How to Manage Your Joomla 1.5 Newsletter (AcyMailing)

Click the below links for easy to follow instructions on how to:

If you are new to Joomla, we strongly recommend that you check out our beginners guide here: How To Update Your Joomla 1.5 Website Content

If you haven’t installed AcyMailing yet, you can get it directly from the developers (Acyba) by clicking on the image below:

How to Manage a Manual Newsletter

Go to Components -> AcyMailing -> Newsletters

You should now see a screen like the one below:

Either:

• Create a new newsletter by clicking the new button
• Edit an existing newsletter by clicking the appropriate newsletter title (or click the appropriate newsletter check box, and click the edit button)

If you have a template already installed, you can select this by clicking the template button (only available for brand new newsletters).
If you do not have a template installed but instead have the template HTML code available, you can select the HTML button and copy and paste the code in (or copy the HTML code from a previous newsletter if you wish).
You can add tags which will automatically pull in intelligent data such as pages from your website or the name of someone who has subscribed to your newsletter.  To do this, click the Tags button in the top right hand corner of the window.

In the Subscription tab, you can insert an Unsubscribe, Modify or Confirm link.
It is very important to always give those who receive your newsletters an option to no longer receive mail from you.  If you do not provide this opt-out option, you newsletters may be considered spam.  Not good.

In order to make your newsletters more personal, why not add in a tag such as “name” which will dynamically insert the name your subscriber registered with.  This will allow you to create a newsletter that starts “Dear John….” (if John is the subscribers registered name) and therefore seems a bit more friendly and warm.

If you wish to insert the date, day, time or month, you can do this via the Time tab.

Using the Joomla Content Tab, you can pull in an entire page, or article from your website.  Just select the page you want to insert into your newsletter, define the options that you desire (whether just an introduction to the article, or the full article itself, and with or without any images that may exist in the article).
We would recommend to always set the Author Name to “No”, unless you are delivering a newsletter that is a collection of articles from a range of different authors that represent a range of companies, and need to be acknowledged as such.
If you prefer, you can select all articles from a particular Section or Category if you have organised your articles in this way.
For the purposes of Social Media, and allowing your followers to share your message, it is always best to add the option to share on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn if this is not already available in your template.

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How to Manually Add a New Subscriber to Your Newsletter

If you have a list of people who would like to be subscribed to your newsletter, and you need to add them to your newsletter list, you can do this via the instructions below.  If you have a large list (for example from an exhibition or fayre where people consented to be added to your newsletter), then it may save you a lot of time to use the bulk import option, which you can view here.

Go to Components -> AcyMailing -> Users

From the Users menu, select New

Here you can add in the subscribers name, email address and select whether or not they receive HTML, as well as other options.

Select which newsletter to subscribe the user to (if you have multiple newsletters) and then click Save to add the subscriber.

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How to Bulk Import a Large Number of Subscribers

Sometimes you may need to import a large list of subscribers in one go.  To do this,

Go to Components -> AcyMailing -> Users

From the Users menu, select Import

You now have two options:

1. Import via file (CSV)
2. Import via text area

For the CSV file method, select the “File” radio button and then the “Choose File” button to select your file.

Your CSV file should be in the following format:

• The first column heading should be : “email,name,confirmed,html” (must be in English).  This means that there is only one column with information in it in your CSV file.
• If your file contains a list of e-mails (this must be one per line) and no extra information, simply add the string “email” at the top of your file and import it.
• Please specify your file charset (if you know it), so that the import will encode your data in UTF-8 in order to import it properly.
 If your file charset is unknown, simply leave it as “Unknown” and the import won’t encode your data.
• For the field confirmed, 0 = not confirmed and 1 = confirmed. If you don’t specify this column in your file, the default value is 0 (not confirmed).
• For the field html, the values should be 0 (receive Text) or 1 (receive HTML). If you don’t specify this column in your file, the default value is 1 (receive HTML).

Example:
email,name,confirmed,html
bob@table.com,Bob Tableson,1,1

If you have an excel file with all your contacts, just add a new line at the top to indicate the column name (email,name,confirmed,html) and then save your file as a CSV file (Save as -> CSV). Then import your CSV file following the instructions above.

If you have any problems with the file import option, then select the Textarea radio button, and you can just copy the names and email addresses straight into the text field, as shown below:

You can select the “Auto-generate user’s name” if the “name” field is empty, so that the import will automatically generate a name for each user based on the relevant e-mail address.  If you have completed the “name” field, then set this to no.

Select which newsletter to subscribe your users to:

Then select the import button:

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How to Create an Auto Newsletter

If you would like to have regular newsletters that get sent out to your subscribers on a regular basis without your intervention, then Auto Newsletters are for you!

Go to Components -> AcyMailing -> Auto-Newsletters

Either:

• Create a new newsletter by clicking the new button
• Edit an existing newsletter by clicking the appropriate newsletter title (or click the appropriate newsletter check box, and click the edit button)

Complete the appropriate fields, and click the template button to select your business template (if you have one), or instead select the HTML button in the content window to paste in your own HTML template.

Now follow the instructions on how to add content to your newsletter all the way through to the end of the Manual Newsletter section, but instead of Sending (or Scheduling), click the Save button : How to create a Manual Newsletter

The final task is to create a Cron Task to send the Newsletters automatically, which can either be done through the Components -> AcyMailing -> Configuration option.  Then on the “Queue Process” tab, go to the Cron section and click the “Create/Edit your Cron Task” button, and follow the instructions.

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How to View Your Subscribers

Go to Components -> AcyMailing -> Users

Here you can see a list of all your subscribers and see what newsletter they have subscribed to (see the subscription column).

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How to View Your Statistics

Go to Components -> AcyMailing -> Statistics

In the window you are presented with, you can view the statistics of all your previous newsletters including:

• how many subscribers opened your email
• how many subscribers clicked a link in your newsletter
• how many subscribers unsubscribed from your newsletter

If you go to the Statistics menu and click on Detailed Statistics you will get a full detailed list of your subscribers.
If you go to the Statistics menu and click on Click Statistics you will get a full detailed list of what links your subscribers clicked on within your newsletters.

If you go to the Statistics menu and click on Charts you will get bar charts representations of:

• Your Subscribers/Unsubscribers
• Your Subscription History

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