Cooler Email: The Basics Pt. 3: Create and Send Out Your Blast

This post assumes you're familiar with the skills introduced in Part 1 and Part 2.

So now you've got at least one mailing list setup and you know how to manage the contacts in this list. Within each list are Editions. An Edition is simply the term we use for a distinct message that we're going to send out to that email list. Since we send this Edition out to everyone on our list, we also refer to it as a blast.

An edition can be as simple as text or a complete HTML email. Granted, not all the HTML used on the web at large is allowed or appropriate in an email. We'll go over these specifics and general good practices in this post.

I. Edition Creation
a. Brand New vs. Duplicate
b. Naming Conventions

II. Editing
a. Cooler Email Layouts
b. Gotchas and Workarounds with the Layout Editor
c. Custom Templates
d. Importing Your Own HTML File
e. Restrictions and Best Practices for HTML Import

III. Send It!

IV. Tracking

V. Edition Management
a. Naming (again)
b. Archiving

I. Edition Creation
Every list has by default one edition. You create your first edition when you create your list. Create other editions by hitting the "New Edition" button.

Ia. Brand New Vs. Duplicate
You can create a new edition by leaving the default option, "None - create new edition from scratch" selected. Else, create a new edition that starts from a previous one by finding the Edition you want to duplicate and selecting that.

You will notice that the list of editions to choose from is extremely long. This is because Cooler is pulling from ALL the Surfrider chapters. This is a quirk of the Cooler system.

You will also notice that each edition starts officially with the name of the list that it belongs to.

Ib. Naming Conventions
Cooler, on this page, suggests naming an edition by date. A good idea, but Cooler's example is problematic. We highly suggest naming by date year first, then month, then day, not day-month-year. The reason is that editions are typically sorted alphabetically. If you name by date, your editions will be listed in an order that's difficult to manage, for instace on the "New Ediyion" screen referenced above, and on the Control Panel.

Other possibilities for ordering are year-month-date, followed by a description... ex. "2009 10 29 Halloween Party Invite".

Editions, unlike Lists, can have spaces in the name.

II. Editing
Right after creating an edition, Cooler will place you in the Edition Editor. By default, you'll be using the Postcard (1 Article) Template. You can change this.

IIa. Cooler Email Layouts
Layouts are simply preformatted email messages. Some are simple, like the Postcard layout. Some are more involved, having multiple columns and/or allowing for multiple articles. In all cases, choosing a layout results in filling out a form, with a place to put your headlines, content, images, etc.

You can get a better approximation of what the layouts look like by going to the "Layout" area, from the top menu.


This area will allow you to see and choose your layout. Once chosen, you'll go back into the editor.

IIb. Gotchas and Workarounds with The Layout Editor
The Cooler Email layout editor is, unfortunately, buggy in some browsers. The best way to use it is to learn some very basic HTML, which is not hard. (If you are going to be doing email blasts, you should know some of the basics even if the editor was flawless.)

HTML has a lot of parts, but you can get by just knowing about italic/emphasis, bold, hyperlinks, and images as a start. Here are some good tutorials:
http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp
http://htmldog.com/guides/htmlbeginner/
http://vzone.virgin.net/sizzling.jalfrezi/iniframe.htm

One thing to keep in mind is that we are building HTML emails, not HTML pages, so you do not need to worry about the headers or the body. You just need to learn the basic HTML tags.

The Cooler Email editor has icons to automatically format your text, but you can use HTML directly to do the same thing.

The biggest bug deals with images. Sometimes the layout editor forms have specific places for single images, but sometimes you'll want to place an image within the flow of your content. The Cooler editor icon for doing this without coding up HTML (the little tree) does not work in many browsers. In the case of inserting an image, you can either show one from somewhere on the web, or use the Cooler Email library.

The CE library, while functional, is unneccessarily complicated and difficult to use. If you want to use it, of course you may, but if you have any issues, please contact Brian for some help.

The other way is to place an image somewhere on the web and include it via HTML, as in <img src="http://www.surfrider.org/mychapter/images/myimage.jpg" />. You can put the image on your chapter's webserver, or you may use the Surfrider Global server for webspace. If you need webspace for your chapter, contact Mark Babski: mbabski AT surfrider DOT org.

IIc. Custom Templates
Cooler Email offers plenty of layouts/templates, but you can also create your own. A Custom Template is essentially your own layout. You write it using a formatting language specific to CE. Directions for this are in CE Help. Katz can also help you with that (part of the job!).


IId. Importing Your Own HTML File
Importing your own custom HTML is not the same as using HTML in a layout or template. This means you write your own HTML page, albeit simply, and acknowledging the restrictions on HTML in an email blast, and upload that. This way you bypass using the Cooler Email forms, and any problems or limitations there.

To use this feature, simply choose "Import Your HTML File" in the dropdown for the Layout choice, in the CE Editor. You'll then be able to upload a file from your computer.

IIe. Restrictions and Best Practices for HTML Import

• Do not worry about or rely on items in the HEAD of your document. Many email readers strip the HEAD tags completely. So any styles, meta tags, etc. that go there in a traditional HTML page lose their meaning.
• If using CSS, use inline styles in all cases. And do not use CSS classes. That is, each element must be specifically styled. This takes away from much of the efficiency and beauty of using CSS, but is safer in emails.
  
  Ex. I style this phrase
  
  is coded up as
  
  <span style="font-weight:150%;font-color:#00FF00;">I style this phrase<span>.
  
  Don't use linked style classes or external style classes. They usually won't work.
  
  
• Attachments are not allowed in email blasts. Period.
  

III. Send It!
Well once you save your edition, preview it, and everything looks good, you can send it.

You can send it to a temporary list, say one containing only your email address, to make sure it comes through okay. You can also schedule the send; it need not go out right away.

Click "Send" on the top level menu.

On the Send screen, "Send edition to only" is the field to fill out for your temporary, test blast. You can enter emails separated by commas. Typically you'll only want a few, say yourself, somebody else, part of your executive committee, etc.

Ignore what Cooler Email calls the "Test List". This is another user interface deficiency... this refers to a test list setup globally, that doesn't apply to individual chapters.

When you are ready to send out the real deal, select the "Broadcast edition to all..." option.

If you want to schedule your blast to go out later, choose that option in the "Deliver Broadcast" section. NOTE: THE LOCAL TIME IS SAN CLEMENTE, CALIFORNIA TIME, Pacific Daylight or Standard.

Be sure to click the confirmation checkbox that states you are not spamming anyone.

"Send Now"! (Even if you're sending later. "Send Now" means initiate the Send. You may cancel a scheduled Send by going to this Send screen, and if there is time left, you'll see your scheduled sends and be able to cancel.)

There may be a delay before the emails all actually get sent. Within a few hours though, they will all be delivered. Or at least sent out. The next step is to see how many were successfully delivered, how many bounced, and of those delivered, how many were actually read, and how many were clicked thru, if you had hyperlinks in the message.

IV. Tracking

As stated, you can track bounces, delivery rates, read rates, and click thru rates. Read rates and click thru rates will change over time, of course, as more people respond to the email you've sent.

To track, go to your Control Panel, choose the relevant edition, and hit "Track".

You'll see several graphs, statistics, and links to reports. There are many ways to interpret these, too many to go over in this blog engtry. Read rates above 35% are pretty good.

One area you may wish to focus on, if you have the time, energy, and motivation, is the bounce reports. Many bounces can be avoided if your recipients give explicit permission for emails from your domain, be it surfrider.org or otherwise, or your "From" email address, to come into their inbox. You may wish to compile your bounced emails and attempt to contact those individuals. You also may look at the reports of which domains are bouncing the most, and contact those domains to see if they have you on a blacklist.

To compile a list of the bounced emails, click on the word "Bounced" underneath the main graph. This will popup a new window in which you can create a new list from the bounced emails. You can then try to send a message to this new list asking recipients to allow your domain, or at least the main "From" email for your domain (ex. membership@surfrider.org) to come thru. Granted, you may get another bounce from this list, so you can also take these bounced emails and put them into a spreadsheet, for individual contacting. This is a less efficient method, to be sure, but better than nothing!

The other thing we mentioned was contacting domains with high bounce rates and asking them to clear your domain or "From" email from any restrictions or blacklists. This sometimes happens with service providers like "cox.net" or "pacbell.net". In fact, better than you contacting these domains, is if Cooler Email contacts these domains. They do this as part of their ongoing efforts to improve service to their clients. If you find domains which are problematic, please contact Brian Katz (the author of this entry) and I will contact Cooler Email. I don't encourage you to contact suppport AT cooleremail DOT com directly because of disorganization in the communications flow.


V. Edition Management
Va. Naming (Again)
We mentioned in section Ib naming conventions to use for your editions. The idea is to name them so that they can be more easily organized.

Vb. Archiving
You may also archive editions. You may not want to lose editions in case you want to use them as a start to the creation of new editions, and also if you want to retain tracking information, but they may be cluttering up your Control Panel. You may archive editions simply by hitting "Archive" from the top right of the Control Panel. There, you'll be provided a list of all your editions, and can choose which ones to archive. You may also choose to de-archive, using the same method.