Setting up the newsletter: sender, sending domain and design
On this page
Before your first newsletter, set who it comes from under Settings › Newsletter, verify a sending domain of your own, add your imprint link and give your newsletters their look under Newsletter › Design.
The Overview page of the newsletter lists these steps as a checklist. You need the right to send newsletters. See The newsletter: booking, plans and extra mails for the plan.
Sender and legal details
Open Settings › Newsletter. The page opens filled in from your account's details. Check them and choose save: nothing is used until you have saved it.
- Sender — Sender name, usually the name of your gallery, and Sender address, a name on your verified sending domain (see below): you type the part before the @, and the domain after it is fixed, or chosen if you have verified several. Reply-to address is where replies go; it is free and can be any address, also a free mail account.
- Imprint in the footer — Company or gallery name, Legal form and Postal address. Every newsletter names who sends it and where. A newsletter cannot be sent without a name and postal address.
- Imprint link — the web address of your legal notice, see "The imprint link" below.
- Confirmation by email — when people sign up themselves, they confirm their address by email first. You can edit the Subject and Text of that email, and choose Remind once to send one reminder to people who have not confirmed. The reminder is off by default.
- Welcome email — an optional email sent once, right after someone confirms for the first time. Off by default. Like every mail to a reader, it is counted.
- Consent wording — what people agree to when they subscribe. Insert suggested wording gives you a text to start from. See Audience and consent.
Texts you leave empty use the built-in text shown in grey.
The sending domain
Newsletters can only be sent from a domain of your own that you have verified, for example gallery-nord.com. Nothing is sent while your sender address is not on a verified sending domain: no newsletter, and no test send either.
Why: mail services such as Gmail and Outlook judge a newsletter by who sends it. With your own verified domain the mail really comes from you, it is less likely to be taken for spam, and the good name you build belongs to you.
We recommend a subdomain such as news.gallery-nord.com: the reputation of your newsletters then stays apart from your everyday email.
- In Settings › Newsletter, under Sending domain, enter the domain and choose Add domain. It is the part of your sender address after the @.
- WrkLst shows a table of records: Type, Host and Value, each with its purpose — for example the proof that the domain is yours, the sender check (SPF) and the signature (DKIM). Copy each with Copy host and Copy value.
- Enter these records at the company that manages your domain (your domain provider). DNS changes can take a few hours.
- Choose Check now. Every record shows Found or Not found yet, and the domain shows Pending, Verified or Failed.
Your domain also needs a DMARC record. If it has none yet, add the one shown; if it already has one, keep it.
When the domain is Verified, you can send from addresses on it, and signups open. Until then the signup page and the signup form are "not available" and nobody can sign up. The confirmation, welcome and preference mails leave from your own sender on your domain. Readers can always unsubscribe through the links in mails they have received. You can Add another domain or Remove one.
A new domain starts slowly
Mail services distrust a sender they do not know that suddenly sends thousands of emails: they delay the mails or file them as spam. So a new domain starts slowly — a few hundred emails in the first hour — and speeds up a little with every email it sends. Once the domain has sent 130,000 emails in total there is no limit any more.
Sending speed on the settings page shows the current state (Warming up or Full speed) and how long a newsletter to all your readers takes right now. The send screen shows the same before you start. Tip: send a smaller newsletter first, for example to your closest contacts, before a big announcement.
The imprint link
Every newsletter links to your imprint. Add the Imprint link in Settings › Newsletter: the web address of your legal notice, starting with https://. It is the same link your presentations and your website show. Without it a newsletter cannot be sent and the signup page is not available.
The design
Newsletter › Design holds the look every newsletter starts from:
- Style — typefaces, colours, buttons and spacing.
- Header and footer — the account's header and footer. WrkLst always adds the legal lines at the end of a newsletter: your details, the links to your imprint and privacy policy, Manage preferences and a way to unsubscribe.
- Templates — designs you saved from a newsletter.
Changing the account's design changes every newsletter that is not sent yet and follows it. You can take the typefaces and accent colour from your presentations with Take from presentations. The logo, typeface and accent colour of Your brand are used too, unless you set your own.
In a newsletter's own Design step you can deviate from the account's design for that newsletter only, and Save as template… to keep a design.