Newsletter Pro

Newsletter Pro is an advanced version of Newsletter plugin for WordPress. Newsletter Pro replaces both Newsletter Extras package (which added extended functionalities to standard Newsletter plugin) and Newsletter plugin.

Hence, to upgrade, you need to follow the simple procedure below, while if you are installing for the first time you only need to add the plugin to your plugin folder and activate it.

Newsletter Pro is a totally different products from Extras package, so you can stick with Extras until any issue is resolved.

Features

• automatic delivery: Newsletter Pro can send automatically all newsletters breaking the whole process in small task o avoid overloading of the mail server and to bypass hosting providers limits
• statistics: Newsletter Pro can rewrite links in your messages to track every click on them giving data on which links are more clicked and the number of unique subscriber who clicked
• customized forms, a way to create in HTML your own subscription form with custom fields
• lists: users can subscribe and choose to be “linked” to specific lists you can use to send targeted messages
• locked content: want to make some content available only to subscribers? with a special short code you can hide parts of a post or page
• follow up: automatically send out a series of emails to new subscribers (every a configured amount of days)
• labels: directly from a special control panel you can change any labels (no more need to edit files)

Newsletter Pro is available to members of Satollo.net on download area. Read more about membership and when ready create your account.

Newsletter Pro upgrade

Newsletter Pro is a full plugin that replaces the Newsletter standard version and the Newsletter Extras. To install it follow the steps below:

1. unzip the plugin package and you’ll get a folder named “newsletter-pro” with a lot of files inside it
2. upload such folder on “wp-content/plugins” folder of you blog: you have to end up with a folder named “newsletter-pro” inside “wp-content/plugins”
3. go to the “Plugins” WordPress panel and DEACTIVATE the plugin named “Newsletter” if you have previously installed it: no configurations or subscribers will be lost
4. on the same panel find the plugin named “Newsletter Pro” and activate it: Newsletter and Newsletter Pro share the same configuration
5. check the Newsletter Pro configuration to see if all it’s right or adjust options if needed

You can safely delete the “newsletter-extras” folder: it is no more used.

Automatic delivery

Automatic delivery is an internal system that enable Newsletter Pro to send out a great number of emails dividing them in small batches.

For example, 1000 email can be send 20 at time every 5 minutes. The benefits of this system is to avoid hosting provider limits. Usually hosting providers limit the number of emails per hour (200 to 500 per hour). Don’t think about “small provider” such limits are imposed by Hostgator and Dreamhost too.

Hostgator has a limit of 500 emails per hour while Dreamhost has a limit of 200 emails per hour (but always check with them to have the latest limits).

Sending emails in small group grants to “bypass” those limits. Clearly the newsletter can take many hours to be delivered completely.

On version 2.0.0 of Newsletter the configuration of automatic delivery has been simplified and now you have only to set the maximum number of emails per hours that can be sent: automatic delivery system compute the number of “runs” and the number of emails per run.

Even if you provider has no limits clearly specified, pushing 10,000 email at once to an SMTP can raise problems: SMTPs have their internal overload protection and if you have luck they fill up their queue and deliver emails slowly, if you have no luck at all, they drop silently a lot of emails. Really, it’s not a silent drop, in their log you can see drops, but have you access to SMTP logs? Usually not.

There is an important note you have to read. Automatic delivery is based on WordPress “cron system” that’s not a real cron so delivering interval are not granted to be strictly respected. Your blog needs to have some traffic to keep the cron system of WordPress work. More, if you use a cache system, such behaviour can be amplified.

Read more about Scheduler on Newsletter Extras Scheduler Notes.

Statistics

Statistics give you some data about clicks made from your subscribers on newsletter or a simple analysis on distribution of profile data over your subscribers list.

Click tracking

Statistics on clicks are collected rewriting link URLs on emails you send so they can be intercepted by Newsletter and stored. Click tracking has to be enabled in Composer panel and, before send, you have to give a name to your newsletter so you can identify the campaign with an informative name (usually email subject is not enough to distinguish email campaign on long time period).

Saying that, on Statistics panel you can choose a newsletter and see on what links readers clicked. Not only the link, but the anchor both textual or image. A pie chart give a brief view of the click distribution over the first links.

Below an example of clicks analisys from one of my italian blogs (first image the pie chart, second image detailed click data with anchor text or image).

Profile analysis

Newsletter collects some extra data on subscription (ip address, referrer) but other profile fields can be collected. Graphically and tabled statistics can be created selecting a profile field, like in the example below where, for one of my italian blog, I’m showing the distribution of page from which subscription starts.

Graphs are made with Google services, so they are available is those service are running.

User statistics

This is a very basic panel that show the number of subscribers in any list.

Customized forms

There is two main reason to create custom forms: to have a different appearance or to add new fields to collect. Actually, Newsletter (without Extras) can use custom forms configured in configuration files but with Extras you have a control panel where to put form HTML code.

Yes, some HTML coding skills are required.

To better explain the forms usage, let me extract an example from www.satollo.com. I need to customize the Newsletter widget adding a field to collect the “sex” of subscriber. So I created the form HTML:

and then I configured the widget to use the “form number 1″:

and the widget changed in (note the added field – Maschio means Male):

Sorry for this example in italian language, but it is from a  blog that deeply uses Newsletter (4000 subscribers at writing time).

Locked content

If you want to restrict access to a post or part of it to subscribers, now you can using a short code. A short code is a WordPress “tag” in the form of [tagname] that embed in a post or a page something (eg. a image gallery as did by WordPress it self).

The Newsletter Pro short code to hide a part of a post is

[ newsletter_lock ]…content…[ /newsletter_lock ]

(do not add spaces in short code as in this example, I need it to avoid them to be processed)

When someone open the post, in place of the content surrounded with Newsletter short code he will see a message you can configure on Newsletter administration panels. How do a user “unlock” the content? Simply following a link you should place in newsletters and welcome message with Newsletter tag {unlock_url}.

See the “Locked content panel” for examples.

SMTP

(since version 1.0.4)

Standard Newsletter plugin uses the email system of WordPress. That system, by default, uses PHP mail() function which is “configured” by hosting providers.

The mail() function cannot be the right choice to send emails, not for the function it self, but because usually the system is configured to send emails via a SMTP that can be black listed for spam. It’s easy to understand: on a shared hosting there are a lot of sites and services, all using mail() function. If one of them creates spam, the whole system will be black listed.

WordPress, to be precise, uses a library to send emails, so there are plugin that reconfigure such library to use an external SMTP. It’s a good choice, for a serious blog, to use a different mail service than the one supplied by a hosting provider. Those kind of plugins can be used with Newsletter to solve the spam problem.

Newsletter SMTP is something different. Not only it permits to configure an external SMTP but it uses the service in a optimized way, so, when delivering a lot of emails, the SMTP service is used in a efficient way.

When Newsletter SMTP is activated, Newsletter does not use the WordPress mail system (which you already know is working), so it’s important to make tests (at least to try a subscription to see if confirmation and welcome email work). On SMTP configuration panel there is a test button to check the SMTP configuration and send a test email.

You can use GMail ad SMTP service. On SMTP configuration panel there are tips to configure as SMTP your GMail account. Just remember that as hosting providers do, GMail has a limit of emails per day to respect.

Follow Up

(since Newsletter Pro 2.0.0)

Follow up is when you send a sequence of emails to new subscribers. A follow up can be a series of lessons on a topic, a product/service presentation broken up on small parts or anything else. Those emails are typically sent every few days (configurable, of course).

Every subscriber has a set of data to store if he is associated to the follow up, when he have to receive the next email and what email in the sequence. The follow up system periodically check all subscribers status and, if it’s the case, send out emails updating their follow up data.

So once you have created your follow up email (up to 10) and activated the system, it starts to work for you contacting the new subscribers as if you’re writing to each of them.

A subscriber can unsubscribe from the follow up without removing him self from the list: simply the “follow up” status will be set to “stop”. This point is of great importance, because you can let the user to stop annoying messages without loosing him. That “follow up unsubscription” is done via a link you should add to each follow up email. The link is inserted on every occurrence of {followup_unsubscription_url} place holder.

The picture above shows the main configuration of follow up. Other that enable or disable it, you can set the interval (in hours) between two email in the sequence, if every new subscriber has to be “attached” to the follow up (clearly starting from the first email…) and if you want to track link clicks on follow up emails.

After that configuration, there are up to 10 emails to set up, made by subject and message body. The first email with an empty subject stops the sequence.

Follow up theme

Following the new theme organization, each email body is “embedded” in a follow up theme. The follow up theme is stored under

/wp-content/plugins/newsletter-pro/themes/followup

and is only an example. To fully customize that theme, just copy the follow up folder (keeping it’s name) under

/wp-content/plugins/newsletter-custom/themes/followup

and change it as you prefer. The latter folder won’t be overwritten from a plugin update while the supply follow up theme will (and you will loose all changes). If the folder “newsletter-custom” doesn’t exist, just create it.

Manage follow up subscription

If you need to add or remove a subscriber to follow up, you can use the simple function on its panel. The same function, based on email addresses, can check the subscription status too.

A simple way can be the use of “subscribers management” panel as shown on picture below.

Lists

(since Newsletter 2.0.0, Free and Pro)

There are up to 9 lists usable in Newsletter that can be public or private. A subscriber can be part of a list if associated to that list by the blog owner (editing the subscriber profile) or if the subscriber selected such list during subscription time.

A subscriber can be part of one or more lists. Ususally be part of a list is a way to indicate that subscriber wants to receive special kind of information.

A subscriber can be associated with no one list but still be a… subscriber and receive newsletters… so for who want to use Newsletter in the simplest way, there is no need to understand and manage lists.

A third way to “subscribe” to a list is to click a special link delivered with newsletters, inserted with tag {list_N_subscription_url} (N has to be from 1 to 9). Why? Because if you already have a list of subscribers you may want to set up some lists to send special information that are not for “everyone”. So, with a newsletter, you can ask every subscriber if he want to be listed for such special information clicking a link.

A subscriber can remove him self from a list without removing his subscription. This is done by a link placed with tag {list_N_unsubscription_url} which you should be add to emails sent to a specific list. Unsubscription from a list is direct with no confirmation.

To be honest, even if list are interesting thay are a little bit “out of scope” for Newsletter plugin, which aims to be simple. But having so many people asking for them, I decided to implement lists in a simple way without compromise the starts usage.

Feed by mail

(still experimental)

Newsletter can now send an excerpt of you latest articles (posts) to subscribers who are subscribed to “feed by mail”. Subscribers can activate the service clicking on a special link you send them with a newsletter by placing on it the tag {feed_subscription_url}.

You can even decide to subscribe every new user to you “feed by mail”, just setting it on feed by mail configuration panel.

A subscriber may change his maind and decide to receive no more you feed while stay subscribed to your newsletter. To allow him to to unsubscribe the feed, on each email you should add the feed unsubscription link, generated by a special tag: {feed_unsubscription_url}.

The default feed theme already contains such link.

Timing

Feed by mail can be configured to send email every day or weekly (on a specific day of week) and in a particular hour. You can set the maximum number of emails per hour and an internal scheduler will be used to break up the whole send process in small batch.

Feed by mail theme

Following the new theme organization, the feed by mail body is generated by a special theme stored under:

/wp-content/plugins/newsletter-pro/themes/feed

and is only an example. To fully customize that theme, just copy the folder content to

/wp-content/plugins/newsletter-custom/themes/feed

and change it as you prefer. The latter folder won’t be overwritten from a plugin update while the supply feed by mail theme will (and you will loose all changes). If the folder “newsletter-custom” doesn’t exist, just create it.