Add Images To Your Newsletter Messages in Dada Mail

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New to Dada Mail v10.4.0 is the ability to upload images right into the Rich Text Editor you’ll find in the Send a Message screen just by either copying and pasting the image from a graphics program, or just dragging and dropping an image from your computer’s file manger. Check out the above screencast to see how.

These two new methods make things a whole lot easier to add images quickly, without having to use one of the web file manager that are also bundled with Dada Mail. These methods also work in adding documents to your message too – Say you have a PDF document you’d like to upload and link into your message. Just drag and drop the document itself: the file will be uploaded and a link will be automatically created.

Below, we’ll guide you through the individual steps on how to do this yourself, and go into how to work with the other method of uploading/selecting/inserting an image: one of the bundled file manager. All these techniques are available in v10.4.0 – we didn’t remove the file managers, to make you rely on the copy/paste or drag + drop methods, so don’t worry if those are already deeply seated in your own workflows.

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How to Send Personalized Emails with Dada Mail

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Dada Mail fully supports sending personalized mass email messages to your entire maling list, or just a segment of your mailing list. Let’s go through how to set this all up!

Profile Fields

By default, Dada Mail only captures and stores a subscriber’s email address, but we can add additional fields to capture and save in the List Control Panel. Log into your mailing list (use your Dada Mail Root Password!), and navigate to, Profiles: Profile Fields. In this walk through, we’re just going to make one field called, Name. I’ll then show you how to create a salutation in your message.

Here’s the Profiles: Profile Fields screen, with our new field filled out,

profiles_add_new

Field Name is the internal name used when working with profile fields, and has few constraints on what you can use. In this example, I’ll be using, name.

Label is what you’ll see on things like the subscription form, and is much more free-form. In this example, I’ll be using, Name (notice the capitalization!)

Fallback Value can hold a value used, if there isn’t a value for the subscriber, for this profile field. We’re not going to use it here, but I’ll show you how to add a default value, when using this in our actual message.

Finally, there’s a checkbox to tick, if you would like this field to be required.

Adding Subscribers w/Profile Fields

OK, now that our field is created, let’s add a few subscribers to our mailing list.

I’m going to navigate to the Membership: Invite/Subscribe/Add screen. This screen allows you to subscribe new members one at a time, and en-mass. We’re going to add three at a time in this demo, by adding a CSV (Comma Seperated Value) file. Here’s what that file looks like:

dadamailtest@gmail.com,Dada Mail Test
john.smith@example.com,John Smith
el.mysteriouso@example.com,

I created this file in a spreadsheet, then just exported the data as a .csv file. Our first two subscribers have both an email address and name, and our third subscriber, el.mysteriouso@example.com doesn’t have a name at all.

profiles_add_new2

After pasting the content of my .csv file (you can also just upload the file itself), I’ll click, Verify Addresses…, which goes through the black magic of making sure the data I’m submitting is valid, that these addresses aren’t already subscribed, etc. Once done with the entire process, I can see all my subscribers, in the Membership: View screen,

profiles_add_new3

You’ll see our new, “Name” field in the last column of the table of subscribers. Great! Now that we can capture and save new fields, let’s use them!

Sending out a Personalized Message

We’re now going to go to the Mass Mailing: Send a Message screen, and write a new message. Now that we have the Name field, let’s use it to add a simple salutation up front – “Hello, ” and then the name of my subscriber. How do we do that?

Enter template tags.

Template tags allow you to put placeholders into your message that will then be replaced with the value that they represent. In Dada Mail, a template tag to represent our, Name field will look like this,

<!-- tmpl_var subscriber.name -->

(Notice we’re using the Field Name, and not its Label!) So, to make that salutation we would like to create, we just have to write,

Hello, <!-- tmpl_var subscriber.name -->!

And that’s all there is to it. What about our subscribers, like el.mysteriouso@example.com that are nameless? We can add a default value to our template tag, to let Dada Mail know what to write, if there isn’t a name. Here’s what that looks like,

Hello, <!-- tmpl_var subscriber.name default="Subscriber" -->

In our example above, if there’s no name saved for an address, “Subscriber” will be written instead. Here’s how it all looks, when writing my message:

profiles_add_new4

Let’s see what this looks like, when we send our message out. Checking my test account, dadamailtest@gmail.com:

profiles_add_new5

And that’s all there is too using template tags!

Many other template tags are available to you, and a collection of them can be easily inserted via the rich text editor. Look on the rich text toolbar for a popup menu labeled, Tags. Clicking this popup menu will reveal some of the tags available. Selecting a tag will insert that tag into your message:

profiles_add_new6

Delving Deeper

We’ve only touched upon Dada Mail’s features for Profile Fields, Personalized Email Messages, and Email Template Tags. Check out the doc links, as well as the Pro Dada Manual, which comes with a Pro Dada Subscription.