Adobe Software Tutorial: How to Create a Newsletter to Send As an Email With Active Links
Creating an email newsletter has become simpler in recent years, with email service providers offering customers attractive templates for any industry or type of newsletter. Such templates include many of the features marketers need, such as active links to product pages and current offers. However, many companies need a custom newsletter template that exactly matches their existing website. Creating a newsletter using Adobe's Dreamweaver website development software allows a great deal of control over an email newsletter's appearance, allowing the development of custom email templates that exactly match a marketer's vision with regards to appearance, branding, and structure.
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Things You'll Need
- Adobe Dreamweaver (R) software
- Existing website to copy, or specific design ideas for colors, images, layout, and links
- Several different browsers and email clients, including popular ones such as Eudora and Thunderbird
Instructions
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Determine which of the features of the existing website design, or draft of a design, are most essential. Email design differs from web design in the level of complexity that is feasible. Most email software cannot properly display very complex designs. For instance, email templates laid out using CSS (cascading style sheets), the normal method for websites, frequently display very poorly. In addition, newsletter recipients will be reading the email newsletter using a variety of different programs, from email clients such as Outlook to web-based email services such as Gmail. Email designs will appear slightly different in some of these different programs. Minimizing the complexity of the design reduces the inconsistencies that will appear when customers view emails across different platforms.
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Upload all images that will be used in the email to your website, in a separate folder just for email images. Make a list of the URLs (web addresses) of each image. Email recipients will not be able to see images in the email if they are only on your own computer. They will only be able to see the images if they are uploaded to a location that anyone can access online.
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Lay out the email using web-friendly fonts, such as Arial and Verdana. Remember when inserting images to specify their URLs, rather than their local location on your computer. To insert active links, click on the Insert Link button, and enter the address of the site, or the page on your site, to which you are linking. Keep the layout simple, avoiding the use of frames, or of large numbers of tables.
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Test the email in a variety of email clients, free web-based email services, and browsers. Eliminate any formatting that does not look the same across all services and platforms. Test all links to ensure that they work, and take readers to the correct page.
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Open your email program. Address a new email message to your own address, or to the address at your organization to which you would like recipients to reply. Copy and paste the email newsletter into the new message, and select the option, following the instructions for your email program, to send the email as an HTML message. Remember to enter the email addresses of all recipients in the bcc field, to keep their email addresses private.
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References
- Photo Credit email button image by Richard Kane from Fotolia.com
