Simplenews is a module for Drupal that allows users to create and send newsletters to subscribed users. It provides functionality for managing newsletter content types, subscriptions, and sending newsletters on a schedule. Additional modules can add features like including views in newsletters, tracking analytics, and selecting content to include. Alternatives include using Views Send with Views Bulk Operations or a third party service like MailChimp or Campaign Monitor.

1. Newsletters in
Drupal using
Simplenews
0032 2 306 02 11 Weiveldlaan 37g,
info@desk02.be 1930 Zaventem,
www.desk02.be België

2. Content of this presentation
 About Simplenews
 Simplenews setup
 Additional module for Simplenews
 Alternatives to Simplenews

3. About Simplenews

4. About Simplenews
 About newsletters and e-mail marketing
 What is Simplenews?
 Why should you use Simplenews?

5. About newsletters and e-mail marketing
 If you are using your website as a marketing tool,
chances are high you will also want to send
newsletters to your users as part of an e-mail
marketing campaign
 E-mail marketing enables you to actively
communicate with your existing customers and
visitors instead of passively waiting for them to
return to your website or -store.
 You can easily target your e-mails by source,
interest, or list.

6. About newsletters and e-mail marketing
 Unlike other marketing methods, results from e-mail
campaigns are easily measured
 Results are reported in terms of
 “opens”, which report how many people saw your offer
or newsletters
 Click Through Rates (CTRs), which measure how many
people actually clicked on the links in your email

7. What is Simplenews?
 Simplenews publishes and sends newsletters to lists
of subscribers

8. Why should you use Simplenews?
 If you already use a Drupal powered website, you
might prefer a tool which integrates with your CMS
 The template les support CCK elds (http://drupal.org/project/cck)
and modules like ImageCache (http://drupal.org/project/imagecache)
 Even more advanced is the ability to embed speci c
Views into the templates
 It is a good alternative if you don't have a need for
complex HTML based e-mails

9. Simplenews setup

10. Simplenews setup
 Con guration
 Content type
 Newsletter management
 Sending a newsletter
 Multi-language newsletters

11. Con guration
 General
 Select content type and vocabulary
 Newsletter
 Default newsletter settings and sender data
 Settings include priority, sender information and format
 Subscription
 Settings to synchronize email subscriptions to user accounts
 Adjusting the con rmation e-mail texts
 Send mail
 Cron and debug options

12. Newsletter
settings

13. Subscription
settings

14. Send mail settings
 With cron
 Set the 'cron throttle' to the number of newsletters sent per
cron run
 Too high values may lead to mail server overload or you may
hit hosting restrictions
 Without cron
 All newsletters will be sent immediately when saving the node
 If not all emails can be sent within the available php execution
time, the remainder will be sent by cron
 Therefore ALWAYS enable cron

15. Content type
 Newsletters are a separate content type
 The newsletter content type is extendable with CCK
 The newsletter content type is theme-able as any
other content type

16. Newsletter management
 Sent issues
 A list of newsletters that have been sent or are pending
 Draft issues
 A list of newsletter that have not been sent yet
 Newsletters
 List, add and edit newsletter series (taxonomy terms)
 Subscriptions
 List, export, mass subscribe or mass unsubscribe users

17. Newsletter management: Sent & Drafts
 Manage or view previous or unsent newsletters

18. Newsletter management: Newsletters
 Each newsletter category is a taxonomy term
 Each has an own subscription block
 If a user has a role that is allowed to subscribe, he/
she can subscribe to all the newsletters

19. Newsletter management: Subscriptions
 View and manage all the subscribed users
 Mass subscribe or unsubscribe users
 Export subscription data

20. Newsletter management: Subscriptions
 Both anonymous and authenticated users can opt-
in or opt-out to different mailing lists
 Anonymous users receive a con rmation mail with a
link to a con rmation page
anonymous authenticated

21. Newsletter management: Subscriptions
 Authenticated users have the possibility to manage
newsletter subscriptions on his/her account

22. Sending a newsletter
 Create a newsletter node like any other content
 Select the newsletter category (taxonomy term)
 You can use tokens in the body text:
 !site: the name of your website
 !uri: a link to your homepage
 !uri_brief: homepage link without the http://
 !date: today's date
 !login_uri: link to login page
 !con rm_subscribe_url: subscription con rmation link
 !con rm_unsubscribe_url: unsubscription link
 !newsletter_url: link to this newsletter issue
 !newsletter_name: name of this newsletter series

23. Sending a newsletter

24. Sending a newsletter
 Select whether you want to:
 not send the newsletter
 send the newsletter
 send a test newsletter

25. Multi-language newsletters
 Simplenews supports multilingual newsletters for:
 node translation
 multilingual taxonomy
 url path pre xes
 When translated newsletter issues are available
subscribers receive the newsletter in their preferred
language (according to account setting)
 Translation module is required for newsletter
translation

26. Multi-language newsletters
 Multilingual taxonomy of ‘Localized terms’ and ‘per
language terms’ is supported
 ‘per language vocabulary’ is not supported
 I18n-taxonomy module is required.

27. Multi-language newsletters
 Use ‘Localized terms’ for a multilingual newsletter
 Taxonomy terms are translated and translated newsletters are
each tagged with the same (translated) term
 Subscribers receive the newsletter in the preferred language
set in their account settings or in the site default language
 Use ‘per language terms’ for mailing lists each with a
different language
 Newsletters of different language each have their own tag and
own list of subscribers
 Path pre xes are added to footer message according to the
subscribers preferred language

28. Multi-language newsletters
 The preferred language of anonymous users is set
based on the interface language of the page they
visit for subscription
 Anonymous users can not change their preferred
language
 Users with an account on the site will be subscribed
with the preferred language as set in their account
settings

29. Additional modules
for Simplenews

30. Additional modules for Simplenews
 MimeMail (http://drupal.org/project/mimemail)
 Insert View (http://drupal.org/project/insert_view)
 Simplenews Content Selection (http://drupal.org/project/Simplenews_content_selection)
 Simplenews Analytics (http://drupal.org/project/Simplenews_analytics)
 Simplenews Statistics (http://drupal.org/project/Simplenews_statistics)
 Simplenews Scheduler (http://drupal.org/project/Simplenews_scheduler)
 Simplenews on Register (http://drupal.org/project/Simplenews_register)

31. Mime Mail
 The mail functionality accepts an HTML message
body, mime-encodes it and sends it
 If the HTML has embedded graphics, these graphics
are MIME-encoded and included as a message
attachment
 Adopts your site's style by automatically including
your theme's stylesheet les in a themeable HTML
message format

32. Insert View
 This module has a security vulnerability, but can be
used safely if you are careful with con gurations of
views and input formats.
 Replacement patterns
 [view:name of view] is replaced by the content listing
 [view:name of view=name of display] invokes the view using the
speci ed display
 [view:name of view=name of display=arg1,arg2,arg3] invokes the
view using the speci ed display and passes arg1, arg2 and arg3
to the view
 [view:name of view==arg1] passes arg1 to the view and will use
the "default" display set for the view.

33. Insert View
 As easy as:

34. Insert View
 As easy as:
Hide these with
theming or in the
views tools (admin/
build/views/tools)

35. Insert View
 As easy as:

36. Simplenews Content Selection
 Allows you to select content from your website and
send a newsletter with the selected content

37. Simplenews Content Selection
 Select content from admin/content/node and
choose ‘Create newsletter’ from the update options

38. Simplenews Content Selection
 Give the newsletter a title
 Order the included posts any way you want

39. Simplenews Content Selection
 Select which content types that can be selected at
admin/settings/simplenews/scs

40. Simplenews Content Selection
 Select content at admin/content/scs_node_selection

41. Simplenews Content Selection
 And order the included posts any way you want

42. Simplenews Content Selection Views Integration
 Depends on views and views_bulk_operations
 Create a view with the views Style set to ‘Bulk
Operations’ and the ‘Create newsletter
(scs_views_create_newsletter_action)’ operation
selected.

44. Simplenews Content Selection Views Integration
 Example view:
 Which leads to ...

45. Simplenews Content Selection Views Integration
 Which leads to ...

46. Simplenews Content Selection Views Integration

47. Simplenews Analytics
 Depends on Google Analytics (http://drupal.org/project/google_analytics)
 Adds tags to links in in the email. This helps you to
track clicks in your email newsletters with Google
Analytics
 Permission 'administer simplenews settings' is used.
No additional permissions are required.

48. Simplenews Analytics
 Results in a link like: http://www.yoursite.be/node/1?
utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Drupal%20newsletter

49. Simplenews Statistics
 Gathers newsletter statistics like the open rate and
click-through rate
 Open Rate is the number of people who open a
newsletter divided by the amount of subscriptions
 Click-through rate is the number of people who clicked a
link in a newsletter divided by the amount of
subscriptions

50. Simplenews Statistics

51. Simplenews Scheduler
 Sends a newsletter as a re-occurring item based on
a schedule
 Creates a new ‘edition’ (rendered copy as HTML
Format) of a node at the time that it is required to
be sent again
 Works great with Insert View to place the content of
a view into a newsletter

52. Simplenews Scheduler

53. Simplenews Scheduler
 The editions have an extra tab (for those with
permissions) for viewing all editions as well as the
original newsletter they are generated from

54. Simplenews on Register
 Enhances simplenews by adding the ability to sign
up for newsletter from the user registration page

55. Alternatives to
Simplenews

56. Alternatives to Simplenews
 Inside Drupal
 Views Send (http://drupal.org/project/views_send) with Views Bulk Operations
(http://drupal.org/project/views_bulk_operations)
 Email Newsletters (http://drupal.org/project/enewsletter)

57. Views Send
 Create a view and add at least one column
containing e-mail addresses
 Create a ‘Page’ display and set the Style to ‘Bulk
Operations’
 Select the ‘Send mass mail
(views_send_mail_action)’ operation
 You can use exposed lters
 Messages are sent on cron runs

58. Views Send
 Basic settings at admin/settings/views_send

59. Views Send
 Example view:

60. Views Send
 Leads to:

61. Email newsletters
 Still in beta
 Many features:
 Multiple email newsletters
 set up as many as you need
 Plain text or HTML email
 Subscriber chooses which to receive
 Default can be set to either format
 Multiple schedules
 Each newsletter can have more than one schedule, e.g. Daily,
Monthly, Quarterly...

62. Email newsletters
 Many features:
 Include site content
 Restrict to content types (con gured accross all newsletters)
 Filter by category terms (con gurable on each newsletter)
 Include all new content if no terms are set for a newsletter
(option)
 Subscriber content control
 Subscriber can select which of the newsletter's terms they receive
content from
 Manual or scheduled send out
 Send manually ('Send Now' button), or send every (x) hours, (x) days,
or (x) months
 Bounced email handling
 (in development)

63. Email newsletters
 Many features:
 Personalization
 Pro le info can be added into email
 Token integration
 Templates
 Templates can use Drupal input formats, e.g. use PHP to create a
conditional plain text email
 Include teaser or full content
 Include content/teaser in newsletter based on length
 Email link authentication
 'Read more' links, and account control links, allow users to access
the site (based on their role) and their email subscription settings,
but without accessing their full site account.

64. Email newsletters
 And many dependencies:
 Access Permission Grouping (http://drupal.org/project/access_perm_group)
 Deliver (http://drupal.org/project/deliver)
 Bounced Email (http://drupal.org/project/bounced_email)
 HTML To Text (http://drupal.org/project/html2txt)
 Identity Hash (http://drupal.org/project/identity_hash)
 Publication (http://drupal.org/project/publication)
 Schedule (http://drupal.org/project/schedule)
 Subscribed (http://drupal.org/project/subscribed)
 Templates (http://drupal.org/project/templates)

65. Alternatives to Simplenews
 Outside Drupal
 How to include content from Drupal
 From an XML feed
 Copy/paste from the appropriate view
 MailChimp (http://drupal.org/project/mailchimp) (http://www.mailchimp.com)
 Account directed to one speci c client or company
 Campaign Monitor (http://drupal.org/project/campaignmonitor) (http://www.campaignmonitor.com/)
 Account directed to one company with multiple clients

66. MailChimp
 Set up a MailChimp account
 Create mailing lists in MailChimp
 Each list will have a block in Drupal

67. MailChimp
 Alter the subscription forms
 The elds from MailChimp will be shown in the block

68. MailChimp
 Alter the subscription forms
 The elds from MailChimp will be shown in the block

69. MailChimp
 Con gure MailChimp at admin/settings/mailchimp

70. MailChimp

72. MailChimp

73. MailChimp
 Send out e-mail campaigns from the MailChimp
website

74. MailChimp
 Follow up the reports

75. Campaign Monitor
 Set up a Campaign Monitor account
 Create a client
 Create a mailing list

76. Campaign Monitor
 Fill in the API key, client
ID and list ID at
admin/settings/
campaignmonitor

77. Campaign Monitor
 Create and send or resend an e-mail campaign

78. Campaign Monitor
 Follow up the reports

79. Interesting links
 Incomplete guide on d.o (http://drupal.org/node/369754)
 Simplenews theming and code snippet for an
alternate subscription block (http://drupal.org/node/369757)
 Simplenews theming (http://drupal.org/node/268404)