C21 Mailpoet Setup

Explanation

Video

Reorder Mailpoet Newsletter pages

Subscription widget and images

After that we make from scratch new widget, using shortcodes. This widget can be used in page too. The shortcode is: [ custom_subscribe ]. We used our core wp user table and store all the information there. Our widget is independent from mailpoet and we can easily change from one newsletter plugin to other. We also can easily transfrom our subscribers into users.

Importing old subscribers

The next step was the importing subscribers from subscribe2 plugin to mailpoet. We used the core tool from mailpoet. After all we have 219 imported subscribers on which we can send emails.

Sending Mails

As opposed to Subscribe2 we do not need a SMTP plugin.

Next step was to configure mailpoet. Like the old newsletter plugin, we set up the plugin to use gmail smtp server. This is good, because in this way we will be sure that every email goes on their mailboxes, not in spam. We also changed the old subscribe page from subscribe2 form to our new form. The link in the header is the same.

Mailpoet working Example

“Step 0”: Adding pages into the newsletter

One can add posts or pages into the newsletter using only the tag newsletter. If the post or the page have had this tag and it is not sended via newsletter yet, it will be included into the next newsletter. We show only the last 2 pages and 2 posts. It includes the recent added posts. (It sorts by DATE Desc)

See all pages sent as newsletter

You can easily try to find all pages contained in a Newsletter via the search under Pages -> All pages (the same for the posts) or via this link.

Step 1: Main Details

Define starting send time

You can define the starting send time via the admin panel. You can find the needed option under MailPoet -> Newsletters. You need to choose to edit newsletter with name “Newsletter from SNB & CHF Your Central Bank Watch “.

Choose automatic or standard Newsletter

On step 1 you can see the option. It is called “Automatically sent…“.
only automatic??

Step2: Branding and design

First we created a new snbchf branded mail template. We firstly show 3 latest pages. All with the author, category and image. We also show the excerpt for every page. After that we show the latest 2 posts. They have the same structure.

Additional Remark and further Customization

Emails per hour

We have limits of max mails per hours, because we use Gmail SMTP servers. It has these limits and we need strictly follow them.  We currently sent 70 mails per hour. We have almost 350 subscribers, so the whole process will be 5 hours long.

Custom code

We added some parts of custom code into the code.

The functions, which we extend are three:

Lift limits

MailPoet have limit from 2000 users and after that it stops working. It stops sending and adding new subscribers. We remove this limit, but this caused changing in more than 10 files.

Tags

Currently we use tag “newsletter” for adding content into our newsletter. There was a bug in this. It simply didn’t work. We needed to fix it. Now it is working fine without any troubles. The problem was in base.php

Sending one post again and again

The base mailpoet doesn’t have such a function. So we need to make. We want sometimes to send one post again after a while. So we needed to recreate this functionality. Now it is working fine. The changed files are more than 5.

Testing

The last step was the test. We started testing firstly the integrating process and the widget. After that we test all the links in the email – for unsubscribing and viewing the email in the browser.

Monitoring

We still have to monitoring the whole sending process. How much time it takes and how it works. We also have to check if we can sent again the page, if we update it.

Updating posts

After some tests and research – there is no way to have this functionality without hard-coding it. We can change and use the update date, but it will took time to make the correction. We can also document the process and which files we changed. And when we update the plugin, we can easily make the change again.

Newsletter Testing

- Click to enlarge