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Newsletters

Send Newsletters

Navigate to Marketing —> Newsletters, from the home page of your admin area.

How to create a newsletter:

  • Click the ADD tab at the top of the page to begin creating a new newsletter.
  • Fill in the Newsletter Name field with a title for this newsletter. This is not displayed to the customer.
  • Choose an Email Template. There is an existing one called EmailTemplate1.asp that is a simple email template with an un-subscribe link at the bottom.
  • Choose who you want to send the e-mail to:
Group Description
All Email subscribers All records in Customers table with EmailSubscriber set to Y. (By default, all customers are Email Subscribers until they unsubscribe.)
Only Customers All records in Customers table with AccessKey set to C.
Only Affiliates All records in Customers table with AccessKey set to P.
Only Administrators All records in Customers table with AccessKey set to A.

Note: Newsletters do not get sent out to customers that have the option "Customer_IsAnonymous" checked.

  • Type a Scheduled Send Date for your reference as to when you plan to send it, and to look back in the future as to when you sent it. This is only for your reference.
  • Fill in the Send Test Email To field with an email address to send a TEST email prior to sending it out. Note: This must be an email address that is registered in your customers table. Normally, you would not want to check the box labeled Include people who unsubscribed.
  • Type an Email Subject, which will be the subject line of the email.
  • In the Email Body (HTML version) you may type out your newsletter and include any fonts, graphics, links, images that you want. Any HTML code can be used. Note: Do NOT include any <HTML></HTML> or <BODY></BODY> tags, just begin with your paragraphs and content. You actually should follow this rule of thumb throughout the entire software.
  • Fill in the Email Body (Text Only Version). This should be filled in with plain text only. No HTML. A very, very small percentage of people have their email settings to view text and no HTML, this is for them. So you will want to only use plain text here.
  • Check the appropriate Newsletter # check box from 1 to 20 under the section titled Send to persons w/ the following interests only. By default everyone would be on Newsletter 1.
  • Click Add New Record at the bottom of the page to add this new newsletter. Make sure the radio button beneath the button is set to Add + View Record in edit mode, because the next step is to edit this newsletter...
Preview / View Stats / Send the Newsletter:
  • Click on a existing Newsletter to edit it.
  • At the top of the page, you will see a green box labeled Send / View Stats. Click the button Preview / View Stats. From this page you can preview the email. Another important thing to check on this page is the top of the page Quick Stats that lists how many emails have been sent. If 0 of 250 have been sent, this means it is going to send the newsletter to 250 customers. If this number doesn't look correct, go back to the previous page and verify that you are sending the newsletter to the appropriate group of customers.
  • Next, click the Send Test Email Now button, which sends you an email to the email address you specified. Once you review the test email and everything looks good then you can continue on to the next step which sends all emails.

Note: If you are managing your own server, then, sending newsletters is dependent on the installation of the VSMTP component and a correct configuration / installation according to the instructions provided in the Volusion Components zip file provided to licensed version store owners. There is an Email Agent program that runs on the server to send bulk email newsletters. Please refer to the installation notes provided in the Volusion components zip file.

Tracking Newsletters:

To view your success of newsletter campaigns you will want to return to the Preview/View Stats page and look at the section under: How many have been sent so far? This will show you how many emails have been sent, how many emails have been opened, etc.

Certified vs. Non-Certified emails

  • Certified emails - Subscribers that have already been sent a newsletter previously
    • All certified emails will be sent out on the first time you send the newsletter
  • Non-Certified emails - New subscribers that have not been sent a newsletter previously
    • Non-Certified emails have to go through a one-time process of getting "certified" outlined below

Process for sending Non-Certified emails:

DAY 1) You'll proceed sending newsletter and it will send out 250 e-mails. Then you have to wait 24 hours.
DAY 2) You'll proceed sending newsletter again and it will send out 2000 e-mails. Then you have to wait 24 hours.
DAY 3) You'll proceed sending newsletter one last time and it will send out the remainder of your e-mails (all of them).

Why does it take 3 days? This process ensures the absolute best deliver ability of your newsletter, by ensuring spam is never sent from the Volusion network.
Will I have to do this every time I send out a newsletter? No. It's based on email addresses.  Any e-mail address that you've already sent a newsletter to will be "certified", and will be sent out immediately on DAY 1.  Only newly added e-mail addresses will have to go through the 3 day process of being "certified".
Why does Volusion append an un-subscribe link to my newsletter? This makes all of your e-mails legally CAN-SPAM compliant, and provides a trusted way for users to un-subscribe. This ensures that you're not sending out any spam and thereby increases the deliver ability of all e-mails from the Volusion network.

If you would like to get very accurate detailed statistics on the success of your newsletters through to the point of tying together sales ROI, you will want to do the following:

  • Click on an existing newsletter to edit it.
  • In the top right section of the page titled ROI Tracker > Newsletter you will see a TrackingURL. Use this TrackingURL throughout your newsletter, so anytime you have a link in your newsletter, make sure to use this TrackingURL. The only important parameter of the TrackingURL is the ?Click=123 part. So, if one of your hyperlinks in your newsletter links to a product or category page that already has query string parameters, you can add the &Click=123 parameter to it. Here are a few example links:
    • http://www.yourdomain.com/?Click=123
    • http://www.yourdomain.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=7&Click=123
    • http://www.yourdomain.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=ABCXYZ&Click=123
  • To track your sales success, Go to Reports -> ROI Tracking from the home page of your admin area. . You will see the newsletter listed and you can track it's success along side all of your other advertising channels.
Personalizing the Email Subject and Body:

You may personalize each email using the text $(FirstName) or $(LastName) in the subject or body of the e-mail. This text, which is case sensitive, will be automatically substituted with each customer's name prior to sending each email.

Creating Custom Email Templates:
  • You must login via FTP to your site.
  • In the FTP account, navigate to the following directory of your website where all of your email templates are stored: /vspfiles/admin/emails/
  • Copy the existing EmailTemplate1.asp file and rename it. For example, MyNewEmail.asp. Edit this new file in your favorite HTML editor, and upload it back to the website via FTP.
  • To use this newly created newsletter, simply choose it from th drop down menu list for the field Email Template. It will automatically get listed in the drop down menu list if it exists in the vspfiles/admin/emails/ folder on your site.

Note: An unsubscribe link is automatically including within each newsletter if you are using the Newsletter.asp email template.  There is no method of editing the text for the unsubscribe link or to remove it.  By having the unsubscribe link, it makes your newsletter non-spam compliant.

Handling Bounced Email:
  • Navigate to Settings —> Config Variables, click on the Email variables tab
  • Fill in the following variables:
  • Config_BouncedEmailAddress = (This is the email address that bounced emails get sent to. Make sure to create an email account prior to inserting an address into this field.)

The above variable is required.

Note: We suggest setting up an email address called bounced@yourdomain.com. And you can check this email account Inbox anytime.

However, if you would like your store to handle all bounced email and provide you statistics on the bounced email, fill in the following configuration variables as well:

  • Config_POP3_Bounced_Server = (This is the mail server such as mail.yourdomain.com)
  • Config_POP3_Bounced_Username = (This is the username to login to your email account, this value is usually your full email address)
  • Config_POP3_Bounced_Password = (This is the password to login to your email account)

If the above variables are filled in, it will allow the system to keep track of how many emails were bounced for each newsletter email campaign you send out.

Monthly Newsletter Limit
Plan Limit
Bronze Plan 250
Silver Plan 500
Gold Plan 2,500
Platinum Plan 5,000
Semi-Dedicated Standard 10,000
Semi-Dedicated Premium   15,000
Additional newsletter limits may purchased by logging into http://my.volusion.com, then on the left menu, under my store click on the plan usage and then click ADD next to Newsletter Limit.

Note: Please note that these limits are only for the newsletter and not for any order confirmation or system generated e-mails.