wysiwyg for email blasts with graphics?
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when I send blasts to the membership (email, discussion or calendar), and want to include graphics in the note, I have to make sure the originating graphic is first uploaded to an "open" folder on groupsite, that doesn't require login for a recipient to be able to view in the initial blast. If anyone needs training on how to do that, let me know.
Here's my problem. I want to send a periodic blast regarding various topics, most of which have an associated graphic. I understand an easy way is to make the whole darn email body into a jpeg image and include that in the blast. Fine, but not sure if embedded links will work.
Does anyone have experience with this and can help me out?
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Ralph - Groupsite.com doesn't do any mail processing that would prevent you from sending images and links. And, you can hyperlink a single image to landing page in the text editor.
When I send a .jpg image in an email blast, and link that image to a landing page, the image displays in my email client (Thunderbird) after I choose "show remote content."
Many people will have an image blocker in their email client, by default or personal preference. You may want to send text and images (and not just a single image) so people blocking images can still read your email. Then, if the recipient wants the images, they can accept/load them.
Also, thanks for offering to help others learn how to manage the visibility of images in blasts. Interested parties can also review this post:
http://champions.groupsite.com/post/how-to-allow-a-file-folder-in-a-private-groupsite-to-be-publicly-visible
I hope this helps.
Diana,
missing my point entirely. I know groupsite.com isn't preventing me from sending images and links in an email. I am asking "how" to do it. In other words, how to send images with text surrounding the images. Some people are telling me I need to create HTML in order to do this. Is this true? If so, how?
Anyone else have feedback that could help Ralph out?
is anyone trying to utilize groupsite.com to send formatted emails similar to constant contact? If so, how do you do it?
Hi Ralph,
Actually you can send out newsletters through groupsite, but good luck with getting it to look right. We send out a newsletter with the Iowa State University Engineering Admissions Partnership Program bi-monthly. We thought it would look good and promising, but we had some issues doing so. I have had over three different web browsers open and none of my newsletters looked the same after it was sent out, so groupsite has problems supporting Cascading Style Sheets in email blasts. So this is the process to what I have done. I have created the html for my newsletter using a program like Dreamweaver or you could use a program like SharePoint Designer 2007 by Microsoft which is free. Then I take the finish .html file and load it into the browser, selected it all, and then copy and paste it into my email blast. Works like a charm, but it still has problems with CSS as it hardly looks like what it does in the browser. Iowa State and their engineering department said I would have better luck with inline CSS so that might help some of my issues. To view my newsletter you can look at my html at http://eric.flippedweb.com/newsletter/newsletter.html.
One problem that we are also running into with our newsletter is participation. We want to track clicks, links, and newsletter opens to see what has been effective for us in our newsletters. So we have ditch Groupsite due to the lack of CSS support and time to make it work correctly and went with a free service called phplist.com. If we get somebody just to view our newsletter that is a plus for us as our focus is on a group of 80 extremely busy community college students.
If anybody has a suggestion on how to get better support or experience with email blasts for sending out newsletters I would like to hear that, along with using Google analytics to track user traffic in the newsletter would be appreciated.
I find Bit.ly is a good way of tracking how many clicks you are getting. If you create an account it will give you a nice report and it's free. It should integrate easily with whatever you're using to create your newsletter.
Hi Ralph,
Regarding sending out formatted Emails, HTML in email is fine, but it has been our experience that cascading style sheets (CSS) is not a good idea in email. Many email clients don't support it. If you want your email to look correctly, we recommend that you design it using HTML tables instead of CSS. But if others are having better luck with CSS, give it a try.
Sincerely,
Celeste Sharper Wooten
Groupsite.com
Director, Client Services/Support
Celeste, is there a tool or program which can help me create formatted emails using HTML tables, as you describe? Something more WYSIWIG?
Hi Ralph,
I send a newsletter out using groupsite.com using a process very similar to what Eric describes. I first create the newsletter using MS Front Page, then I copy the HTML source into groupsite.com under the HTML source tab. I make sure I have a web addressable image for all images. I find the image I want on the web, right click the image and under properties get the URL. I then insert the image using the URL when it asks for the file name.
I also use Constant Contact to send out the newsletter by copying the same HTML source into the Constant Contact editor.
The bottom line is that HTML source is compatible between most editors. I don't use cascading style sheets.
Here's a link to the last edition of the newsletter:
http://bdpa.groupsite.com/discussion/topic/show/432205
I hope this helps.
Milt