Explore newsletter signup options

Simplenews

• This module allows an administrator to create a newsletter entity to which people are able to subscribe.
• Subscriptions are managed with a Drupal block that is placed in a region.
• After a user subscribes, they are sent a confirmation message with a link back to the site. Once they follow those steps, they are then 'subscribed'.
• An administrator then can create a newsletter issue, and assign it to a newsletter. Once the newsletter is ready to send, the administrator can browse to a page and send the message to all those subscribed. Drupal's cron process will then handle sending to all subscribers.

Questions

If we decide to go this route, I think we need to determine the following:

1. What newsletter should be included?
2. What text should the subscription block contain and where should it be placed?
3. What should the confirmation messaging be?
4. What roles should we create to allow the newsletter creation/sending?

Great first steps. Here are my answers, thinking about it from a first-time user perspective:

1. We should create a default newsletter title. Is there a Site Title that we can leverage to do this? Something simple like "[Site Title] Newsletter"
2. "Yes, send occasional emails to me from this site." The block should be placed in the footer region.
3. Confirmation message: "You are successfully subscribed to the [Site Title] Newsletter." Follow up question: Should we include a link to the Unsubscribe page in case someone signed up by mistake?
4. Unsure how to answer this one. A new user likely is not thinking too much about various roles, and they are likely the sole owner/admin of a site. I would keep this ability on the Admin role unless it makes more sense to create a new role (but that feels more complicated than it needs to be)

Thanks for this @pfrilling and @artinruins!

I think we need to do a UX assessment of Simplenews before we proceed, I haven't ever used it myself. My main concern would be that it doesn't quite match the expectation of marketing-focused users, and we may be better off looking to integrate with external tools first.

I think Simplenews makes sense as an initial focus.

However, as Drupal CMS evolves, it would be great to offer options for other solutions, whether they are alternative Drupal solutions (I don't have a specific one in mind), locally hosted options, such as Mautic, or SAAS solutions like Mailchimp.

I would guess a separate recipe would be needed for each option.

Thank you @pameeela and @lostcarpark. We want to proceed with a Mailchimp integration option using https://www.drupal.org/project/mailchimp → . A newsletter sign up block will be added to the Footer region.

For SASS options, I would like to also offer Constant Contact as an option, as it has a good portion of the non-profit market (thinking beyond marketers a little bit). This module seems stable but please chime in if there is a better option: https://www.drupal.org/project/constant_contact →

Difficult to find numbers, and they vary depending on the source, but it seems like Mail Chimp has 20% market share of email marketing while CC is close behind with 15%. The next contender is SendInBlue with 10% (now called Brevo). Providing a connection option for the two market leaders makes sense.

We plan to create improvement issues over the next few days to roadmap our progress with the Contact Form Track.