best program to create&publish e-newsletters

[thadley]

Hi there-
I am looking to buy new software that will help me create professional looking e-newsletters for my company. Does anyone have any suggestions? Is this possible to do in Dreamweaver?

[sypher]

To make them or to send them?

[thadley]

both, preferably. Right now we are using newsletterpro (newsletterpro.com) and I dislike it greatly!

Thanks for any suggestions you might have.

[Rob]

I think you should actually consider using Microsoft Word....

Seriously though, it's mail merge (email merge) facilities are pretty good and it produces HTML emails.....

Whats more you probabally already have it.

It can create AND send bulk mailings with it.

[benbramz]

you will have to set up an access database or an excell spreadsheet to get it to work. more information on mailmerging can be seen here

[Rob]

Sorry.... I presumed most people know how to do this..... sorry.

[benbramz]

just giving a uncondensed answer

[sypher]

To make one online, i.e. people sign up for your newsletter and it auto sends them then you would either need to use a free online script or get a custom one made for you.

[thadley]

I understand how to mail merge, so it's basically the same to do an "e-mail" merge through Microsoft Word?? Crazy! I didn't know that. Our website currently has a "sign up" box that directs the information to our current e-newlsetter host (newsletterpro.com).

So in Word, would you design the e-newsletter using tables? How do you set the viewing size? Sorry for the barrage of questions...

Thanks!

[thadley]

I think our company will end up purchasing Dreamweaver for building websites... couldn't I use it to also build e-newsletters? (Design the elements, save as html page, email it out to email list?)

Please let me know if anyone has had any experience using Dreamweaver as an e-newsletter application. I'm concerned with using Word to design my enewsletter (as previous suggested) because I don't understand how you would really design within Word.

Thanks! Happy Friday!!

[sypher]

Yep dreamweaver is fine for doing this.

[benbramz]

dreamweaver can send out newsletters?or do u mean design them..then send them out using outlook? woah....got ma stupid head on lol

[sypher]

Design them

Word would not be suitable for a web newsletter. Microsoft embeds too many "IE specific" tags by default unless you clean them out. Also, you've still got to host the images somewhere unless you embed them in the email being sent.

Also, a good email delivery tool will have the ability to send HTML, Text, or Multipart versions of your newsletter.

[thadley]

Do you have any suggestions? We currently use www.newsletterpro.com, and I am very dissatisfied with the program. However, it does allow us to send multiple versions of e-newsletters...

Thanks for your reply!

[sypher]

i dunno any free ones because ive never used them, but theyre very simple to build in php.

[benbramz]

would it not be better in the long run to build such an application yourself? save using bad products and paying for them...

[thadley]

Whew, sounds a bit beyond my skill range! Thanks for the suggestions though... I think I might do a search through Google to find a good e-newsletter delivery service.
Thanks again, always helpful!
-T

[JamieH]

I use Word and a spread sheet to great effect as metioned before, if you want to see what I knock out then let me know your e-mail address

Jamie