Newsletter Design

You use the same amazing Drop-and-drag DIY Design-Implementation Engine to create your Newsletters as you do to implement your Site Design. The one major difference being that Newsletters are largely static elements, and therefore use only a subset of Affino’s Design Element, as listed below. Newsletter Skins also have differently optimsed HTML, so you need to be sure to select the ’Newsletter’ type Skin option when saving your Newsletter Skin.

Newsletter Design Elements

• Article Listing
• Blog Highlights
• Button
• Calendar
• Campaign Placement Area
• Design Object
• Design Script
• Events Listing
• Image
• Media Listing
• Message Board Highlights
• Prime Content (For automated Message content only)
• Recommendations
• Smart Item
• Spacer
• Text Item
• Who’s Online

For more heavily ’Designed’ Newsletters like the pictured ’Aido’ one - these tend to be really just a jigsaw of images with links on those images.

On the adjacent Newsletter an obvious omission is the personal salutation (Text Item) - i.e. ’Dear Stefan’ - which is an essential element if you wish to minimise the chances of your Newsletter ending up in a Spam folder / bin.

Even with largely or wholly image-based newsletters, you still tend to have at least one text paragraph which can appear rapidly at the top of the newsletter - for when the images don’t load up.

Content Newsletter

Most Newsletters tend to be of the ’Content’ type - i.e. sending out regular content roundups on a scheduled basis - from the site’s various Features and Articles Sections.

In the case of our site Comrz, the most regular new content on our site is in the form of Blog Posts - hence we can send out a monthly digest of all the Blog Posts created within that month - using the ’Blog Highlights’ Design Element. A Newsletter Item has several scheduling settings, as detailed in the below panel; which can allow regular, automatic scheduling of updates.

There is another mechanic in Affino called ’Content Subscriptions’ which are user-centric self-selected updates, where Users can themselves sign up to a particular Section for updates of all the content uploaded to said Section. This is not part of the Newsletter offering, as styling for Content Subscription is at a much more basic level.

Comrz Newzletter!

Some pointers to pick out from the Comrz Newsletter include the Issue references in the naming convention and the Date of despatch. See also the personal salutation - ’Dear Stefan’ - these are all just ’Text’ Design Elements, we also have ’Button’ elements at the top, and make use of ’Blog Highlights’ for the main content.

And note the Un-subscribe link which gets automatically appended to the foot of the Newsletter.

Another option available which has not been activated here is a ’Click Here if you have trouble viewing this Newsletter’ link - which would appear above the actual Newsletter Message - and direct Users to the onsite version of the Newsletter.

Auto-Triggered Newsletters

The adjacent screen capture shows an automatically triggered Newsletter Message  of the type ’Aborted Shopping Basket’

On the Newsletter Item settings there are a number of Event Trigger options:

• Login
• Registration
• Purchase
• Aborted Shopping Basket
• Birthday
• Conversion Event

Conversion Event is the most powerful of these as you can have any of the 35 Conversion Event Triggers act as a catalyst here

Filters

• You also have a number of User Filters:
• All Subscribers
• Active Members (Logged in recently)
• Inactive Subscribers (Not logged in recently)
• Active Members (Logged in)
• Inactive Members (Not Logged in)
• All Customers
• Customer who bough selected Catalogue Items
• Group Filter (Filter by User / Security Group)
• Country (Filter by Country)
• Gender (Both | Male | Female)
• Age Range
• Active Member Timeframe

Scheduling

If not auto-triggered, Newsletter Message can be scheduled to go out Daily, Weekly or Montly - at a particular time, and day of the week / month.

Newsletter Sign-up / Components

The starting point for every Newsletter is the Sign-up Form - which feeds into the Newsletter Subscriber List, this is its own Channel Type, as well as a multi-layout type Design Element which can be implemented on Home Pages and other key site Landing Pages.

On the Newsletter Sign-up Page you can view current Newsletters, as well as archives if several Newsletters have been mailed out - this is where users Subscribe from, as well as are directed to when they wish to Un-subscribe.

There are a few other elements to Newsletters which we need to highlight; in the main we have focused on Newsletter Item, Newsletter Message and Newsletter Sign-up. The major components not yet featured are Newsletter Despatch Screen and Newsletter Analysis.

Newsletter Despatch Screen

Obviously not all Newsletter are auto-scheduled or auto-triggered, some you will want to send out more sporadically, and for this we have the Newsletter Despatch screen - which allows you to manually despatch Newsletters when you feel the need.

Newsletter Analysis

Both as part of the Analysis Dashboard and the Analyse screen in general, Affino has some very clever Reads and Click-through analysis for Newsletters. Users who click on certain content features can be singled out and assigned to a separate Newsletter Subscriber List for even more focused / personalised delivery. You can also export data to feed into other 3rd party databases for further analysis or outside Affino mailings.