Building newsletters

To build newsletters, navigate to Administer > Site building > Email newsletters. Access to this section requires the 'build sunmailer newsletters' permission. Each newsletter will contain one or more sections. Each section is backed by a view from the Views module, and the section will pull content from that view. The order of the sections in a newsletter as well as the order newsletters are displayed in on the subscription form can also be controlled.

Subscribing to newsletters

Users can subscribe from multiple locations:

Managing subscribers

To manage your subscribers, navigate to Administer > User management > Email newsletter subscribers. Access to this section requires the 'manage sunmailer subscribers' permission. The Find tab allows you to enter the email address of a subscriber and then view or edit their subscription. The Import tab allows you to import a list of subscribers, such as a list obtained from a sign-up sheet. The Settings tab controls some miscellaneous subscription settings.

Sending newsletters

To schedule newsletters to be sent or send them manually, navigate to Administer > Content management > Email newsletters. Access to this section requires the 'send sunmailer newsletters' permission. Under the Settings tab for a newsletter, the cutoff date for content can be adjusted or disabled. If enabled, the cutoff date automatically updates itself to the current time whenever the newsletter is sent. This update ensures that the next newsletter excludes any content in the newsletter that was just sent. This ability to automatically exclude old content from future newsletters, combined with the ability to automatically pull in new content using Views, and the ability to schedule newsletters to be sent at a regular interval, allows email newsletters to run on autopilot without any user intervention. Note that if you schedule a newsletter be sent at a regular interval, when it is ready to send, it will only be sent when cron runs. Thus, cron must be configured to run at least as often as the mailing interval. The Preview tab for a newsletter allows you to preview a newsletter before sending it. The Broadcast message tab also allows you to send a special message to all subscribers of one or more newsletters.

Newsletter reports

To view newsletter subscription statistics, navigate to Administer > Reports > Email newsletters. Access to this section requires the 'view sunmailer reports' permission.