Weekly email from WordPress posts?

[tommchale]

I'm wrestling with finding the best approach to create a semi-automated weekly email from a wordpress site. Ideally I would like to use an email service like Aweber or Mailchimp so I don't have all the headache of running that, avoiding blackisting, reporting, subscriber management, etc.

However, I won't want to use an RSS email approach as there is no flexibility. In a perfect world, I'd figure out how to beam (or import) individual posts as discrete email content blocks so I could design a template with ad / sponsor spots etc and have some flexibility to insert content between stories. When you manually create a newsletter in Aweber, Mailchimp, or similar apps, you create these discrete "post" blocks by hand, so I am wondering if there is some way to automate the process.

I also don't want to use a plugin that sends direct from the wordpress site, or at least I don't think I do. Seems like that approach might have mail deliverability and spam flagging problems? If not, I'd love to hear if there are any great plugin solutions that are solid.

For a partially automated approach there are some services out there like Curated and Goodbits that make it easier to dump web posts into an email but they're not great options either as you don't have nearly the email design and template flexibility that commercial email solutions offer.

It seems like WordPress is the perfect CMS not just for presenting web content, but entering data once that can then be delivered via the web site but also email. I can't believe that someone hasn't solved this challenge so I figured I'd ask the community to see if I'm just completely missing an obvious solution.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Tom

[Marcy]

The best solution to keep your domain and emails from being marked as spam is to use a "newsletter" service, such as Mailchimp or MailerLite or Aweber, as you mentioned.
They have a verification process for your domain.

The only WordPress plugin that I know of is MailPoet

MailPoet – emails and newsletters in WordPress

Home

BUT there is a lot to do to keep your emails and domain out of spam, including considering an outside service for sending the emails.

As to why no one has thought of it

https://www.wpbeginner.com/opinion/why-you-should-never-use-wordpress-to-send-newsletter-emails/

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Marcy | Amethyst Website Design | Twitter

[tommchale]

Thanks Marcy - The MailPoet option looks kind of interesting if you use their service as the sender. Apparently that avoids some (or maybe most?) of the deliverability gotchas associated with sending from your own server, especially if it's on shared hosting.

I'm surprised that there is no "link" (for lack of a better word) between WordPress and the big commercial senders like Mailchimp and Aweber. That would be the bomb I think, but in the meantime I'll take a closer look at MailPoet. It seems to solve a large part of the problem.

Thanks for weighing in!

Tom

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