Newsletters

The Newsletters functionality can be used to send customized e-mail content to a list of e-mail addresses. Also, it’s possible to offer a subscribe/unsubscribe form on the website, so visitors of the website can subscribe online and newsletter recipients can unsubscribe.

It’s important to know that in our system, a newsletter will contain 1 or more “editions”. So each time you want to send a newsletter (e.g. once a month), you will have to create and send a new edition. So you could see the newsletter as a group of newsletter instances (the newsletter editions).

1. In “Admin”, go to “Newsletters”.
    
2. Click “ Add newsletter”.
    
3. Now you can create the newsletter;
    
   a.) At “Name”, fill in the global name of the newsletter, e.g. “Website Newsletter”.
   
   b.) Check “Send to all members” if you want to send the newsletter editions to all members.
   
   c.) Check “Only unique e-mail addresses” if you want to send the newsletter editions only to unique e-mail addresses. In Visual ClubWeb, multiple members can share the same e-mail address. If you don't check this box, it's possible that multiple copies of a newsletter edition will be sent to one e-mail address.
   
   d.) If you want to offer a subscribe/unsubscribe form on the website, check “(Un)Subscribe form”. At the end of each newsletter e-mail will be automatically added a unsubscribe link as well.
   
   e.) At “Subscribe form intro”, you can enter an introduction text for the subscribe form.
   
   f.) Click “Save” to save the newsletter.

Editions

4. At the Newsletters page, click on the name/link of the newsletter you just have created.
    
5. Click “ Add new newsletter edition”.
    
6. Now you can create the newsletter edition;
   
   a.) At “Date”, fill in the date of the newsletter edition.
   Please note: This is not the date that the newsletter will be send, but this date is used if you want to display all sent newsletters on the website.
   
   b.) At “Subject”, fill in the name of the newsletter edition, e.g. “Website Newsletter - October edition”. This will also be the subject of the e-mail.
   
   c.) Below the subject you can create the content for your newsletter edition.
   Tip: If this is the first edition you create, you can start creating a layout using a table, with images and colors matching your (corporate) identity. Then click save, and click “ ” at the edition you just created to create a copy. You can create a copy each time you want to send a new newsletter edition. In this way you always keep the newsletter in the same look & feel.
   
   d.) Click “Save” to save the edition.
   Please note: The newsletter edition has not been sent yet.

Recipients

7. Click “ Recipients”.
   Tip: You can also click on this icon at the main Newsletters page in Admin. 
    
8. Here you can view and add/edit the newsletter recipients. If visitors have subscribed to your newsletter (via the subscription form), then they will appear in this list as well.
    
   a.) Click “ Add new recipient” to add a new recipient (e-mail address) manually.
    
   b.) If you want to import a CSV containing e-mail addresses, click “ Import”. 
    
9. At the top of the page click “« Back” to go back to the list of newsletter editions.

Send a newsletter edition

10. At the end of the newsletter edition you want to send, click on the “” mail icon to send the newsletter edition. The e-mails are sent immediately, and the date will be displayed in the “Sent” column.
     

 

Add the subscribe/unsubscribe form to the website menu

11. In Admin, go to “Menu Structure”
    Please note: Only if you have checked “(Un)Subscribe form” at the Newsletter (See step 3.d.), you will have a newsletter subscription form on the website. But you need to link it to a menu item before a visitor can access this form.
    The recipient will see a “Unsubscribe” link at the end of each received newsletter edition. This link will go to the form directly.  
     
12. Add a new menu item in the menu structure.
     
13. At “Page type” choose “Newsletter (un)subscribe form”. Then select the newsletter.