Create an auto-Newsletter

This article will explain you how to create an auto-Newsletter.

The auto-Newsletter feature is included in AcyMailing Business and Enterprise.

• What's an auto-Newsletter?
• Create your auto-Newsletter
• Add tags to your auto-Newsletter
• Test your auto-Newsletter
• Frequently Asked Questions
  • My Auto-Newsletter is generated properly when I click on the Generate button but it does not do the job automatically, why?
  • The Newsletter is created automatically. But this Newsletter is published and no e-mail are added to the queue, why?
  • I created a new article but the Newsletter has not been sent, why?
  • What happens if I add several tags?
  • Can I add a tag in the Newsletter subject?

What's an auto-Newsletter?

An auto-Newsletter is a Newsletter automatically sent to one or several of your lists at a fixed frequency (every day, every week, every month... you can select anything you want).

Our auto-Newsletter system is integrated with several Joomla components so you can include in your auto-Newsletter your newly created (or modified) Joomla articles, your newly created virtueMart products, your upcoming events from jCalPro, jEvents, EventList, your new content for K2, your new listings from Mosets Tree...

And for each of these integrations, you will be able to specify a "minimum number of articles" to allow the generation of the Newsletter so you can use our auto-Newsletter system as a notification system too for newly created content/article/events/products...

If the result of the tag does not match your minimum number of articles, the Newsletter won't be generated and won't be sent.

You can create as many auto-Newsletters as you want and attach those auto-Newsletters to one or several lists.

Create your auto-Newsletter

• Connect to the back-end of your website and then click on the menu AcyMailing -> Auto-Newsletters
  

  

• Click on the button New to create a new auto-Newsletter
  



• Enter the subject of your Auto-Newsletter.
  You can add in this subject the tag {issuenb} which will be replaced by the current issue number (incremented each time a Newsletter is generated).
  You can also include other tags in this subject (like a list of content articles, a date, a user information...).
• Set your auto-Newsletter as published (an unpublished auto-Newsletter won't be generated/sent).
• Send HTML Version: Choose if you want to send the text only version of the Newsletter or the HTML Version too.
• Next Generate Date: Indicates the next time the Newsletter should be generated.
• Generate Frequency: Specify the frequency at which your Newsletter should be generated.
  If you want to use the auto-Newsletter as a notification system, you should select the frequency "every 1 hour" so AcyMailing will check for new content every hour.
• Issue Number : This is an automatic number indicating the next issue number of the Newsletter.
  This number will be incremented each time AcyMailing generates a Newsletter from this automatic Newsletter.
• Last Run time: This field indicates the last time the Newsletter has been generated so if you add new articles in your auto-newsletter, they will be added if they have been created after this date.
• Generating Mode:
  • Wait for the confirmation before sending: In that case, AcyMailing will generate the Newsletter and send a notification. You will have to manually send or schedule the generated Newsletter in order to send it. This option is very useful in test mode.
    Please select this option first, we will switch to the other option "Send the generated Newsletter" later.
  • Send the generated Newsletter: AcyMailing will generate and send the Newsletter automatically.
• Send notification to: Please specify the e-mail address where you want to receive the notification of the Newsletter creation.
  This is not a mandatory field.

Add tags to your auto-Newsletter

• The tags inserted in your auto-Newsletter will have two functions:
  • First the tag will be used to replace the content with the latest one so you can send your new articles/events/products/content...
  • But the tag will also be used to allow or not the Newsletter generation. So if the tag is not replaced by at least a certain number of articles, the Newsletter won't be generated and the content will be included in the next generated Newsletter.
• Click on the button Tags



• You can use standard tags in your auto-Newsletter to include personal information in the generated Newsletter but you can also include content with some specific rules.

• The plugin used to insert your Joomla articles is the AcyMailing: Joomla Content Plugin
• Click on the menu Joomla Content
• Click on the tab Categories
  



• Configure the tag the way you want and then click on the button Insert the tag
• The same way, you will be able to include your newly created Products, K2 content, Mosets Listings, upcoming events from jCalPRO 2, EventList, jEvents...

Test your auto-Newsletter

At any time you want, you can click on the button "Generate".
AcyMailing won't force the Newsletter generation (it will do it only if it was time to do it) but will tell you - for each auto-newsletter - when it will be generated and why it won't be generated if it was time to do it.

If AcyMailing generated a Newsletter from this auto-Newsletter, you will be able to see it as a scheduled Newsletter in the listing of standard Newsletters.

You don't have to click on the button "Generate". It's something AcyMailing will do automatically with the cron task so you should do it only if you are wondering what's going on.

It requires two triggers from the cron task to generate and send your Newsletter automatically.
The first time the cron task triggers your website will generate your Newsletter as a scheduled Newsletter and then the second time it will take care of adding all e-mails in the queue and will start the send process.