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.

Cooler Email: The Basics Pt. 2: Getting Started

(Part 1: http://www.surfrider.org/surfwriter/2009/08/cooler-email-basics-pt-1-what-it-is-and.php)

Before you send out your first Cooler Email blast, you'll have to setup at least one list of contacts, and configure it and your system appropriately. After that, we can work on sending out your first blast, which will be covered in Pt. 3 of this blog series.

I. Setting Up A List
a. Creating Your List
b. Configuring Your List

II. Managing Contacts
a. Importing Existing Contacts From Another System or File
b. Adding Contacts Individually
c. HQ's Membership List Download Tool
d. How Contacts Are Stored In The System
e. The CRM (Contact Relationship Manager)
f. Web Signup Form

III. Next... Part 3


I. Setting Up A List

You can have multiple lists for your chapter. For instance, you may have one list for your confirmed members and another that includes everybody. Keep in mind in many cases multiple lists may mean more maintenance and management, and having just one list works for most chapters. But it's up to you.

Ia. Creating Your List

Login to Cooler. You'll be in the Control Panel by default.
Hit "New List". It's near the top left.
We'll fill out the basic information about this list. There are three columns of information that Cooler presents to you; we'll only concern ourselves with the first column. You may look at the others and change the default setup if you like, but the first is all that I want to talk about right now. Certain important configurations can be made only after, not while, you create the list, so please do not ignore that part of the process. I agree that it is a deficiency to make you go thru extra steps, but there it is.
For the name of the list, please use a 3-4 letter capitalized prefix at the beginning of its name. If you have a training with me, I'll typically suggest something to use or we can come up with something. For instance, "SMC" for San Mateo, "SFL" for South Florida, "OFG" for Ocean Friendly Gardens. The reason I ask for this is so I have an easier and quicker time managing things (and giving support).

Note, the list name cannot change, so make sure you name it appropriately so you can understand it. If we ever do need to change the list name, we can create a new list and import all the old contacts, but we won't be able to import sending and tracking history for editions on that old list.

Even tho we are not sending anything yet, Cooler requires at least one edition per list, so give your first edition a name. You can call it "Dummy" or "Test" or anything... edition names CAN change, as opposed to the list name, which can't.

When it comes to edition names, the only way Cooler displays these is alphabetically, so a good practice is to name things by date. For instance
2009 10 10 Gala Invite
2009 09 25 City Council Meeting
2009 09 19 Chapter Meeting

The "Brief Description Of List" is the wording that appears on the Profile Update page for your recipient. The Profile Update page is where recipients go when they click on the footer for ANY email sent by Surfrider chapters. If you're not sure what I mean here, next time you get an email from Surfrider sent via Cooler Email, go to the bottom of that email and note where it prompts you to click to update your profile information (unsubscribe, take yourself off the list, etc.) This is the footer that appears at the bottom of every email sent by Cooler automatically, to give recipients control over their subscriptions.

All the Surfrider lists appear here. If you do not fill out the "Brief Description Of List", the wording that appears will be the typically cryptic actual name of the list. That is, instead of "Cocoa Beach, Florida" it'll say "COCOMain01", etc.

The list type, "Public", "Private", or "Hidden", should be set to "Public" in almost all cases. A "Private" list cannot be subscribed to by the public. A "Hidden" list is even more restrictive in that a recipeint can't even tell that they belong to this type of list. Never use a Hidden list. This is only appropriate for companies with employees, or one shots, etc. Hidden lists violate an agreement with Cooler and our subscribers that they have the right to unsubscribe at anytime. Hidden lists may have a place in the world of email communications, but not for Surfrider chapters!

Ib. Configuring Your List

After you create and save your list, Cooler will place you back into the Control Panel. For the list, hit "Settings". Again, lots of options, lots of sections. We'll focus on the most important here.

In the top left, fill out all the "Contact Information". This is about your chapter. The "Contact From" email address should be something officially Surfrider, either your chapter's surfrider.org email address or something with the domain of your specific chapter (ex. surfridersd.org). NOT the personal email address of the volunteer performing the blast. (If you need a surfrider.org email for your chapter, contact Ed Mazzarella or Brian Katz). You may leave the administrator's email blank if you don't want to receive reports and things from Cooler. The postal address is important for legal reasons, and can be your chapter's address or Surfrider Global's (942 Calle Negocio Suite 350, San Clemente, CA 92673).

In the "Send To A Friend" section, there's a default message "Take A Look At This Email!" that comes with it. My personal preference is to remove (or change) this message and I just point that out because it's easy to miss.

The color, logo, and banner options are those which will serve as defaults for the design of all editions created under this list. They're defaults only... they can be changed (and don't need to be set at all, necessarily).

II. Managing Contacts

You manage contacts by hitting the "Contacts" button for the list, in the Control Panel, or, in a more advanced way, by going to the "CRM" tab.

IIa. Importing Existing Contacts From Another System or File
Cooler can import contacts via a file. It must be a text-based tab-delimited file. All major spreadsheet programs (Excel, Calc, etc.) can export into this format. All this format means is that, in a simple text file, each contact has a row and each field for that contact is separated by a tab. (The abbreviation for this type of file is TSV, tab separated value, or CSV, character separated value. CSV can be confused with Comma separated values!) You can open up a TSV in any spreadsheet program like Excel, but also in any text application like Notepad, and it just looks something like

myemail@here.com Bill Smith
anotheremail@there.com Jenny Jones
boyisthiseasy@barrio.com Manuel Ramos

Note that you may import contacts at any time... when you create your list and throughout its lifetime. Cooler Email gracefully prevents duplicates, and also prevents repeat uploads from wiping out previous statii, such as an unsubscribe request. You need not do the work of checking lists for this type of thing before import.

To import, go to "Contacts", then hit "Import" at the top left. There are instructions here for the format of your file. The CRM gives you more options, but is also more complex.

I help out chapters on a regular basis getting their existing lists into the proper file format. If you need some help, don't hesitate to contact me about it.

In Excel, the process is typically to first organize your columns as Name, Company, and Email. Then "Save As", and choose the tab delimited format.

Once your file is setup, use Cooler to "Browse" for the file, and then "Import Data Now". Cooler will report on how many records were successfully imported, how many bounced, how many were already listed as unsubscribed, etc. More details on this below.

IIb. Adding Contacts Individually

Adding contacts one by one is straightforward. In the "Contacts" area for your list, there is a form at the bottom, below the existing contact list, that allows you to enter the individual contacts (And if you're wondering, having the form at the bottom of this screen is indeed somewhat of a user interface deficiency).

IIc. HQ's Membership List Download Tool

We have a tool setup on the chapternet that allows you to download your chapter's current members, in a format that you can use for importing into Cooler, or simply for your own, human use. There are several options there, and instructions. In Chapternet, it's in section #7, Internet Technologies Support.

(If you need Chapternet access, contact Ed Mazzarella.)

You can download all your members, or just those joined up since a month and year.

You'll need an extra password (besides the Chapternet password) in order to download your list. We can set this up for you anytime, and it can be the same as your Cooler Email password.

IId. How Contacts Are Stored In The System

Your Cooler Email account is a subaccount of the overall Surfrider account. Contacts are shared between subaccounts... for instance, there may be a Contact on a South Orange County list, and a San Diego list, all legitimately.

What this means is, you should never delete a Contact. If you need to remove a contact from your list, just remove them from your list.. don't delete them from the entire system. You can also set their status to "Unsubscribed" if you are sure they want to be removed from ALL lists. Typically, recipients can do this themselves via the footers in the emails (described above). But once in a while, you'll get a phone call. You can unsubscribe a contact by finding them, viewing them, editing them (this brings up the CRM), and changing their EmailFormat to "Unsubscribed".

There is more to editing a contact than just this, but I'm leaving the additional features out for simplicity's sake. Feel free to explore it.

What you should take from here is that removing a contact from a list is much different than deleting a contact. Deleting a contact removes their record entirely; removing a contact from a list just changes the record.

So another reason you do not want to delete contacts is in the case where, for instance, their status has changed to "Unsubscribed". If the contact were to be deleted, then that contact could be re-imported later, and they'd no longer be Unsubscribed. This results in bad karma! Cooler keeps track of duplicates, but not if the contact has been deleted.

The one exception for never deleting a contact is if it has "noemail.com" as part of its email address. In this case, the email address for the contact is blank or illegitimate, and so can't be used by any list, or any chapter. It's basically a bogus or erroneous record. In this case, and in this case only, you can permanently delete the contact.

The email address is the key used by the system for identification.

Cooler keeps track of duplicate emails and does not allow them... you do not have to worry about parsing lists for duplication. If you enter, via an import list or individually, a contact whose email is already in the system, Cooler will detect that and update the contact record with the new information (say the new address you are entering or a change in first name spelling). There will never be two contacts with the same email address in the system, across all the chapters.

IIe. The CRM (Contact Relationship Manager)

If you click on a contact in your list, Cooler will open that contact's record in the CRM. The CRM is a more comprehensive view of the contacts. In some cases, the CRM takes the POV of the overall system, and in some cases that of your local chapter account. I mean things like subscriber counts, and mailing list memberships. There's not a perfect logic to it, by any means... knowing this may help with some questions that come up from time to time. Perfectly justified questions, by the way.

Like several other items in this blog post, the CRM is more involved than for writing about here. So use it if you like by all means; just be careful. And like other items, if you want any assistance or training on it, I'm happy to oblige!

IIf. Web Signup Form

You can place a small form on your chapter's website to allow visitors to signup for your Cooler Email list. For instructions on this, go to the Help Section, where there is a menu item specificially for this. Whoever sets up this form should have a good grasp of HTML. While it is simple, HTML knowledge is required.

Next... Part 3

We're almost done! The next blog entry focusing on getting started with Cooler Email addresses creating the email editions themselves, sending them out, and tracking. Thank you for reading this far, and in case I haven't said it enough, I'm here for any questions, training, and help your chapter needs.

Peace and waves!

Cooler Email: The Basics Pt. 1: What It Is (And Isn't)

Heard about Cooler Email? Just started volunteering for the Surfrider Foundation? Been tasked with communicating with your public about your chapter's issues, events, and happenings? Cooler Email is a tool and online service that the Surfrider Foundation has contracted with for FREE use by our chapters. This is a very basic rundown of what it is designed to do, and what it is NOT!

Part 2 and Part 3 go into the basics of Getting Started, and Sending Your First Blast.

Cooler Email IS:

• for sending out "one to many" email messages from a chapter to the public.
  
• an active way to increase the read rates of your email messages and decrease the chance that they get filtered out due to spam trapping.
• a tracker for seeing how well your communications are being received, via graphs, statistics, and reports.
• capable of importing email lists from other applications (ex. Yahoo, Outlook, etc.), some of which you may currently be using (inefficiently!) for email communications.
• capable of integration on your chapter's website via a signup form, which can be stylized however you like.
• capable of managing and gracefully handling bounces, unsubscribers, and duplicates.
• capable of sending out any email that you can design and that modern email technology can handle.
• a provider of basic design templates for your emails.
  
• free for your chapter, no matter how many emails you send.
  

Cooler Email IS NOT:

• an email program. It's not a replacement for Gmail, Yahoo!, Outlook, Thunderbird, Surfrider.org webmail, etc. You should continue to actually read and write standard emails via the program of your choice.
• an email address, or a provider of an email address. If you need a surfrider.org chapter address, please contact the writer of this blog, your chapter's regional coordinator, or Ed Mazzarella (director of chapters).
• An activist listserv. It is not for ongoing back and forth communications . It is not specifically designed for generating discussions.
• for sending out emails containing more than basic information, instructions, or explanations... tho it can be used for alerting and linking to webpages that may contain more comprehensive information.
• perfect, but can do most of what you need with some learning and training, and training from Surfrider is always available.