One of the more powerful time saving tools of your site is the ability to "bundle" existing content and "blast" it to an group of email recipients. This replaces the need to create your content once for the site and again in Constant Contact or Mailchimp, or another email blasting service.
Understanding how Bundle & Blast™ works
The Digital Deployment Bundle & Blast™ system uses Mailchimp as the sending service for all emails. However, the email blasts are built within the site itself, by bundling existing content together and sending to your list.
We leverage Email blast post types to make this work. Your site will have a standard "Email blast" post type by default, but you may also have particular post types for branded newsletters, as well.
In this example, we've used the standard Email blast post type for image 1 ("Digital Deployment takes over the world"), and the Feature Release post type for image 2 ("July 2013 Product Release"):
In the first example, we've bundled multiple posts into our email blast. The intro paragraph is the body text of the Email blast post itself, and the system has automatically generated a table of contents, "In this issue," with links to each bundled post.
In the second example, our Feature Release email blast *is* the entire email. We did not use the bundle feature, just the entire post. We'll cover all of this more in a bit.
You can have as many different post types for various newsletters / email blasts as you'd like. The only catch is that you'll need to either send us the unique header for each, or let us know we need to help you create one. Headers will need to be 550 pixels wide. You have the ability to customize the header, and to change between full post or teaser display for your content. Other than that, all email blasts use the same template, which has been tested thoroughly to hold up in almost all email systems.
- Go to Commands > Create post, and choose the Email blast post type you'd like to create.
- Add an introductory paragraph (or more) in the body text area if you'd like
- Scroll down to add the main image (as you would any other post on your site)
- Scroll down to Bundled content tab (note: the post type may have been customized so it could be called "items to include in this newsletter" or something similar)
- Use the autocomplete fields to add posts. Start typing a key word or phrase from the title to find the posts you'd like to bundle (note that this is optional, you can also send one email blast with no bundled content)
- Click the "Add another item" button if you'd like to add additional posts
- Scroll down and save your post.
To preview and blast
- Go to your commands menu in the lower left corner of your screen and select "Manage Post Types"
- Edit the post type for which you would like to change the TOC title.
- Scroll down and expand the "Customize fields" text link
- Now scroll down and expand the "Email Settings" text link and look for "TOC Title:"
- Replace "In this Issue:" with whatever you would like.
- Save!
- Go to your commands menu and click on "Manage post types".
- Edit the post type you would like to make the email blast only show the teaser.
- Once in the editor for the post type, click on the text link at the bottom labeled "Customize fields".
- Now scroll down to the next text link called "Email settings"
- Here is where you can change the default of the bundled posts. Look for the section labeled "Bundled posts display" and change it from Full (default) to teaser.
- Scroll down and save
- Go to your "commands" menu and navigate to Manage Post types.
- Edit the post type you would like not to show the title of in an email blast.
- Scroll down and click the Email settings.
- Uncheck the box that reads Show post type in blasts.
- Save your settings.
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