version.  Since URLs could get long, I created something similar to
tinyurl on our server, and used those URLs on the plain text version,
and regular URLs on the HTML version.




The other advice I have is to make sure you keep a clean list.  
GroupMail has a plugin that does an SMTP check of all the email
addresses in the group list.  I always did this check before adding an
email to the list.  When email is returned, be sure and remove the
address from your list right away.  Of course, if someone requests
unsubscribe, remove them immediately, and send a nice aknowledgement
email saying they have been removed.  I also added x-unsubscribe to the
header, as well as an unsubscribe email address within the body of the
newsletter.




Good luck to you.  You might also want to consider keeping an archive of
past newsletters in HTML format, in case the recipient deletes the email
and wants to read the contents at a future time.  You could also set up
RSS with the contents of the newsletter, for those that prefer that.
Click to expand...

Hi,

I already created a newsletter sample in:
http://www.bonsalunos.pt/Newsletter.htm
Any comments are welcome.
Which Doctype should I use?

Thank your for the suggestion of group mail.

About RSS I already have it ... basically my RSS keeps an instant
updated list of any article or document created or updated.

The newsletter sends a list of the documents and articles created and
updated each month.

And yes I am keeping a copy of each newsletter on my web site to.

Thanks,
Miguel
 
A

Adrienne Boswell

Hello,

I just posted the last version of my newsletter:
http://www.bonsalunos.pt/Newsletter.htm

Does anyone has any suggestion that would improve my HTML markup?
Click to expand...

I still think that black background is a bad idea. The title elements are
a dark green (?) and there just is not enough contrast. How about a light
background, perhaps white, or old lace?
 

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