Newsletter - Mailable

@neewd Keep in mind that newsletter services do a lot of work to make sure their servers don't get blacklisted or have emails always hitting spam folders. While this .at seem like a cool app idea... there are much bigger challenges under the surface. I don't mean to discourage I just know some of those inner workings and they can be a lot to deal with.

I know it and I didn't take a full decision on it yet. But Mailchimp don't offer the possibility to modify the unsubscribe URL to point to MY app and not theirs, and don't allow me either to unsubscribe via the API with a unsubscribe _reason like "no longer wants to receive the email". This is mandatory to do it via the ugly form.

And the campaign process on their dashboard is such a pain in the ass IMHO ... If someone are using Mailchimp programmatically I would love to hear how he made it.

And if I sent my newsletters mail via another SMTP provider like Sendgrid or whatever, the "under the hood" work will be done via the provider also right ?

Perhaps look at https://mailcoach.app/ from Spatie

@neewd That's fair, just figured I'd share my perspective and opinion on it. That's all it is. More power to you if you build this out. Good luck!

And I really appreciate you took from your time to answer ! I dont owe the truth and I am eager to learn on everything i build so there is maybe a better solution. Like mailchimpcoach maybe i will get a look on it Thanks :D

I'm also stubborn and want to keep everything in-house.

Things to consider + best practices to minimize getting blocked:

• use email verification (api) so you don't send emails to non-existing boxes
• make sure your server is setup perfectly: DKIM, SPF, DMARC, DNSSEC, clean IP
• use postmaster tools (google). I haven't yet but plan to check it out ;)
• add headers to your email with unsubscribe options (worked fine in laravel up to 5.7, then swiftMailer callback broke)
• format email correctly + send both text and html
• be very clear with subject and match content to it

be aware not to add zero height tracking pixels and other trickeries

And that's for starters :)

I would seriously caution against sending any form of bulk mailing from the same IP and domain as your application. You can easily end up blacklisted so that your users then don't get their transactional emails such as password resets.

The mailcoach.app seems to be exactly what I need, but no info about a release date yet :(

My ultimate goal is to be able to manage my newsletter from Nova. Like see all the subscribers, the unsubscribed, and to be able to send the newsletter from nova whenever I want. So I need a rock solid API to allow me to do everything ! Anyone has a good mail provider with that kind of API ?

With this I won't send the email on my own, just trigger everything from my backend ;)

Perhaps hookup with a Sendgrid account

Haha I was exactly looking in the direction of the Sengrid API, their dashboard are smooth like a breath. I have contacted their support to know if their's a possibility to add an endpoint to remove a contact from a list with an unsubscribe reason. Currently they offer only a get unsubscribe group but that's all

Does someone already used Amazon SES as Mail provider ?

I think @ftiersch might have?

Can't wait to hear from him so :D

@neewd I've also been trying to find a way to set up a newsletter system that can connect more closely to my existing app, and have some of the same feelings about Mailchimp eo as you brought up.

Did you find a way to do so you'd like to share?