If you have a website, which collects visitors' e-mail addresses, then you should maintain contact with those registered on the site. This can be in the form of weekly newsletters, promotional offers and other related campaigns.

If you make use of WordPress platform, you should install plugins such as WordPress Newsletter Plugin to send mailers. I have seen several plugins which have the ability to send mass mails all at once. However, this process will drastically affect the functioning of the mail server. Hence, you require an automated solution, which has the ability to send a fixed number of e-mails on an hourly basis without causing any heavy loads on the server.

WordPress Newsletter plugin developed by Tribulant Software ships with several advanced features such as Multiple Mailing Lists, Bounce Management, Gmail SMTP Capability with several themes. Moreover, you can directly import subscribers using the Import/Export feature and automatically pump new subscribers to the mailing list. I feel that this feature will be very useful for blogs and WordPress article directory websites that are already established on the web.

In order to work with the product you should install and activate it like any other WordPress plugin. You will find relevant links for managing the plugin on the left side menu bar. The default screen of the newsletter software will look like as shown below

Figure 1

The first step is to create a new mailing list by selecting Mailing Lists link located on the left hand side. A user interface as shown in Figure 2 will be displayed.

Figure 2

After creating a mailing list, you should add subscribers to the list by selecting Subscribers link as shown below.

Figure 3

The next step is to create a newsletter by selecting Send Newsletter link. The interface is similar to that of post/page creation as shown below.

Figure 4

You should spend some time to check out the custom fields which you can make use of while creating newsletters. After entering the relevant content and selecting a mailing list, you can schedule the newsletter for delivery. The newsletter software will place the content in the queue and will be delivered periodically as per the schedule interval as shown below.

Figure 5

The newsletter software also enables you to send mailers with attachments and supports paid subscriptions with an ability to publish newsletter as a post. A core feature of the newsletter software plugin is that you can set the maximum number of emails which should be delivered per hour and also provides an option to notify administrator on successful delivery of emails.

Figure 6

I noticed that there are several options which you can make use of in order to simplify the management of newsletters. The vendor has hosted a live demo with which you can test out all the functionalities before the purchase of newsletter software.

The newsletter software will be useful if you run a WordPress based article directory websites. It can also be used on ordinary blogs but you have to add members manually and send out mailers either weekly or in a monthly basis.

The cost of the newsletter software is only $49.99 and you will get lifetime updates for free. A key point to note is that once you purchase the software there is no monthly or yearly recurring cost unlike other hosted newsletter providers. So do you require newsletter software for your WordPress blog? Then why are you waiting for. Buy a copy now and avoid huge recurring expenses.

Title	WordPress Newsletter Plugin
Price	US $49.99
Rating	*****
URL	Buy Now

About the Author

Anand Narayanaswamy is a Microsoft MVP who works as an independent consultant based in Trivandrum, India. He is the author of Community Server Quickly (Packt Publishing) and runs www.learnxpress.com and www.dotnetalbum.com