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Enewsletters & Eblasts

Caution: Before sending eNewsletters, your organization must be aware of spam regulations. It is required by law that users signing up for and accessing your eNewsletter be provided certain rights. More info on How to Comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.

An enewsletter (or “electronic” newsletter) is simply a newsletter that is sent via email. Publishing an enewsletter involves the same three steps as publishing a traditional paper newsletter: Gather Content, Design & Layout, and Distribute to Recipients. This article discusses the how-to of creating and sending enewsletters. Click here for "best-practices" tips.

 

  1. The first step in publishing an enewsletter is to gather the content of the publication. Depending on the focus of your publication and its complexity, you may create all of its content yourself or you may assign others to help you by writing articles, taking photographs, etc.

  2. The second step in publishing an enewsletter is to assemble the content into an appealing visual arrangement. With a traditional paper newsletter, you might use a program like Microsoft Word or Microsoft Publisher for this step. However, for an e-newsletter, you will use Radius to layout your page. It's just like creating any other page. You can add images, create hyperlinks, and format text (just like any other page on your site.)

  3. The third step in publishing an enewsletter is making sure people receive it. This will likely involve opening a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and creating a simple list of email addresses, saving it as a .csv file format, and using it as your "mailing list".


Step By Step

Enewsletters start their lives as pages. This allows for an online archive of previous enewsletters. It also supports the "view this email in your browser" functionality in case the email reader is having trouble displaying it properly. Once a page has been created, you use the enewsletter module to configure how it is sent.

  1. First, choose where you would like your enewsletter to be located on your site (you might create an "enewsletters" folder to organize all of your enewsletters in one place).

  2. Next, create a new page just as you would any other page on your site. This new page will be your enewsletter.

  3. When your enewsletter is ready to go, navigate to the Email tab, then the Enewsletter link.

    1. From Address - Provide a valid email address to which receipients can respond.

    2. From Name - The friendly display name for the email address. Often the name of your organization.
    3. Reply To Email Address - Where replies should be sent. Can be the same or different from the From Address.

    4. Email Subject - The Email Subject is what the recipient will see when they receive the email in their inbox. In this case, the actual Page Title (and Subtitle) are for organization purposes only - as you use the Email Subject to specify what the recipient actually sees.

    5. Page To Send - Select the page you've been working so hard on from the drop-down menu.

    6. Recipient Addresses - Type, copy-paste, or upload your list of email addresses.

    7. Click Send Mail.