This chapter describes how to set up information such as From email addresses, Mailing List Groups and email templates. It assumes that the basic functionality necessary for your server to send and process emails in the first place has already been configured. See Email System Configuration in Advanced configuration for details.
In order to send mass emails you must fill in some basic information: your organisation's name, a short description, your email address, and your postal address. CiviMail requires that you include the sender's postal address along with unsubscribe/opt-out links in any mass mailing you send, in order to comply with privacy laws in many countries. This information is made available via tokens and must be included in any mail sent with CiviMail.
To configure this information, go to: Administer > Communications > Organization Address and Contact Info.
CiviMail uses Groups to organise recipients of mass mailings. To create a group, go to Contacts > New Group. When you create and configure a Group for this purpose, make sure to check Mailing List under Group Type so that it is available as a Mailing List in CiviMail. You can then do a search and add contacts to the Group.
You can also create Smart Groups based on search results, which will update the Group with any contacts that fit the search criteria. For example, based on the results of Advanced Search you can create a Smart Group of contacts who have active memberships, or a Smart Group of contacts in a given city. As people become members or move to the city you've searched on, they will be automatically added to the Smart Group. This makes it possible to to send mailings without having to first update the contacts in a group.
To create a Smart Group:
Note: You can also create a Smart Group based on a Participant search. However, the Smart Group save page will not offer you the option to make this group a Mailing List. To make this Smart Group available to CiviMail, you must change its settings through Contacts > Manage Groups. This same thing happens if you use the Advanced Search and choose Event Participants under "Display results as."
You cannot create smart groups based on Membership, Contributions or Pledge searches, or based on results of an Advanced Search if the "Display results as" option is set to anything but Contacts.
CiviCRM makes it possible for people to sign themselves up for your mailing lists online.
To allow this, you must designate the group as a mailing list. If you didn't do this when you created the Group, go to Contacts > Manage Groups. Click Settings on the group that holds your mailing list recipients and check the Mailing List next to Group Type. You must also change the Visibility to Public Pages.
For this to work for users who don't have a log-in to your CiviCRM, you must ensure that anonymous users in Drupal have the following permission checked: "Access CiviMail subscribe/unsubscribe pages."
One way to allow users to subscribe to an email list online is by directing them to www.yourdomain.org/civicrm/mailing/subscribe. You and anyone who accesses this link can subscribe to the available mailing list groups.
Alternatively, you can collect more information when people sign up to your mailing lists with the use of a profile that is then displayed on a public page. Guidelines on what is you need to think about when using profiles for mailing list sign-ups are below; for more complete information about profiles, how they work, and how to set them up, see the Profiles chapter in the Data in CiviCRM section.
For example, you could create a new Profile called Newsletter Sign-up. Add to this profile the fields that you'd like website visitors who want to join your mailing list to fill out. Each of the fields in the profile must have its Visibility set to Public Pages.
For each field you include, you can choose whether it is required or optional for people filling out the public form. The one exception is that the profile must include an email field that is required. This is so that an email can be sent to the person to confirm that they wanted to sign up for the mailing list. Until they confirm, they will have a status of "Pending" in the mailing list group.
You must also add a field for the mailing lists groups that you want them to be able to sign up for. Click Add Field. For Field Name, select Contacts. When the possible selections load in the second field, select Group(s). In Field Label, you can leave "Group(s)" or you may want to change it to something more intuitive to your website visitors such as "Newsletter Sign-up." Visibility for this field must also be set to Public Pages. When the profile displays publicly, this field will show check boxes for all Mailing List Groups that have their Visibility set to Public Pages.
There are two ways to display the profile publicly:
Many Drupal site administrators prefer to use a webform instead of a profile to create their newsletter sign-up, because it provides additional features such as advanced spam control and flexible theming. For more information see:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Webform+CiviCRM+Integration
After people subscribe to mailing list groups—via the subscribe link or a profile—CiviCRM will automatically send them an email asking them to confirm their subscription. Until they click the confirmation link in the email, their contact information will appear in CiviCRM with their group subscription set to Pending. When they confirm, CiviCRM will automatically change their group subscription status to Added and they will be sent a welcome message. (Note: When users subscribe to multiple groups at once, a confirmation email is sent for each group separately.)
CiviCRM sends emails automatically when your participants take certain actions:
In CiviCRM, these are called Automated Messages, and you can edit them and add new ones at Mailings > Headers, Footers, and Automated Messages.
For more information on email list management see the chapter entitled Maintaining Healthy Email Lists which explores how CiviCRM handles unsubscribes, bounces and email holds.
Message templates help to streamline your communications by allowing you to reuse entire emails or parts of emails in both mass mailings and when using the Send Email activity.
The easiest way to create a new message template is to check the Save as New Template box on the message creation screen. This is available both when using the Send Email activity and when sending a mass mailing.
You can also create message templates from scratch or edit existing templates by going to Mailings > Message Templates OR Administer > Communications > Message Templates.
Message templates are available even when CiviMail is disabled.
HTML code allowed in emails is more restricted than HTML used for web pages. For instance, it needs to use tables for layout, inline CSS, and must not include background images. Here are some tips for creating a template that will look good in all mail clients:
<table border="1">) allows
you to see the edges of your table and helps identify potential
places to fix problems. Please note that HTML email templates
usually have multiple tables and nested tables (tables inside
tables). Make changes one at a time and switch to the HTML view to
see the results. A table usually has more than one parameter, so
make sure to place spaces between parameters. To see examples of message templates, see http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Sample+CiviMail+Messages .
All messages can be sent either in plain text or in HTML. Today the vast majority of people use email clients that can read messages received in HTML. However, the best practice is to offer the option to send a plain text email version to ensure all recipients can view the message. Plain text email readers may display HTML email as blank. HTML email may also present accessibility issues to people using screen readers.
However, there is a risk that if users modify an email based on a template that contains both plain text and HTML, they will forget to modify the plain text version of this message. This will mean that people using plain text-only email clients will receive an incorrect or incomplete message.
One solution to this problem is to either use plain text emails only or to set templates without the plain text option and ask users to create a plain text version before sending their mailings.
To create a plain text version of a message from HTML:
Headers and footers can be used only in mass mailings using CiviMail. They are not available unless CiviMail is enabled.
The header is the area at the top of the email; it should include elements that you want to be displayed before the main content body, such as the logo of your organization and the title of the newsletter.
The footer is always the last thing in the email. The footer is an ideal place for the compulsory unsubscribe tokens (see What You Need to Know for more information).
You can manage the content of headers and footers in Mailings > Headers, Footers, and Automated Messages. You can create different headers and footers for different purposes; for example, you might want to create a set of headers with different images and titles that can be used for different campaigns or programs. It is recommended to style them similarly, to present a coherent visual identity across all your messages.
After headers and footers are configured, staff who prepare a new mailing will be able to select them from available headers and footers. This helps staff create more standardized mailings with elements that help your readers identify the contents of the mailing or find information.
Like the Message Templates, headers and footers have both a text and an HTML version. Unlike Message Templates, however, the header and footer creation pages do not offer a WYGIWYG editor. You will need to write header and footer HTML directly or use another HTML editor to produce the HTML code.
Once your templates are ready, we strongly recommend that you test them in various email clients, such as Mozilla Thunderbird, MS Outlook, Mac Mail and web-based e-mail such as Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail. An easy way to do this is to create a group that includes a test contact for each of those destinations and use it each time you create a new mailing.
Because email clients can display the HTML very differently from each other, we recommended that you keep the HTML as simple as possible and use only inline CSS or tables for formatting. Include as much of the layout as possible in the templates so that each new mailing will not require too much reviewing, since the template will have already been tested.
It is possible to have emails sent to and from your regular email client automatically filed in CiviCRM. This is done by including a designated email address in the To, Cc, or Bcc field (Bcc is recommended, as it is invisible to the recipient.) Emails that include this designated email get filed as an activity for the contact(s) that match the other email addresses in the From, To, and Cc fields. If any of these email addresses are not already in the system, a new contact record will be created. (Technically, this can work for inbound emails as well; however, it does depend on the person sending the mail to you including the auto-filing address in the To, Cc, or Bcc field.)
For this, your administrator should have configured IMAP or other mail accounts and set them up in CiviMail (see Email System Configuration, especially Adding an incoming email account for handling bounces or auto filing to CiviMail, in Initial Set-Up for more details).