Now that we have set up a group to which we can send a mass e-mail and provided ways for site visitors to subscribe to our newsletter and other bulk e-mail subscriptions, it's time to send a bulk e-mail with CiviMail to all the group members who have subscribed to it.
The construction of a bulk e-mail message involves a five-step wizard in which you select the recipients, mailing options, develop content, preview/test, and then schedule the mailing. Before we work through those steps, let's look at a few additional tools and options you may want to review and configure first.
CiviCRM supports the creation of multiple headers and footers for insertion in your mailing. These can be used in conjunction with or in lieu of message templates. The footer, in particular, can be a very useful element in your mailing.
In order to comply with the US CAN-SPAM Act, and in accordance with generally accepted mailing practices worldwide, every mail sent using CiviCRM must include two special mailing tokens: the domain address and the opt-out URL or e-mail token. We also recommend that you include the group-unsubscribe URL or e-mail token.
It is important to understand the difference between opt-out and unsubscribe: opt-out means that the user has chosen to completely remove themselves from receiving all e-mails from your organization; unsubscribe means they choose to no longer receive a certain newsletter (they are removed from the associated group). If both links are included in your e-mail, be certain to craft the language carefully and accurately. Wherever possible, you will want to encourage people to simply unsubscribe from a certain list rather than completely opting out of all e-mails. If the latter is selected, you may be legally bound to respect the contact's request.
The footer comes into play by providing a useful way to collect these required tokens and make sure they are consistently inserted in your mail. We recommend constructing a single default footer that is generic enough in its layout to be used in conjunction with any template. The footer should generally include the organization's name, domain address token, phone/e-mail/website, and opt-out/unsubscribe tokens.
Optional elements mentioned earlier in the chapter are your organization's tagline/mission, and perhaps a featured call to action that you change regularly. Note that the opt-out/unsubscribe tokens may be included as a URL link (which directs people to your website where they confirm the action) or as an e-mail address which is processed by the CiviMail EmailProcessor.php
script (see Chapter 3, Installation, Configuration, and Maintenance for more details). We recommend using the URL form unless there's clear reason to do otherwise. By using the URL, you force people to visit your website before taking action, which provides an opportunity to remind them about who you are, what you do, and perhaps cause them to rethink their removal request.
To construct and edit headers and footers, carry out the following steps:
<html>, <head>, </head>
and<body>
tags. Then close those tags (</body>
and</html>
) in the associated footer. Doing so will frame your e-mail in the appropriate HTML tags and will allow you to use the body region for your content.<style type="text/css" media="screen">
in the body to define inline CSS
for formatting.td.footer { background-image:url( 'http://example.org/sites/example.org/themes/example/images/newsletter-footer-bg.gif'), }
</body>
and</html>
tags.As introduced earlier, the actual construction of a bulk e-mail consists of walking through a five-step wizard as follows:
Note that the track replies and forwards functionality requires the proper functioning of CiviCRM's EmailProcessor
script. See Chapter 3, Installation, Configuration, and Maintenance for a full discussion of cron job scripts that ship with CiviCRM and how to configure them to your needs. Also note that you can turn these two options to default enabled by altering the constant defined in your civicrm.settings.php
file. If you plan to use these options regularly, you will want to do that to avoid manually turning them on for each mailing.
{domain.address}
and either {action.optOutUrl}
or {action.optOut}
tokens are included in your content. CiviCRM requires this in order to ensure that CiviMail is not inadvertently used in a way that is sure to get your site blacklisted as a spammer and thus unable to get much of your e-mail delivered. If you've not included them in a standard footer as recommended, they must appear in the body content (generally in both the HTML and Text versions). In your HTML version, you are likely to want to embed the opt-out URL/e-mail token in a hyperlink (a) tag with user-friendly text.At this point, the mailing enters the CiviMail queue. It won't actually be sent until the mailing script (civicmail.cronjob.php
) is run. Normally, this will be set up as a cron job on your server and scheduled to poll the queue at regular intervals and start mailings. Understand that it will take time for the mailing to be processed. Initially, there will be a delay as the mailing won't begin until the next cron job is run. Thereafter CiviCRM will process the mailings as fast as your hosting environment and resources permit.
After initiating a mailing, you can monitor its status by doing the following:
You can cancel or delete a mailing that is in the process of being delivered by doing the following:
As soon as the actual mailing process initiates, you can begin to review the mailing report. It will periodically get updated with new information as the mailing proceeds. The metrics for click-opens and click-throughs will generally change for several days after a mailing is sent. Constituents may receive the e-mail, take note of it, but may not follow up by clicking on links inside it for a few days after receiving it.
The report itself provides a snapshot of the key metrics and details of the mailing. This includes the number of successful deliveries, bounces, click-opens, click-throughs (including a list of each link and whether it was a unique click), and links to the list of contacts to whom the mailing was sent. It also provides a copy of the message and record of the mailing options you chose.
The following screenshot is from an actual mailing (with some organization-specific details obfuscated). Note that the categorized items in the Delivery Summary section are all hyperlinked. For example, you can click the click-through links to view a list of all contacts in the mailing who clicked on at least one link in your mailing.