How to make an email newsletter....

[plainman007]

Hi,

Im very interested in knowing how to make those standard newsletters you see in your email. How do we design those ? Do they need to be made in Dreamweaver or something ? Or is it basically a vertical sized webpage designed and hosted on a server which gets downloaded into the mail body space ? If so ....is it possible to make flash designed webpages appear inside the mail body of the recepient.

Id really appreciate some guidance in this subject.

Thanks.

[MyFriendIsATaco]

No Flash. That will not work in emails.

In general HTML emails are a mess. There are so many rules and different cases for what will and won't render properly. Just think of how many different email clients there are, to get an idea: online Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Outlook, Outlook Express, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Entourage, etc. Then add on top of all the online versions, different browsers. Gmail in Firefox, Gmail in Chrome, Gmail in IE6, etc. And then there are mobile devices!

You might want to stick to something like MailChimp unless you really know what you're doing and are prepared to spend hours upon hours testing and testing.

[plainman007]

Yes i understand what you mean. It makes sense. But then when we make websites how come its not so picky. Im looking at creating websites entirely in flash. Since i dont know Dreamweaver etc. When i make sites in flash will they work perfectly in other browsers or is it mostly compatible with IE only ?

Thanks

[MyFriendIsATaco]

I think you are misunderstanding.

Flash is a plugin. That plugin is the exact same in every browser. One company makes that plugin and assures that things render exactly the same. Without Flash, it's up to the browser to render the website. Every (almost) browser has their own rendering engine. Every engine attempts to do things their own way. IE just makes up their own rules and messes everyone else up, so don't ever use them as a judge of correctness.

Email clients are a whole other ballgame. They are like browsers, in the sense that they have their own rendering engines for a page. But unlike browsers, lots of email clients attempt to strip out HTML and modify the code to make pages render better in their window, and there are more odd dimensions to deal with.

[plainman007]

Hmmmm, i get what your saying. But i wanted to share something with you. This morning i got a html newsletter. Very simple one ofcourse with just 2 clickable links. One their website url and another to mail to them. But its from a small catering guy at the corner of my street. Im sure he didnt have the time and resources to spend on a wizard who could test the newsletter on so many email clients. Secondly, it was a rush out newsletter which was about a seasonal discount hes offering for this week. I cross forwarded it to each and every email client i had accounts with. Gmail, yahoo, outlook express, rediffmail etc and i never saw a glitch at all. It worked / displayed perfectly on every email client.

Actually like how flash is handled by the flash plugin, arent newsletters all handled by HTML which is also universal. Ive seen a lot of guys, small time business' making quick newsletters and ive never seen a case where it hasnt rendered properly. If it was so finicky i dont think there would be so many people making and using them. There are some ready made softwares out there that just make newsletters,,, some stand alone,,, some offering online newsletter construction.

SO to get back on topic. If i want to make a newsletter in dreamweaver, how does one save it ? I can imagine the nitty gritty of putting it together in the WYSIWYG workspace. But what do you do after putting everything together ?

Thanks

[rdoyle720]

Newsletters are HTML, yes, but as people have been explaining to you, email programs handle HTML differently. You can't use modern HTML techniques in email and expect them to work across the board. If you're willing to work with tables and limited CSS, you'll probably be OK. But don't be surprised if you run into issues.

In any case, once you have your newsletter designed, you can simply save it as HTML. Sending it depends on what email program you have. For example, if you have Outlook, you can open the file in there and choose Tools>Send Web Page By Email. You'll have to look up how to do it in whatever program you use.

And here's some information on CSS support in email programs: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/

[plainman007]

Thanks. Im looking at making really simple web newletters. Mostly like a poster with one or 2 clickable buttons. Thats it. Ill read the link you gave me, but i dont know anything about CSS of what it even means .