As of the Monday of January 11, 2010, Press Publisher is changing the way the system handles Newsletters to Subscribers. (Please Note: the Newsletter feature is only available with Paid Package users of the Press Publisher system). While some Users of the system have been content with the simple Newsletter feature that allows you to send basic Newsletters to your Subscribers in the system, others have wanted a considerably more robust solution for handling newsletters.

Press Publisher has integrated with MailChimp to provide a more robust solution for sending Emails/Newsletters to your Subscribers. This means to use our Newsletter feature, you will have to have a MailChimp account. Here is the good news, for most users of our system this will not cost anything additional. MailChimp has a free package that is priced based on the number of subscribers and the number of emails sent in a monthly period (0-500 subscribers and 3000 emails per month for FREE). So, everyone wins!

What are the Benefits?

1. If you have en existing subscriber list with another service, you can import it directly into MailChimp and then sync the subscribers in our system, with the list you import into MailChimp.
2. Professional templates. MailChimp is the premier email marketing and mailing list services in the industry with the ability to create your own or use one of their pre-designed email templates.
3. No limit to the number of subscribers you want to send emails to or the number of emails you send. They have a package for you.
4. Detailed analytics of email campaigns. MailChimp has a powerful tracking system to monitor your campaigns.
5. Instant opt-out for your subscribers from your email campaigns. This is an important spam control measure.
6. Better system health. Because we will no longer be handling emails on our system, we will no longer be prone to problems associated with spammers on our servers and network. We will do what we do best and MailChimp will do what they do best.

What do I have to do?

This change only effects users of the Press Publisher system who are on a paid package.

1. If you want to use this service, you will first need to register for an account with MailChimp.
2. Once you have an account set up, you will need to create at least one list and at least one template in MailChimp.
3. In MailChimp, you will need to create a Valid API Key. Go to Account > API Keys & Info
4. Click the “add a key” link.
5. Copy the API Key (it will look like a really long string of numbers and letters). This needs to be copied and pasted under the Settings page in the Press Publisher CMS.
6. Once you have inserted and Saved the Valid API Key, you can go back under the Settings > MailChimp and select the list you created previously. If you have multiple lists, choose the list you want to use for your newsletter mailings. Please note: you can change this from mailing to mailing if you want.
7. You are ready to start creating your email newsletters under the Newsletters tab in the CMS.

This has been a widely requested feature and we are excited to see it come to completion. We are sure it will be a truly positive enhancement to the system.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 8th, 2010 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Features, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.