Components

YANC Newsletter component

YANC is a newletter component for sending out bulk emails.

To review the configuration settings that you have for YANC, log in to your system and from the Components menu click on YANC > Configuration.

This screen has the overall settings for YANC. One that you might particularly like to change is the "Send subscribe confirm to administrator" if you get too many subscribe emails.

The steps that you should go through to before sending out a mailing list are:

  1. Create a letter (eg "Prospect Newsletter") This is essentially the list of people that you will be mailing to
  2. Upload a list of the names of the people that you want to mail to (Upload a database of names)
  3. Create the email and send it out
  4. Review the statistics from the mailout

Create a letter

Note: this may have been done for you by Butterfly Internet. If you see one already, use that (ie you can continue to upload your list) unless you want to create another one.

A letter is essentially a mailing list. For example, you might want one mailing list for Prospects and one mailing list for Clients. In that case, you create two letters, and add subscribers to each letter before going on to create the mailing.

To create a new letter:

  1. Log in to your website
  2. Components > YANC > Manage Newsletters
  3. Click on the New button in the top left corner
    • Give the letter a name and description, for example "Prospect Newsletter"
    • Insert the senders name and email address that you want viewers to see
    • Choose the template that you'd like to use
    • Check the wording for the messages to subscribers and unsubscribers (Note that the [NAME] is replaced by the name of the person). The message to subscribers is sent if you have set YANC to confirm their subscription.
    • Tick Yes to "published" on the right hand side of the page
  4. Press Save in the top right when you are ready to proceed

Upload a database of names

Note: create the letter that you want to use first, before uploading names to that letter

There are two ways to upload names - bulk uploading from a CSV file, and inserting the names one by one.

Inserting names one by one

  1. Log in to your website
  2. Components > YANC > Manage subscribers
  3. This shows all of the subscribers to your newsletter component
  4. Click on the "Import" button in the top left hand corner
    • Choose the letter to import into (it may be selected automatically for you)
    • Import as confirmed - change this to YES unless you want the people you are uploading to confirm their subscription. Please note: only send emails to people that you have permission for, otherwise you are SPAMMING and will break the Spam laws.
    • Under Import from text, on each line enter each person that you want in your database in the format email address,name
    • For example: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , Mary
    • You have a decision to make here - do you insert the Full name of the person, eg Mary Smith, or just their first name, eg Mary. Note that YANC can insert the name field into the emails so if you have the full name and you insert "Dear [NAME]" at the top of your emails it will read as "Dear Mary Smith" etc, which doesn't make as much sense as "Dear Mary") As such, you may like to just insert the first name.

Press import in the top left hand corner of the screen when you are ready to import the names.

Bulk uploading names from a CSV file

First, get a list of all of the people that you want to mail to into a CSV file (instructions).

  1. Log in to your website
  2. Components > YANC > Manage subscribers
  3. This shows all of the subscribers to your newsletter component
  4. Click on the "Import" button in the top left hand corner
    1. Choose the letter to import into (it may be selected automatically for you)
    2. Import as confirmed - change this to YES unless you want the people you are uploading to confirm their subscription. Please note: only send emails to people that you have permission for, otherwise you are SPAMMING and will break the Spam laws.
    3. Under Import Using CSV, click on Browse, and upload your CSV file (Instructions on making a CSV file with your list of people)
    4. If you do not have any column headings in your CSV file, leave "Start at line" as 1 (otherwise, make it 2)
    5. Press import in the top left hand corner of the screen

Create a new email to be sent out

  1. Log in to your website
  2. Components > YANC > Manage mailings
  3. Press New (or you can copy an old one)
  4. Insert the following

    • Subject line: as you'd like people to read

    • Choose the template you'd like to use

    • In the content, insert the text you'd like to insert. You can use the standard text editor functions to insert pictures, links etc (More instructions about using the text editor)

    • You can insert short cuts to put in data

      • [NAME] = Will display the name of the subscriber

      • [EMAIL] = Will display the emailaddress of the subscriber

      • [DATE] = Will display the date the mailing was send.

    • On the parameters tab

      • You can choose the Letter to be sent out

      • A date for automatically sending the email out

      • Attachments: DO NOT ATTACH ITEMS to bulk emails - it can create a lot of problems. The best thing to do is to put the item onto your website and then insert a link into the email - this way people can choose to download the file or not.

    • When you are ready to proceed press save

    • To send straight away (or preview), tick the mailing and then press "Send"in the top right of the page"

    • To send a preview enter a name and email address, and then press Preview

    • To send the mailout straightaway to everyone press Send Mailing

Review statistics

  1. Log in to your website
  2. Components > YANC > Statistics
  3. Click on the mailing that you want to send to
  4. Press the statistics button to review the statistics

Editing your template

  1. Log in to your website
  2. Components > YANC > Manage templates
  3. Click on the template that you want to edit
  4. Make the appropriate changes and then press Save

Please note: you are required to have the [UNSUBSCRIBE] tag in the template

Exporting your database of people

  1. Log in to your website
  2. Components > YANC > Manage subscribers
  3. Click on Export
  4. Choose the letter that you want to export from
  5. Press Export
  6. Save the file and then download it

Creating a CSV file of names

The purpose of this is to create a list of email addresses and names for you to upload into your website.

CSV means "Comma Separated Values" and is a simple, standard format for tables of information. Many programs can save CSV files, the easiest to use is Microsoft Excel

  1. Start a new Microsoft Excel file
  2. Put all of the people that you want to email to in the following format:
    • Column A: email address
    • Column B: name of the person (You might want to use first name only, or full name.
    • You have a decision to make here - do you insert the Full name of the person, eg Mary Smith, or just their first name, eg Mary. Note that YANC can insert the name field into the emails so if you have the full name and you insert "Dear [NAME]" at the top of your emails it will read as "Dear Mary Smith" etc, which doesn't make as much sense as "Dear Mary") As such, you may like to just insert the first name.
  3. Do not have any row headings or anything above or below the list of names
  4. Do not have anything in any other sheets (ie tabs at the bottom of the file)
  5. In the File menu, choose "Save as"
    • Give the file a name
    • Save it to somewhere easy to find, for example the desktop
    • In the File Type, choose "CSV Comma Separated Values" [Exact wording is different in different versions of Excel]
    • Press Save
  6. Several warnings will pop up that the CSV doesn't support formatting etc, press the appropriate button to ignore the messages and save it anyway
  7. Close the program (again, it might give several warnings that CSV doesn't support formatting etc, that's fine)
  8. You can now upload your database