Newsletter Best Practices

Below are some best practices that may be helpful if you intend to send Newsletters from your web-site.

1. Ensure that your mail settings are correct.

You can check this in the System Setup under "Preferences" / "E-Mail".  These settings govern who e-mail is sent from and what the reply to address is. It is also a good idea to specify a bounce-address so that rejected mail can be bounced to a known location. Ideally this should be an e-mail account hosted on the same server as your web-site as this will look less like SPAM to mail recipients.

2. Ensure that you have an appropriate header graphic for outgoing e-mails

You can upload a graphic to appear at the top of all of your outgoing e-mail messages including newsletters. A good size for such a graphic is approximately 80 pixels tall by 300 pixels wide. We recommend that graphics have a white background since most e-mail clients display a white background text pane. Graphics that you intend to use as a header for outgoing E-Mail or Newsletters should be assigned to the System Photo Category called "EMail Header Graphic".  This will cause the graphic to be selectable on pull-down lists where the header graphic is specified. The E-Mail Setup screen described in step 1 above is where you can specify the header graphic.

3. Test E-Mail from your site

Under "System Setup" / "Utility Functions" / "Test E-Mail" you can send a sample e-mail to yourself (or anyone else). This allows  you to see what e-mail will look like when sent from the web-site.  This is also a useful tool to isolate problems if a particular user cannot receive e-mail from your site.  Outgoing test e-mails will include the header graphic configured in step 2 above.

4. Setup a page header & footer

In the document library, you will find documents in the "System" category called "EMail Header Text" and "EMail Footer Text".  This is a good place to put any information that you would like to have accompany all e-mails or newsletters that originate from the web-site.  You can use the "Test EMail" feature described above to make sure that headers and footers are appearing in outgoing e-mail as they should.  Things like privacy policies and disclaimers are often sent along with outgoing mail. Some portions of the footer are generated by the software and cannot be changed.

5. Select a method to enter or build a membership list

There are several ways to populate your system with a membership list including:

6.  Ensure you have permission to send to your intended recipients

SPAM is a serious problem on the internet, and as such penalties for organizations caught sending unsolicited commercial e-mail are increasingly harsh.  If you are sending e-mail, please familiarize yourself with the CAN-SPAM act. Laws in Canada and the US are similar as they relate to unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE).

7.  Understand that not all recipients might receive your e-mail

In this age of SPAM and SPAM filters, there is a reasonable chance that your perfectly legitimate e-mail will be filtered. Good guidelines for avoiding being marked as SPAM are provided at  the link below.

http://www.nancyschwartz.com/email_newsletter_success.html

8. Be aware of SPF records

SPAM filters are increasingly checking for the presence of SPF records in their effort to classify incoming e-mail. While we will create an appropriate SPF record for you (if we can!), in cases where we do not manage DNS services there are issues that can arise:

a) If your e-mail is hosted with another provider and the MX server(s) for the domain is/are outside of our network and not explicitly authorized in an SPF record, the chances of your mail being categorized as SPAM by a recipient are increased.

b) Also, if you are sending from a residential ISP, but sending mail on behalf of your hosted web-site, this too has a good chance of being classified as SPAM - it is desirable to add networks that you frequently initiate e-mail from to the SPF record. Residential ISPs sometimes require that mail users register any domains with them that they are sending e-mail on behalf of.

More information about SPF records is available under our Advanced Topics under About Sender Policy Framework (SPF) Records.

9. Consider using a bulk-mailer

Sending reliable bulk e-mails is technically complex. Companies that specialize in this include Constant Contact and MailChimp. While sending mail from NeatWorx e-mail servers works, NeatWorx is unlikely to be recognized by recipients as a known and reputable sender. As a result, policies built into their SPAM filter may be more sceptical of mail originating from our servers. (This is a complex topic and we'll skip all the details here)

A good solution is to consider using a reputable bulk mailer. This can be done very inexpensively and it allows your NeatWorx provided web-site to transparently relay outgoing mail through the bulk sender. Setting up e-mail for use with a bulk-mailer account is covered in the website E-Mail Setup documentation.

10. Remove invalid addresses from your member database

You should check bounced e-mails. E-mails are generally bounced because the recipient is invalid or because the recipient is refusing to receive e-mails for some other reason. In either case, it is not a good idea to continue sending e-mail to recipients who are bouncing e-mail. This is not courteous, and receiving sites are more likely to believe that you are sending SPAM and block you.

To prevent e-mails from being included in outgoing mail: