Talking Drupal #057 HTML Email

 

Uses of Email

Transaction/Service E-Mails - one email to the single person for a particular purpose.  ie. Reset Password, Shipping Confirmation...

Bulk Email - send to the group of people.  ie. Newsletter, Forum subscriptions…

User communication - personal contact or something like basecamp

Impact the type of service and tools you will use

Getting Started With HTML EMails

Drupal out of the box will only send plain text emails

Need an SMTP server setup on your web server or use this:

SMTP Authentication Support Module

Structure of HTML email

HTML E-Mails From Drupal (Creating and Sending)

Simple News (Module)

Create E-mails content

Mime Mail

Enhances the abilities of Drupal to send HTML Emails

Allows for email attachments

Mandrill / Mail System

(service by Mailchimp)

Can replace the need for an SMTP server

Has statistics for e-mails sent

Can setup rules (within the Mandrill service) to change e-mail attributes before sending

HTML E-mails From Outside of Drupal (List Signup Only)

Mailchimp

Allow Drupal visitors to signup for emails

List Management for users

E-commerce and webform integration

Service is easy to use

Allows RSS Auto Send

Use site content to build newsletters

Constant Contact

Allow Drupal Visitors to signup for emails

Limited List Management

Some E-commerce and Webform integration

Campaign Monitor

Great reseller program

Easy template generation

Zurb Foundation

Responsive templates
http://zurb.com/playground/responsive-email-templates

 

Module of the week

Table Field - https://www.drupal.org/project/tablefield

This module allows you to attach tabular data to a node in Drupal 6 or any entity in Drupal 7. The input form allows the user to specify the number of rows/columns and allows entry into each table cell using text fields. Tables can be defined globally or on a per-node/per-entity basis, so every node can have multiple tables of arbitrary size. Enter data by hand or by CSV upload. Table data can also be downloaded as CSV files by your users if you so choose. Tables are multi-value and revision capable.

Resources

Simple News - https://www.drupal.org/project/simplenews

Mime Mail - https://www.drupal.org/project/mimemail

SMTP Authentication Support Module - https://www.drupal.org/project/smtp

Mandrill - https://www.drupal.org/project/mandrill

Mail Tester - http://www.mail-tester.com

Mail System - https://www.drupal.org/project/mailsystem

Mailchimp - https://www.drupal.org/project/mailchimp

Constant Contact - https://www.drupal.org/project/constant_contact

Campiagn Monitor - https://www.drupal.org/project/campaignmonitor

Responsive Email Design from Campaign Monitor  - http://bit.ly/rt-rdemailcm

Web Fonts in Email from Campaign Monitor - http://bit.ly/rt-emailcm

Responsive Email from MailChimp - http://bit.ly/rt-rdemailmc

Typography in Email from MailChimp -http://bit.ly/rt-emailmc

Tutorial to Understand HTML Email (Hand crafted) - http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/build-an-html-email-template-from-scratch--webdesign-12770