HarmonySite allows you to send out regular newsletter bulletins to either your members or your friends/supporters - via the mailing lists system. These newsletters have the following features...
- They are attractive, using your existing "branded" email template, with your own colour scheme and logo
- They are primarily constructed from existing news items and events on your website. You "assemble" a newsletter from existing news items and events, rather than create the newsletter from scratch. You are also able to add extra custom text/images to each newsletter if you want, but generally this is not necessary.
- Assembly of a new newsletter is easy and user-friendly. You can even drag-and-drop the articles in your newsletter into the correct order.
- A table of contents (with links) will be added to the top of the newsletter automatically
- There is a simple, working unsubscribe system for your friends/supporters
Before you create a newsletter
As mentioned above, each newsletter is "assembled" from existing news items (or any other Bulletin Board items) and events (plus other ad hoc text). This means that before you create the newsletter, the news items and events must already exist on your website. You're likely already familiar with creating events. In case you don't know how to create a news item, they are simply entries on the "Bulletin Board".
Strong recommendation: To make your newsletter as attractive as possible, each news item and each event should have an associated "image", which will show on the newsletter. The newsletter will still work if the items on the newsletter don't have images, but it will look a lot better if they do.
Images should be sensibly sized!! Digital photos straight out of the camera will be around 3000 pixels wide, and will be around 3 Megabytes - entirely unsuitable for an email newsletter. Before adding your images, resize them to around 300 - 500 pixels wide. And "portrait" images will generally look better than "landscape" images.
To add an image to a news item, update the news item and find the following field...
To add an image to an event, update the event, click the Public tab, and find the following field...
Also, if you're planning to send the newsletter to your group's friends/supporters, then you will probably also want to ensure that each news item or event you're planning to include in the newsletter is set to Public access.
Creating a newsletter
To create a newsletter, do the following...
- Visit your Newsletter page
- Click the Add new newsletter button in the top-right corner of the page
- Enter a title for the newsletter. This will form the "subject" of the email that gets sent
- Select an Access level required. Public Access newsletters will be for your friends/supporters mailing list,Limited member access or Regular member access newsletters will be for your members mailing list
- (optional) Add some Introductory text. This will appear at the top of your newsletter, before any of the news items or events you add, and before the table of contents.
- Click Save at the bottom. You are taken to the page where you can "compose" the newsletter (assemble the news items and events). This page looks very similar to how it will look to the newsletter recipients.
- In the Add section box at the bottom of the page, nominate (click on) what you want to add, and select one of the following
- A news item (Post/Document/News item/etc)
- An upcoming event
- A photo album
- Some ad hoc text ("custom text")
- Select the news item or event, or add the custom text
- Click the Add section button
- Repeat steps 7 and 8 until your newsletter is complete
Note that it is possible to reorder your newsletter sections, simply by dragging and dropping the sections. Click your mouse anywhere in a section, then drag the section up or down until it is in the correct place.
Sending the newsletter
At the top of the page is a Preview email link. Click that to see what the newsletter will look like when it arrives in someone's inbox.
If you're happy with it, click the Email newsletter now link at the top of the page.
Note: If you don't see an Email newsletter now link at the top of the page, this is because your newsletter is not set to be for public access (i.e. it's for members), and there's no members mailing list selected in the HarmonySite configuration. Assuming you actually have a Members mailing list, you can fix that as follows...
- Click the little "cog" icon at the top of the page
- Click the cog icon next to HarmonySite
- Click the Configuration tab
- Scroll down to the Mailing Lists section
- Ensure that your members mailing list is selected in the Members drop-down list
- Click Save at the bottom
So now that the Email newsletter now link is visible, click on it to send the newsletter. If the newsletter is marked as being for public access, and you have a friends/supporters mailing list, you will be prompted to select whether you want to send it to your friends/supporters mailing list or to your members mailing list. Otherwise it will simply go to your members.
Future enhancements
Currently there are only three choices for the items you are able to add to a newsletter: News items, Events, and ad hoc text. This list can be expanded in future. For example, we've had a suggestion to allow a simple list of upcoming events to be added. If you selected to add that list to your newsletter, you'd nominate the "from" and "to" date range, and then a simple list of events would be added to your newsletter. That option is coming soon.
We'd like to hear from you about what other types of sections you'd like to be able to add to your newsletters.