You already know Mautic is great for automation campaigns. But what about sending newsletters with Mautic?
If you’re not quite sure how to use Mautic to send your newsletter, this post is for you. I’ll show you how, in just a few straightforward steps.
In this guide I assume you already have contacts in Mautic who want to receive your newsletter. If you need help importing your contacts, watch this video or read the official docs. I’ve also published a step-by-step guide for MailChimp users.
Also, if you don’t have your email delivery settings configured (using Amazon SES, SparkPost [check out my Mautic + SparkPost guide], Sendgrid, etc.) you will want to do that first.
Sending Newsletters with Mautic
In short, here’s the process: create a new segment, add your newsletter contacts to that segment, create a segment email and send (or schedule) your email. But let’s go through everything in more detail:
1. Create a new segment for your newsletter
From your Mautic dashboard, choose Segments from the main menu on the left. Click the +New button to create a new segment. You can name the segment whatever you want, but something descriptive like “Newsletter” might make sense! Make sure your segment is set to Published, and then you can Save and Close.
2. Add contacts to your newsletter segment
Go to Contacts, and select all of the contacts you’d like to receive your newsletter. Then select the green drop-down option at the top of the list, and choose Change Segments. Add your contacts to that newsletter segment you just created. A few notes:
- To see more contacts per page, use the drop-down menu at the bottom right.
- If you have a large list, it may be quicker to export the entire list, add a “Segment” column to your CSV with the name of your segment populated for each contact, and then import your list.
3. Create a new “segment” email (your newsletter)
Go to Channels > Emails, click the +New button and create a New Segment Email. Select your newsletter segment from the Contact segment field on the right side of your screen. Make sure you complete the other important fields, including Subject and Internal Name.
Now go ahead and start working on your newsletter! Don’t forget you can always save and close and finish later, if necessary. If you need email templates, we have some free ones. You could also build your email in another builder, such as beefree.io, and then use the Code Mode theme in Mautic to paste your html.
4a. Send your newsletter now
Once you’ve finished creating your newsletter, all you need to do is press send! You are now sending newsletters with Mautic. Remember, your email will only send to your chosen segment, and will only send one time.
4b. Schedule your newsletter to send later
To schedule your newsletter, you’ll need to implement the Send Scheduled Broadcasts cron job:
php /path/to/mautic/app/console mautic:broadcasts:send
(If you need help with cron jobs, see the docs, look through my tutorials links, etc.)
Once your cron job is set up, make sure your newsletter email is published, and then set the “Publish at” date and time for the time when you want your newsletter to send.
Important: If you are setting a “Publish at” date, make sure you also set a date to “Unpublish” the email. Why? If you don’t have an unpublish date, that email will continue to send to anyone who is added to that segment. So if someone is added to your newsletter segment two weeks later (for example), they will automatically be sent the (now old) newsletter. So make sure you set an unpublish date.
Wrapping up and further reading
You might want to set up a test segment email to give this a try and make sure your cron job is triggering the email send. Also, check out this Mautic help article for more tips (such as personalizing the subject line of your email): How to Create a Segment Email.
Image credit: Dennis Skyley