Index.md

Luxletter - Email marketing in TYPO3. Send newsletters the easy way.

Creating newsletters

The basic component to create newsletters in luxletter is to build a HTML-output of the newsletter core first. That could be any website of course or - of course - the current TYPO3 website.

A newsletter should be motivate the receiver to click a link to see even more information. The reason is simple: On the one hand, it's better to teaser content elements, so the receiver is able to scroll to the interesting content. On the other hand, in marketing automation, a click on a link leads to an identification.

And last but not least you can see which content is the most interesting content for further newsletters.

Creating newsletters with TYPO3 content elements

Page structure

You could create two pages. The outer page should contain teaser elements with links to the full newsletter text elements on a subpage.

Example pagetree:

Example teaser page content:

You could build your own teaser elements with single content elements or with the content element Teaser element build in in Luxletter.

Example full page content:

This is a page with some content elements. Every element is a newsletter content.

Note You can use variables in your content that should be filled with fe_users.* field values. So a {user.lastName} will be filled with the individual lastname of the user when the mail is sent.

Note Only the part between the opening and the ending body-tag will be parsed into the newsletter.

Note It's of course up to you how you build your newsletters and the technique behind (TYPO3 with Content Elements on one page, TYPO3 with Content Elements on different pages, TYPO3 with a news plugin, etc...)

Teaser content elements

If you add a content element of type Teaser element to your outer page, you can select single content elements that you will teaser automatically.

Field	Description
Show maximum number of characters	Automaticly crop text after this number of characters
Append this characters	Add this characters after the cropped text
Choose a text for the "read more" button	Text for the read more button
Render a teaser of this record(s)	Choose some content elments that you want to teaser
Render a section menu before	Check this for a automaticly build jump-menu

Technical note It's not that easy to build such a function without rewriting every content element markup again. So the teasered text is searched in an element with the class ce-bodytext per default. See ViewHelper luxletter:format.cropyBySelection for more details and options.

The ugly way

If you are not that well versed in newsletter technologies, you may wondering yourself how the HTML should be build that mails can be shown in a large bunch of email clients. Looking back in the past, the Microsoft guys for Outlook used the Internet Explorer engine to render mails. And if you think that was a bad idea, wait what they did some times later. Now (no joke) Microsoft Word is the rendering engine for Outlook.

Long story short: Look at https://foundation.zurb.com/emails/email-templates.html for some responsive Email templates. Those templates are build with HTML from the 90ies.

But if you are looking at the page that you build for your newsletter content, you will see some HTML5 and some DIV stuff. Nothing what will be accepted by Outlook and Co.

But luxletter will render your content again with TABLE-mechanism if you are adding the typenum &type=1562349004 to the URL in the frontend.

Example output:

Note If you are using Sites in TYPO3 9, typenum should be defined in the configuration. Example:

routeEnhancers:
  PageTypeSuffix:
    type: PageType
    default: /
    index: ''
    suffix: /
    map:
      newsletter.html: 1562349004

Zurb foundation and Newsletter wrapping

You can focus your website content on the introduction and the useful content itself. Luxletter uses a wrapping service to wrap your content with header and footer automaticly. Look at EXT:luxletter/Resources/Private/Templates/Mail/NewsletterContainer.html to see the HTML that is used for the wrapping of the header and footer. The variable {content} will be filled with your built content when creating newsletter records (see next chapter).

Of course you can overwrite this template file in your extension in the known way like in other extension.

plugin {
    tx_luxletter_fe {
        view {
            templateRootPaths {
                1 = EXT:yoursitepackage/Resources/Private/Templates/Extensions/Luxletter/
            }
            partialRootPaths {
                1 = EXT:yoursitepackage/Resources/Private/Partials/Extensions/Luxletter/
            }
            layoutRootPaths {
                1 = EXT:yoursitepackage/Resources/Private/Layouts/Extensions/Luxletter/
            }
        }
    }
}

The existing template is using the Zurb Foundation email template (see https://foundation.zurb.com/emails/docs/css-guide.html for details)

Note There is also an unsubscribe link in the footer - look for <f:link.external uri="{luxletter:mail.getUnsubscribeUrl(newsletter:newsletter,user:user)}" additionalAttributes="{data-luxletter-parselink:'false'}">Unsubscribe now</f:link.external>

Note Normally links in luxletter should be rewritten, so clicks can be tracked. But in some cases you don't want to rewrite all links. Some should not be rewritten. Just add an attribute data-luxletter-parselink="false" to the link.

Creating newsletters in the backend module

Now, when your content is ready to be parsed, you can add new newsletter records. Simply open the luxletter backend module and switch from Dashboard to Newsletter view.

If you already have built some newsletters, you will see a list of existing records. Otherwise you can only add new records.

List view

Field	Description
#	Newsletter number
Title	Newsletter title
Description	Newsletter description
Sending time	Time when the newsletter can be send
Progress	Sending progress of the newsletter
Receiver	Receiver frontenduser group with the number of receivers
Disable	Disable this newsletter. The newsletter will not be sent any more when disabled.
Delete	Delete this newsletter and all related queue entries

Add new newsletters

Clicking on Add new newsletter starts a process where you can create new newsletter records.

Field	Description
Newsletter title	Add a useful title to your newsletter
Description	Add a useful title to your newsletter
Newsletter start	If you select a start time (optional), newsletters will not be send before this time

Field	Description
Mail subject	Mail subject (also variables are allowed like {user.lastName}
Choose a receiver group	Choose a receiver group (frontenduser groups that marked as luxletter groups)
Newsletter location	Choose where your HTML for the newsletter is located. An absolute URL like https://domain.org/newsletter.html is possible. If you add a number, the page will be parsed (typenum is automaticly added)

Field	Description
Test email address	Send a quick testmail to an email (variables in the newsletter will be filled with dummy values)
Receivers preview	Add small preview of your receivers will help you to be sure you haven chosen the correct group
Newsletter preview	You will see a newsletter preview (variables will be filled with dummy values)

As soon as you save the newsletter, it will be parsed and after that it's ready for the dispatch.