MonkCMS Help

The Newsletters module in MonkCMS and Ekklesia360™ makes it easy to create mass emails that go out to a group of recipients.

At a glance

Here's a bird's-eye view of the necessary steps to send a mass email with Newsletters:

1. Create site Members and specify their email addresses (in People > Members).
2. Assign these members to a Group (in People > Groups).
3. Create your newsletter (in Connect > Newsletters).
4. Send a test newsletter to yourself or a colleague to test your newsletter.
5. Publish the newsletter, selecting the appropriate Group. The newsletter will be sent to all members of this group.

Members and Groups

Groups of recipients can be added in the People module. To learn how to add Members, see the Members documentation. To learn how to add Members in bulk, use the Bulk Member feature.

Creating the newsletter

1. Visit Connect > Newsletters.
2. Click Add a New Newsletter.
3. Complete the necessary fields: 
   1. Newsletter Name: This is the backend title of the newsletter. It will not be seen by the public.
   2. Subject: This is what the public will see as the subject of the email.
   3. Send replies to: When recipients reply to the newsletter email, their reply will be sent to these email addresses.
   4. Content: Refer to Using the WYSIWYG editor for additional help adding content. Refer to Tips for Creating Email Newsletters on producing newsletter content that appears consistent across a wide audience of email apps. 
      Tip: you can use the merge tag, EMAIL_FIRSTNAME, to dynamically place the recipient's first name in the body of the email.
   5. Template: If you have multiple newsletter templates to choose from, select it here.
   6. Click Save.

Scheduled mailings

1. To choose a time when the newsletter wil be sent, click Publish when editing the newsletter.
2. Select "Send later".
3. Specify the date and time you'd like the newsletters to be mailed.
4. Select your recipients by selecting the appropriate Groups, or by selecting All Members.

When a newsletter is scheduled, a queue is created including all email addresses from the Group as are present at that time. Users who subscribe (or unsubscribe) from the Group after a newsletter is scheduled will be included (or excluded) from the queue in the next scheduled mailing.

Subscribing and unsubscribing recipients

Site Administrators can determine which users are subscribed to a newsletter. This is not typically done by removing a member from a group.

1. Visit People > Groups.
2. Hover over the Group with the members you wish to edit and click the pencil icon to edit the group.
3. Click "Members" in the sidebar to see a list of members in the group.
4. Members that are currently unsubscribed from group communications (i.e., newsletters) will show as "Unsubscribed" in their member record here.

If a member unsubscribes by mistake, a Site Administrator may re-subscribe the user to the group like so:

1. Visit People > Groups.
2. Select the newsletter's group that the member was subscribed in and click the pencil icon to edit the group.
3. Click "Members" in the sidebar and find the member in question.
4. Check the box to the left of the member's name. Then click Edit Selected Members at the top right.
5. In the Subscription dropdown, re-subscribe the user.

Related articles

Tips for Creating Email Newsletters

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