Newsletter is a really powerful WordPress plugin that lets you easily create & control an awesome newsletter system with unlimited emails, subscribers and newsletter tracking (know when your newsletter is clicked) directly from your WordPress admin area dashboard. The plugin is loaded with lots of options and features which makes it highly customizable but sometime lots of options confuses the new WordPress users. In this tutorial we will make things easy by providing you a quick installation and usage steps for this newsletter plugin.
You can easily set it up and start using it in minutes. Not only you can offer a subscription form to your visitors but even you can manually add new subscribers by their email addresses, then choose a theme, include & exclude categories to send post from or create emails with your visual editor, send them and also track them.
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Login to your WordPress admin area and follow the steps:
(If you still don’t have a website then easily create one in minutes by reading our this tutorial)
[heading size=”17″]Step-1 Installation & Basic Settings[/heading]
Install and activate Newsletter plugin. Upon activation the plugin adds a new admin menu with title ‘Newsletter‘. Visit Dashboard -> Newsletter -> Configuration page and specify:
- Sender email address, the email address which comes visible to your subscribers on your newsletter emails
- Sender name, the name which subscribers see as the sender of your email. You may use your blog name here.
- Return path is the email address where delivery error messages are sent
- Reply to is the email address where subscribers may reply to
These are the basic settings, other advanced settings and options can be accessed from other tabs.
[heading size=”17″]Step-2 Editing Subscription Steps (Optional)[/heading]
Visit Dashboard -> Newsletter -> Subscription Steps page and now again there are various tabs with lost of options, the general options allows you to choose an opt in type where:
- Double Opt In (default) means subscribers will be needing to confirm their email address with an activation link, this reduces spams.
- Single Opt In means subscribers do not need to confirm their email address.
Another option allows you to enable/disable your website’s Newsletter dedicated page URL, this is optional. Here you can add a page address(eg. http://yourdomain.com/newsletter) which you have manually created for subscription and messages. The page must have the short code [newsletter].
[heading size=”17″]Step-3 Editing Subscription Form (Optional)[/heading]
You can edit the default subscriptions form, you can add/remove fields etc from Dashboard -> Newsletter -> Subscription Form page. It also allows you to choose a subscription form style & widget style.
[heading size=”17″]Step-4 Displaying Subscription Form[/heading]
You can easily display the subscription form either by using its shortcode [newsletter] or by using its widget from Dashboard -> Appearance -> Widgets page.
[heading size=”17″]Step-5 Building Your Email List By Manually Adding New Email Subscribers (Optional)[/heading]
The best thing about the plugin is that it provides you a very easy interface for manually adding new email subscribes.
To start, visit Dashboard -> Newsletter -> Subscribers page, click ‘New subscriber‘ type the email address, click ‘Proceed‘ button, specify name, gender etc and add it. You can manage your email subscribers individually or massively back from Dashboard -> Newsletter -> Subscribers page.
[heading size=”17″]Step-6 Creating, Sending & Tracking Newsletters[/heading]
Visit Dashboard -> Newsletter -> Newsletters page, this is the page which shows your newsletters list and here you can manage your newsletter messages: compose, deliver, monitor etc.
Click the ‘New Message‘ button, choose a theme for your new newsletter and you will be directed to a page where you can set maximum number of posts to send in your message, you can exclude certain categories and add your social account link etc. (It shows you a live preview of your newsletter on your right screen side).
When you are done, click ‘Save options and refresh the preview‘ button and then click ‘Go to edit this message‘ which directs you to a page where you can add make manual editings to your message.
Who will receive it tab allows you to filter your subscribers like you can send news letters only to men or women or limit to the subscribers which are WordPress users as well etc. Another tab with title Other options allows you to enable tracking for click and email opening, also you can schedule the newsletter to some specific date. There are various other options too, when you’re done click ‘Save‘ or directly ‘Send‘ button.
As soon you click ‘Send‘ button, your news letter gets added to the queue, you can access the statistics etc from Dashboard -> Newsletter -> Newsletters (List Page). You can create and save unlimited newsletters, and add unlimited subscribers. In-case if you face any problem with the plugin usage, you may use the following comment form or refer to this plugin’s support forums or use its official documentation.