So you want a newsletter, huh?
You have had your website for a little while, your business is running well and you want to send out newsletters. Everyone does it and it seems easy enough. But there are a few decisions to make depending on your computer skills, size of mailing list and plans for the future. There is also a little knowledge required if you want to save money, or if you want to know what the value is behind email marketing services.
An often overlooked issue for newcomers is the fact that there are many different email programs out there, and all have a slightly different way of presenting your content. So you have to make sure your readers will be able to see what you are trying to show them. Some email programs like Outlook are capable of showing graphic images and fancy layouts but nevertheless they are very limited in their capabilities, but if your readers use a different email program or read their mail online, chances are they cannot see the images or the layout is all messed up even if it shows ok on your side when you send it.
If you want to send out your newsletter with images it will be like a webpage where images are stored online and downloaded as the user opens the email. The underlying format is called HTML which is a language that describes how web pages look like.
Traditionally your internet browser is specialized in interpreting HTML pages and all browsers like Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome, etc, will render a HTML page pretty much the way they are intended to look like.
The same does not apply to email programs. Traditionally they are not designed to handle HTML content and some are very basic when it comes to being able rendering that kind of content. They are all very good in showing straight simple text and most can handle basic HTML.
The question is, how can you make sure your newsletter appears the way it is intended for all your readers.
So what should you do?
Newsletter format
Instead of writing the entire content of what you have to say onto a page, you could write articles on your website blog, and then when you are ready to create your newsletter simply write short teasers with links to the relevant article on your blog. That way you can keep your message short even if you have a lot to say or show. This method works well with all sorts of email formats whether basic or full HTML
If you don’t want to engage a professional service (or self service) you need to keep things as simple as possible and limit yourself to common fonts. You can use various font sizes, bold italic and even font colour but and don’t use images, tables and other layout tricks.
Sending emails as an attachment is not recommended. Most people do not open attachment newsletters let alone read it.
When it comes to actually sending your newsletter, there are a number of ways you can do this. Depending on the size of your database you need to pick an appropriate distribution method. More about this is described in the next chapter.
Basic options
If you only have a small amount of recipients in your database and you want to save some money then you can use your email program, eg. Outlook and put your recipients addresses in the Bcc field and send it off like any other email. Bcc stands for blind carbon copy and ensures the privacy of your recipients. If you don’t use Bcc, all your recipients will see all other recipients email addresses, which is certainly not desirable.
This method works with small amount of email addresses. Generally I would not recommend it for more than 100 recipients, but it depends on your mail service provider. The safest thing you can do is to send your newsletter in plain old text, pretty boring, but failsafe. However you don’t have to go to this extreme. You can in fact switch to HTML and apply some basic formatting like bold, and different font sizes. Most email readers are pretty good at handling those. You can also even use links to various articles on your website. That way all your images and fancy formatting can be online.
A newsletter that only sends out teasers with links to various online articles is very well suited for all sorts of levels from basic text based to fancy full HTML newsletters.
If you have many customers and still don’t want to spend much money then you can still apply the method above, but you would need to find out how many emails you can send out without getting blocked by your email provider. Another method is to use an online service to send out the newsletter, that way there is virtually no limit on how big your mailing list can be. This does not have to be a paid service. If you use WordPress (you do if you have the site designed and hosted by us) we can install a plugin for you that gives you the ability to do this yourself. The additional benefit is that you don’t have to worry about subscribers as users manage their own subscription online.
Obviously you are still very much restricted in how your newsletter will look like.
Professional options
I you want your newsletter to look professional and you still don’t want to spend much money then you can use our Newsletter service. Apart from full HTML Newsletters with a professional look you also get comprehensive reports about who opened your message and what they did with your email etc.
If you are computer savvy and want to do it yourself, this service won’t cost you much at all, but even if you want a full personal service it is still affordable.
Initially you need a newsletter template that matches your website design. There are a number of free templates you can pick and / or modify to your needs, or you can get us to design a professional template for you that matches your website.
Anti Spam and Bounced emails
In all of the above scenarios you need to somehow maintain your list of email addresses. You also need to make sure you are not breaking any anti-spam legislation or appear to the reader as a spammer. None of this is obviously much of an issue for you if you opt for the full service professional solution as we take care of it all. If you choose the do-it-yourself professional option or any other option, you need to know what is required and act accordingly.
Here is what you need to do. Fully disclose your business contact details on your email along with an unsubscribe link, where people can manage their subscription. You also need to disclose the reasons why they are receiving this message. Along with that it is not necessary but favourably looked at, if the recipient’s email address appears on their individual message. If you have the recipients name in your database you can even address each reader with a personal greeting.
Inevitably some of the messages bounce back when emails become no longer valid. Also people may unsubscribe from your list. This is a situation you need to act on if you want to keep your reputation. Again this will all be part of the full service option, but in a self managed scenario it is your responsibility. Luckily there are free WordPress plugins and other free tools available that help you to achieve this which I can set up for you for no charge.
Please contact us for further information.
Perfect Health website launched
We are proud to announce the official launch of the Perfect Health Body and Mind website. This site is a Perfect example demonstrating the benefits of the Content Management System WordPress: flexibility, expandability and ease of creating and modifying the content of the website.
Fintel social network site
We are proud to announce the all new Fintel Financial Intelligence website. Heavily focused on the Fintel community members, one of the site’s main feature is a fully featured social networking section. The launch beginning of this month was an instant success and hit rates have been up since. Fintel offers a range of financial education products from live classes to recorded training DVDs.
B Balanced now online
The latest addition to my portfolio is the new website of a local thriving health business owned and operated by Leisa Rocker. B Balanced is focusing on homeopathy, a gentle alternative to traditional western medicine. Needless to say that her site too has been done in WordPress with the use of the beautiful theme Azul 1.51 by Switchroyale which of course I had to tweak so that it would fit just the way I wanted it.
B Balanced’s website www.bb6.com is a typical example of a simple content management system, where the website owner has maximum flexibility in creating pages and posts as well as maintaining them without having to worry about breaking anything.
I am very grateful to all who made this an all the other WordPress sites that I have built possible. My thanks goes to all contributors of WordPress and the various plugins, the author of the Azul theme and last but not least Leisa for giving me the oportunity to create this wonderful website.
MBA Queensland website redesigned
In 2007 I designed the website for the Medical Benevolent Association Queensland in Australia on Joomla 1.1, which was a pretty good option at the time. But, since I hadn’t done any upgrades to the site, it was well and truly out of date by now. So I decided to take the time and do the usual pre-upgrade tests only to find out that Joomla 1.5 was not what I expected it to be.
Nothing worked, the template was broken, plugins did not run any more and upgrades were not available.
The bottom line was that I would have had to re-build the whole site again from scratch on a platform which I wasn’t too familiar with any more.
By that time, WordPress was already my best friend when it came to web development tools. So the decision was not difficult to build the new MBA Qld site on this excellent platform. It did not take me all that long and with my new helper Artisteer I had found a tool which is great for people like me who just can’t seem to find a good enough of-the-shelf theme.
How to transfer your WordPress site manually between hosts
Here is the Scenario:
Your WordPress website is currently hosted on Linux with a company, lets call it OldHost. They do not use cPanel. This website needs to be transferred to your new company with a minimum of interruptions to e-mail and to the actual site. We call the new company NewHost and they provide you with cPanel on Linux.
Note this is a procedure that does not include full testing of the site. Additional steps may be required if uptime and full functionality is critical. If you do not have registered a domain name with your new hosting provider yet or if you want to use the same domain name you may be able to access your site using your ip address and the username preceeded by the tilde (~) charachter. However if you use WordPress you cannot test the site fully with this preliminary domain name as WP will throw a 404 on any virtual subfolders. But your home page should still show correctly as long as you use the correct path in your database (step 15)
Steps:
- Create user account with NewHost (cPanel)
- Create the domain name, which in this procedure is to be assumed the same as the one on the existing site with OldHost
- Create a blank database with a unique password on NewHost
- Setup an FTP connection using the IP address (since there is no domain name assigned yet) see also http://www.netlogistics.com.au/support/pre_ip/
- Access OldHost’s file manager and zip the entire site folder content.
- Using an FTP program (I use FileZilla) copy the zip file onto your desktop.
- Upload the zip file to the NewHost’s server.
- While it is uploading go to OldHost’s MySQL Database and log onto your users’s phpMyAdmin account.
- Export the database (not the information_schema) to SQL. The default settings should be fine. No need to save it as a file.
- Copy the resulting SQL code into the clipboard and paste it into a simple text editor e.g. Windows Notepad.
- Log into the new user’s NL cPanel and open phpMyAdmin
- Click on SQL or click on the database name and then click on the SQL tab.
- Take note of the database name.
- Back in the open Notepad delete the line starting with CREATE DATABASE and replace the database name in the next line (USE …) with the new name.
- If you use a different domain name (e.g. for testing purposes) use the Replace command to replace all occurrences of www.oldDomainName.com with www.newDomainName.com
- Copy the entire text into the clipboard
- Go back to NewHost phpMyAdmin and paste it into the Run SQL query field and click Go
- Go back to the NewHost cPanel, open the File Manager (choose to show hidden files) and locate the zip file you uploaded.
- Unzip the zip file into the www folder.
- Delete the zip files as they are no longer needed.
- Make sure the folder structure is the same as on the old server (e.g. it is not in another subfolder). Important: if you need to move things around you want to see & select hidden files as well.
- Edit wp-config.php and change the database details to the new values: DB_NAME, DB_USER and DB_PASSWORD
- At this point you can bring up the website using the ip address if you don’t have assigned the domain name yet. You should see your theme and a bunch of error messages. That means it’s all good. Once you can access the site with the proper domain name it should all work.
- Back on the NewHost cPanel, set up all e-mail accounts that you have on the old server.
- Flick the big switch: With your registrar change the name servers to your own name servers and then wait. They say it takes 24-48 hours but I found that I can access the site already within a view hours. I think it takes that long until the last server on the globe has updated. Therefore it is a good idea to wait a couple of days before starting to delete files on the old location.
- Don’t forget to setup your e-mail program with the new details and keep checking the old e-mail box for a day or two in case there are any late arrivals.
I would be gratefull for any feedback or contributions to this topic.
Spinning Earth now available as plugin
The little 3D Spinning Earth Flash video clip that has impressed so many is now available as a WordPress plugin. Its official name is Utech Spinning Earth and it can be implemented by simple WordPress shortcode. There are a number of settings that can be changed, to make it look exactly the way it is desired. The initial response from WordPress users was overwhelming with positve comments from all over the world.
For more information please visit the Utech Spinning Earth plugin page or the WordPress Plugin Directory entry where you can also rate it.
New version of Spinning Earth 3D animation
A new version of the free 3D animation of our spinning earth globe is now available for download. Special algorithms have been used to achieve excellent graphis while staying extremely small in file size to ensure fast download times for any website. This version now allows the modification of the background of the animated flash file. To find out more and to download a free copy of the Spinning Earth animation visit the Spinning Earth page
World Clock plugin for WordPress launched
Today we launched our first free WordPress plugin called Utech World Time for WP, after successfully adopting WordPress as our preferred Internet publishing platform. The plugin creates simple digital world clocks from any of over 600 locations. (For a full list of available location see www.utechworld.com/locations/).
TheUtech World Time for wp plugin utilizes services provided by timeanddate.com as well as from us inside an iframe. This is the first one in a row of planned plugins for WordPress. For more information or to download this free plugin please visit our plugin page or the WordPress Plugin Directory entry.
Current Newsletter
coming soon