Newsletter
Created by Orckestra
Newsletter User Guide
- Introduction
- Managing Mailing Lists and Newsletters
- Sending Newsletters
- Viewing Statistics
- Using Subscription Forms on Website
- Test Your Knowledge
Introduction
Nowadays, a newsletter is one of the effective ways of reaching your existing and prospective customers as well as a great tool to maintain a community around your products and services. Keeping your clients updated with your latest information ensures that they will not miss what you want them to be aware of.
The Composite.Community.Newsletter add-on allows you to prepare and regularly send newsletters to your customers and subscribed users informing them of your news, upcoming events and other activities.
The user-friendly administrative tools for managing newsletters are directly integrated into the CMS console.
Figure 1: Newsletter
The Composite.Community.Newsletter add-on keeps track of all your mailing campaigns and provides you with statistics for a specific newsletter or a recipient.
Besides, if you want your website users to subscribe or unsubscribe from your mailing lists directly from your website, you can easily add these possibilities to your website using a number of XSLT-based and easy-to-redesign functions.
This guide is intended for editors who will create mailing lists and newsletters as well as send these newsletters and keep track of mailing statistics.
We assume that you know how to work with the Content and Layout perspectives of C1 CMS. We also assume that you have an idea of what mailing lists and newsletters are in terms of the Web and how the subscription works.
As an editor, you will primarily work within the Content perspective, creating and sending newsletters.
To personalize newsletters, you should know how to add fields to web pages.
To add the Subscribe and Unsubscribe forms to your website, you will also need to know how to add functions to web pages,
You should have access to the Content and Layout perspectives to create and edit newsletters, modify web pages and create and edit newsletter templates.
To get started with the Newsletter add-on, you are supposed to take a number of steps.
Getting Started | ||
Step | Activity | Chapter or section |
1 | Install the Composite.Community.Newsletter add-on. | |
2 | Create a subject-based mailing list and add members to this list. | |
3 | Add members to subject-based lists | |
4 | Create a datatype-based mailing list | |
5 | Create a function-based mailing list | |
6 | Create a newsletter template | |
7 | Create a newsletter | |
8 | Send the newsletter either immediately or scheduled for a specific date and time | |
9 | View statistics of your newsletter campaigns | |
10 | Add the subscription form to a page | |
In the following few chapters, you will learn more about these and other activities.
The following is the list of terms and their definitions used throughout this guide.
Terms and Definitions | |
Term | Definition |
Mailing list | A collection of names and email addresses used for sending newsletters to multiple recipients |
Mailing list (subject-based) | A mailing list in the Newsletter add-on based on a subject. Members are added manually to this list. |
Mailing list (datatype-based) | A mailing list in the Newsletter add-on imported from a datatype that contain email addresses. Members are imported automatically to this list. |
Mailing list (function-based) | A mailing list in the Newsletter add-on imported from an XSLT or Razor function that lists email addresses in its output. Members are imported automatically to this list. |
Newsletter template | A template that used to create newsletters. It usually includes a number of defaults that newsletters reuse. |
Newsletter confirm template | A template that used to create emails sent to subscribers to explicitly confirm their subscription. |
Newsletter | An electronic publication regularly distributed via email. It usually covers one main topic that is of interest to its subscribers. It may include but not limited to news, event announcements, or new feature descriptions. |
To be able to send newsletters, make sure that you have configured an email host by editing ~/web.config and including the /configuration/system.net/mailSettings section. For information about configuring the e-mail host in web.config, please refer to http://docs.c1.orckestra.com/ConfiguringEmailHost.