Newsletters are a special type of NeatClubs document. They are identical to other documents except that Newsletters can be sent by e-mail. When we look at a document listing showing documents in the category "Newsletter" below, an e-mail icon appears indicating that these documents can be sent by e-mail.
You may create a newsletter by selecting “Create a Newsletter” from the “Newsletters” menu.
The figure below shows the screen for creating a new newsletter. Once you have completed this screen you can press the “Create Newsletter” button. The properties for newsletters are similar to those for documents described earlier.
After Creating the Newsletter, a screen similar to the one below will appear that confirms the details of the newly created Newsletter.
You can click on the text at the bottom of the screen above that says “Edit Contents of this Document or Web Page” to begin entering content for your newsletter. The process of editing a newsletter is identical to the process of editing any web page or other document in the system.
NeatClubs also supports a simple mail-merge functionality. If you embed fields from your membership database inside {%...%} symbols before sending the e-mail, the system will automatically substitute the mail merge field codes with the values in the database corresponding to that member. Needless to say, before using a mail merge, it is important to ensure that the data in your member database is accurate and current.
You can display a pop-up window consisting of the available mail-merge fields by clicking on the “View List of Mail Merge Field Codes for Newsletters” link that appears just above the red bar when editing a document or newsletter. A default set of Mail Merge Field Codes are shown below.
The data fields for your members database are defined under “System Setup” / “Utility Functions” / "Configure Database".
Once you have created your newsletter and saved it, the newsletter will appear in the detailed view of your document library. You may search for the newsletter by searching for a key term such as “September” or by filtering to only display documents belonging to Newsletters category. Remember that the system category for the newsletter must be set to “Newsletters” before the document will be treated as content that can be sent by e-mail.