Quinterox

Recently a client asked me if I knew how to use 1shoppingcart.com to send out newsletters. I had no idea but the same time I couldn’t help thinking how simple it would be to send out a newsletter through regular email without paying a website to do it. I tried it, but not without a little kicking and screaming from Gmail. It appears that Gmail does not allow you to edit the HTML of your email but just allows you write in either plain text or rich text formatting. Though rich text formatting is synonymous to HTML with Gmail’s built in WYSIWYG editor you really don’t have much control over the layout of your newsletter. In this post I explain my experience with Gmail and a few alternatives.

Gmail

So though we all love Google and thank the internet gods it exists, some us of can’t help but to be annoyed by some of the minute details that bother some of us about its features.

During my testing while trying to insert some HTML into an email message I noticed the Gmail application did not allow you to dive into the message’s HTML to tweak the layout to your liking. Instead I found myself trying to reconstruct the layout I had made on my HTML editor with Gmail’s WYSIWYG editor. I huffed and puffed as I moved at a snail’s pace. After a few minutes I gave up. There had to be a better way!

Copy & Paste

After a little research online I came across a website that had some comments that helped with my newsletter dilemma. About.com had a comment reply left by Nostalgia which suggested the user opens the web page they are trying to email in the web browser, select all, copy, and paste it onto a new rich text Gmail message. This works but leaves CSS class definitions out due to the lack of  the HTML head tag (and CSS links). It does however seem to like any in-line CSS code.  Though this is not the ideal form of coding HTML, it does work making it a pretty basic way to create your newsletter. Just keep in mind Gmail’s limitations on how many people you could send an email to (currently 500 for the web interface and 100 for client software ) and its limits of how many emails can bounce back before they disable your email.

Another thing to consider is your need for subscriber management. If you have a small group you send your newsletters to Gmail is probably ideal, otherwise you might want to purchase software, or web services that allow you to more effectively manage and send out your newsletter.

Email Programs

Some email programs such as Mozilla Thunderbird allow you to edit the HTML of your email. However like the Gmail web interface the end product seems to ignore (or remove?) any CSS class definitions in the header and external CSS file links. So though this option eliminates the step of copying your newsletter from the browser onto the email it also requires in-line CSS but is also affected by Gmail’s 100 send via client software limitation.

Other Software

In my adventures in educating myself about newsletters I also tried out a free newsletter program called SendBLaster. The program seemed pretty useful and packed with useful features. It had a decent amount of emails  it allowed you to send for free (100 per day), a bounce-back test, a spam-check, an HTML editor, as well as the option to send a text version of your newsletter amongst others .  If you need to send more than one-hundred emails in one day you might want to invest in the Pro version or even a web service such as Mailchimp which has great features at different price levels. Keep in mind however that if you are using SendBlaster or any similar software your email host’s send-limit might still apply even with the program.