Email Newsletter

Jonny303

Hi,

Wondering can anyone help me. I have an adobe file that I wish to use as an email newsletter, is there an easy way to do this? I want to use it as the main body rather than an attatchement. I also have it as an excel file. I presume I can convert that to html and play with it there, but im a total novice

Regards

Bit confused here. Adobe make a lot of software - which program was the file made with? Is the file a design template? If that's the case what is in the excel file? That's a spreadsheet, which wouldn't be much use for graphic design, and I don't see how that fits in.

If you want to do e-mail newsletters without dipping into the techy stuff, take a look at mailchimp.com.

Jonny303

Sorry that was a bit unclear.

I have a page put together in excel which I saved as a pdf. That page is basically what I want to be the body of an email.

cormee

Jonny303 wrote: »

Sorry that was a bit unclear.

I have a page put together in excel which I saved as a pdf. That page is basically what I want to be the body of an email.

I'd imagine there are pdf to html converters out there but that's only a small % of your problem. Creating html mailers that behave predictably is quite difficult due to the fact that pretty much all email clients and providers treat html, CSS and images differently. Most converters will use inline styling to lay it out, unfortunately for you most email clients strip out CSS.

So there isn't an easy way of doing it, going from xls to pdf to html certainly won't work.

Your options are to save it as an image and embed it on the email (terrible idea), get someone who can code to convert it for you, or as SBS suggested, and probably the best option, use a service provider such as Mailchimp.

Fanny Cradock

I'm not an expert on newsletters/ ezines (far from it) but if you are going to create your own then you will need to become familiar enough with HTML and CSS to transpose what you have done in PDF form. If you are a beginner that probably sounds intimidating. But it isn't a huge challenge. It will, however, require a little time on your part to learn these rather simple languages.

There are loads of sites out there to help you.

http://www.campaignmonitor.com/design-guidelines/
http://blogs.sitepoint.com/code-html-email-newsletters/
http://www.reachcustomersonline.com/...1/23/09.27.00/

As others suggested you can go to a mail client like Mailchimp (there are many others out there) and let them help you build a newsletter. The offer a straightforward and idiot proof newsletter building service for free that is also integrable with Facebook. You can send out something like 2000 newsletters a month as part of their free package. Over that and you pay a small amount per month.

Jonny303

Thanks for the advise

cormee

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

I'm not an expert on newsletters/ ezines (far from it) but if you are going to create your own then you will need to become familiar enough with HTML and CSS to transpose what you have done in PDF form.

There's no point using CSS, pretty much every email provider and email client strips out CSS.

When you're doing an html email you need to step back about 10 years or so, lay it out using tables, use font tags etc.

tricky D

cormee wrote: »

When you're doing an html email you need to step back about 10 years or so, lay it out using tables, use font tags etc.

This.

Also, many emails have the images stripped out, some leave the first one in. Despite using even simple tables, some email renderers have odd behaviours. If you thought getting cross browser problems sorted was bad, doing html emails is much worse.

I always try to persuade clients to use single column plain text layout with a header image if they really insist.

@OP best advice is to use a 3rd party.

doctorwho-fan

Can anyone suggest a good cheap irish company that I can design a newsletter template online or is mail chimp the best?
I am working on a mac so you can imagine the problems! thanks

Fanny Cradock

cormee wrote: »

There's no point using CSS, pretty much every email provider and email client strips out CSS.

When you're doing an html email you need to step back about 10 years or so, lay it out using tables, use font tags etc.

I know this is 2 years down the road but it's worth revisiting. Campaign Monitor (not sure about other newsletter solutions) will interpret css placed in the head tags and parse it into the body. This is very handy!

@doctorwho-fan - the only Irish company I'm aware of is Cork based Newsweaver. They are slightly different to other companies in that they design (I think) and develop the newsletter for you. If you aren't familiar with the innumerable and infuriating quirks associated with mail clients then they might be a good option as they take a very active role in your campaigns. You would have to check their prices and what type of reports they generate.

If you are comfortable with HTML, CSS and the quirks I alluded to above (see here for more) then a service like Campaign Monitor - which would be my personal choice - allows you to import your own newsletters or use their template builder (never used it myself but I'd imagine it's limited). They have multiple payment plans but as an example their once off "pay as you go" option would work out at about $25 for a newsletter sent out to 2,000 addresses. That's $5 per campaign and 0.1c for each newsletter. Their reporting function is great as well.

doctorwho-fan

Thanks for the advice, very helpful

TheWaterboy

doctorwho-fan wrote: »

Can anyone suggest a good cheap irish company that I can design a newsletter template online or is mail chimp the best?
I am working on a mac so you can imagine the problems! thanks

Try Toddle.com

doctorwho-fan

will check that out, thanks for the help