Sandstorm.Newsletter

The project has been sponsored by Swisscom, and initiated by Web Essentials. Thanks for your support!

This is a tool which adjusts Neos in a way such that it can be used to send Newsletters.

Is is comprised of two parts:

• a Go Daemon which does the actual Mail-Sending
• a Neos package this package which provides the User Interface

This is a newsletter sending infrastructure based on Neos. The actual newsletter-sending is handled through Redis and a Go-Daemon, which can be found at https://github.com/sandstorm/mailer-daemon.

Features

• Performant and distributed mail sending through SMTP or Mandrill
• All Newsletter content is manageable through Neos
• Allow to replace arbitrary content in the newsletter with custom recipient-specific fields.
• Recipient-specific fields can be previewed in the Desktop preview mode.
• Support for multiple languages
• Allowance to seggregate the recipient list arbitrarily to tightly control whom newsletters should be sent to, using the jq query language
• Custom receiver sources possible
• Supports Unsubscribe lists in a privacy-preserving manner, not storing email addresses but their hashes
• Parallel email sending possible by starting multiple Go daemons simultaneously
• Auto-Inline CSS style sheets for maximum compatibility

Non-Features

The following things are *not yet implemented, but might be implemented in further projects:

• Sign Up for new Newsletters

Prerequisites

• Install the mailer sending daemon which is written in Go
• Install Redis
• Install jq and ensure it exists on the PATH.

Installation / Set Up

• Install this package through packagist:

  cd path/to/your/NeosDistribution
  composer require sandstorm/newsletter
  

• Ensure you have the Routes included, so that means Configuration/Routes.yaml should contain the following before the Neos routes:

  -
  name: 'Newsletter'
  uriPattern: 'neos/newsletter/<NewsletterSubroutes>'
  subRoutes:
    'NewsletterSubroutes':
      package: 'Sandstorm.Newsletter'
  
  

• Create a neos page template, using the TypoScript object Sandstorm.Newsletter:NewsletterPage. Also, ensure to include the Sandstorm.Newsletter:SampleDataWidget somewhere in your page.

  As an example, you can use the following TypoScript snippet:

  page = Sandstorm.Newsletter:NewsletterPage
  page.sampleDataWidget = Sandstorm.Newsletter:SampleDataWidget
  

Receiver Sources and Receiver Groups

Internally, the system uses files for representing receiver lists. Each line in a file represents a single receiver, and is a JSON object containing arbitrary properties (where one must be at least the email address, of course).

• A receiver source is essentially one source for receivers. Currently, we support both line-by-line JSON and CSV files; but you might want to create your own Receiver Source lateron.

• If you use multiple languages, the receiver source also contains a rule how the lines are segregated into the different languages.

• The receiver group is an additional subset of receivers inside a receiver source, so you could create a "male" or "female" receiver source if you like.

Usage in Neos

• First, go to the Newsletter Receiver Management module and create a new receiver source; in our example choose the type CSV Upload*[]:

• Then, upload the Documentation/example.csv file. It defines the fields firstName, lastName, email, gender and language and contains just three receivers.

• If you have a languages content dimension configured, set the correct filters; e.g:

  • German: language == "de"
  • French: language == "fr"
  • (others): false (as the input file does not contain these languages)

• (optionally) create a receiver group for "Male", with the filter gender == "male", and vice versa for female.

• Now, in the Content module of Neos, create a new Document of type Newsletter. In the inspector, first select a Receiver Group. Optionally define email subjects etc; and create your content as you like.

• If your content e.g. includes {firstName}, this will be replaced with the actual first name of the email recipient. You can preview this by switching to the Desktop mode in preview central.

• Enjoy!

Getting Help

If you get stuck, feel free to contact @sebastian or @christoph.daehne in Slack at slack.neos.io.

License

This software is licensed as MIT.