How do i deal with newsletter subscriptions ?

[Anonymous]

Hello, i am new to EME, but it looks wonderful …

Currently i am struggling with newsletter subscriptions ?
Where do i find a list of subscribers ?
Can a subscriber subscribe to several categories ?
Can i have a newsletter per category of events ?

I was searching internet, reading FAQ and searching the forum … but unfortunately with no result.

Can anyone help me out with this ? Thanks in advance.

BR Chris

[Franky]

EME has several methods of sending mail, one of them is the separate “newsletter” function in the “scheduled actions” menu, but that sends a mail to all EME registered people (no exceptions).
You can however create groups in EME and set the option “Mail only?” to “yes”. After that, when using [eme_subform], it will be one of the groups people can subscribe to. See https://www.e-dynamics.be/wordpress/category/documentation/6-shortcodes/eme_subform/ for more on that.
Once people are a part of a group, you can use regular EME actions to send emails to that group (even plan them in the future, if mail queueing is activated). You can send “event related emails” to that group (where you can use event placeholders like #_PRICE, #_STARTDATE, … that are replaced by the related event info), or “generic emails” (where you can just use people placeholders like #_FIRSTNAME, etc …). See the doc on those placeholders.

[Anonymous]

Hi Franky, thanks a lot for your extensive answer. I have to apologize as my question was too generic. And I did already some right things, that you are describing, as i was reading a lot of the documentation.
What i want to do:
I have one location with several types of events. Therefore I mark the events with corresponding categories. This all works fine.
I have groups with corresponding names to the event categories – the groups are marked as “email only”
I have a page with a subscription form [eme_subform] where people can enter their mail address an can choose a category of interest. If one enters a mail address he gets a confirmation mail. If clicks on the link in the mail he is directed to a page that says his registration is complete. This works also fine.
My problem with this:
If a subscriber fills/sends the subscription form, he is not assigned to a group. I am also missing a list, where these subscribers appear. I would expect to find them at least in the table “people”.
Two minor questions are:
1) What exactly does the GDPR switch do ? Is it sending the confirmation mail ?
2) Is is possible that a subscriber can subscribe for more than one group ?

Thanks in advance for your time an patience.

BR Chris

[Franky]

(edited response)
eme_subform without custom template shows a dropdown of groups you can subscribe to (and it is a multiselect, so yes, you can subscribe to multiple groups). Edit: If people select “all” then they are not added to a specific group, maybe I should change that so they are added to all mail-only groups.
If the subscription seems to be working, but people are not to be found in the eme_people table, then of course something else is wrong … I’ll try it again here to make sure there’s no bug on that. Edit: tested, works as expected, but you have of course to search for the email address only.
The GDPR switch is just to ask people’s confirmation on them understanding that you store personal data etc …

[Anonymous]

Dear Franky, i just wanted to double-checked what you were explaining … i also had a glance on the database table -> now the person shows up in the peoples table, as well in the groups table.

I can not explain why it now works.

If you could change the behavior of the “all”-selection that would be graet as this can be highly misleading to the subscriber.

Thanks so far and cheers from Berlin
Chris

[Franky]

The next version will add those subscribing to “all” to all existing mail-only groups too.

[Anonymous]

Whow, this sounds great ! Thank You !

[Anonymous]

Hi Franky, i have two more questions regarding the newsletter sending function.

1) For testing purpose I created a newsletter sending every 5 minutes. This works good so far … but how can i stop this ? Currently it creates more and more mailing entrys (what was my original intention) and i become flooded with mails 🙂

2) If mails are send periodically (i.e. once a week) how can i manage on what day the newsletter is sent ? If i want to send it on Monday … do i have to wait for next Monday and then create an mailing entry with „once a week“ ?

Thanks again for your time.

BR Chris

[Franky]

Edit (ignore my previous answer). Just go in the “scheduled actions” menu and set the newsletter schedule to e.g. “not scheduled”.

[Anonymous]

Thanks again. I now understood that the newsletter functionality of EME defines exactly one newsletter and is not a “newsletter generator”.

Unfortunately i need at least one newsletter per event-category where i have for each event-category a corresponding group.

You wrote: “You can send “event related emails” to that group (where you can use event placeholders like #_PRICE, #_STARTDATE, … that are replaced by the related event info),”

With that, can i send all events of ONE CATEGORY for a GIVEN PERIOD to ONE GROUP ? And schedule this somehow ?

I was thinking if i can program this on my own as all info is existing in the database, but as i am not very good with is i would miss all these nice features with placeholders and so on.

Or if i could have a function { USER, LIST_OF_CATEGORIES, STARTDATE_PERIOD, ENDDATE_PERIOD } that sends a mail to the user containing a list off all events of the requested categories, sorted by time, for the requested period.
This would be my dream ! (if i understand how to call this function by a script or php-script scheduled by cron)

BR Chris

[Franky]

See the email submenu, either “event related emails” or “generic emails”, where you can plan your mails at later dates (multiple date/times allowed). And yes, you can send to specific groups, but you have to select your events of choice (multiple allowed), no event categories there yet.

[Anonymous]

Hi Franky, this is great ! You already implemented the behavior of the “all” group selection. I didn’t expect you to be so fast, man ! This feels like a great experience !

Cheers from Berlin
Chris

[Anonymous]

Hi Franky, i solved my problem with individual newsletters per user. Now every subscriber gets a newsletter with the events of the group/category he subscribed for, sorted by time.
I did some PHPing accessing the database and then write the result in the wp_eme_mailings table. The PHP is triggered by a cron job.

So for now i see no obstacle using EME for my project anymore 🙂

Cheers
Chris

[Franky]

Btw, the current version of EME has #_MAILGROUPS{xx} (see the doc), so you can create subscribe/unsubscribe forms where people will also be added to those groups.

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