A mailing list is a good way to keep in touch with your customers. People now expect a website, or Facebook to send them a notification everytime something happens.
Types of notifications include
- A regular, weekly or monthly 'update'. This lists all the activities that your orgaisation has been involved with recenlty.
- Email out a blog, news or media post. People don't have to hunt on a regular basis for latest updates.
- Send comments to people who have also commented on an article so that they can respond.
Of course you can also post/tweet/share your web posts across a wide range of platforms.
What types of email lists does MountainRiver CMS provide. Firstly 'Simple News' which is only recommended for occasional and cheap mailing and then CiviCRM Mailings which are far more extensible.
'Simple News'
Lets you 'send a page' of any kind as a mailing. People can subscribe, just by entering an email address if that is the site policy.
Pros
- 'simple'
Cons
- No bounce management
- Not able to easily segrement or categorise
- A/B testing is possible with difficulty
- Few metrics
CiviCRM Mailings
CiviCRM mailings go a lot further. There are options to create dynamic groups from a fully fledged constitutent database. 2 bounced messages and the system records this and stops sending email to the recipient until it is reviewed. This greatly reduces spam counts.
Pros
- Fully featured and extensible
- Has a variety of user interfaces, including 'compose a website post', aggregate posts, compose in the CRM or a fully fledged layout builder.
- Has a templating system that allows a designer to develop a mail template, facilitating great looking mailings.
Cons
- Heavier. Requires the full CRM installation which also requires updates and professional management.
The CiviCRM mailings
There is a layout builder called mosaico.
