Introduction

Sending a newsletter with Odoo can be incredibly simple and straightforward. When you focus on delivering your message without getting bogged down by how it appears across various web clients, the process becomes seamless.

However, if you want to elevate the quality of your emails and ensure they leave a lasting impact, I’ve got some invaluable tips to share. These strategies, honed through our extensive experience at PeGon GmbH, have helped us achieve remarkable success.

I want to emphasize that:

• Newsletters and email campaigns are pivotal components of a marketing strategy.
• Ensuring the layout of your emails aligns with your corporate identity is essential.
• Your email infrastructure must be ready and fully operational. Ensure your email server is well configured and your reverse proxy (for tracking clicks) is properly set up.

Building content and layout

Creating a newsletter in Odoo is a breeze. With its intuitive interface and drag-and-drop functionality, you can effortlessly design a visually appealing newsletter. Odoo provides a variety of pre-built templates and blocks, making it easy to craft content that resonates with your audience. You can quickly add images, text, buttons, and other elements to create a professional-looking newsletter without needing any technical skills.

However, sometimes the standard templates may not fully capture your corporate identity. If you find that your theme, fonts, or CSS don’t align with your brand's look and feel, customization is the key. Whether you need to tweak design elements, incorporate specific brand colors, or use custom fonts, Odoo’s flexibility allows for extensive customization to ensure your newsletter perfectly reflects your brand.

When Odoo's standard options don't meet your needs, PeGon GmbH is here to help. We can look at your specific requirements and assist you in configuring everything to match your corporate identity seamlessly. If you need help with customizing your CI (Corporate Identity) or specific blocks, don’t hesitate to contact us. At PeGon GmbH, we’re dedicated to tailoring your newsletters to perfectly fit your brand.

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Test and visualize

At PeGon GmbH, we adhere to a general rule: always test your newsletter with the most commonly used web clients. This ensures that your layout is 100% compatible and looks great for the majority of your recipients. We achieve this by creating email accounts on these popular clients and performing test sends.

We use a "custom" tool analyzes your recipients to identify the most commonly used web clients. This allows us to tailor our testing and optimize the newsletter layout accordingly.

Are you an on-premise customer who would like to access this tool for free? Just contact us, and we’ll be delighted to provide it to you.

While this method isn’t foolproof—since many emails are forwarded to different addresses—it does give a solid overview of the main web clients your audience uses, enabling you to target a large portion of your recipients effectively.

A helpful resource we've used to analyze which CSS elements are most compatible with various web clients is https://www.caniemail.com. This tool has been invaluable in refining our newsletter designs to ensure maximum compatibility.

For example, we discovered that "background-image" is not supported for Windows Outlook clients.

Filtering the recipients

Choosing the Right Approach

• For Personalized, Relationship-Driven Communication: Use Partners. This approach is best for emails that require a personal touch and are part of your ongoing business relationships.
• For Broad, Campaign-Based Communication: Use Mailing Lists. This is suitable for newsletters, promotional offers, and other marketing activities aimed at a larger audience.

Unsubscribe

Importance of Testing Unsubscribe Functionality

We strongly encourage testing the unsubscribe functionality during your validation process. This ensures that recipients can easily opt out if they choose to, and it helps maintain compliance with data protection regulations. Properly functioning unsubscribe links also contribute to better user experience and trust in your email communications.

Unsubscribing from a Mailing List

When a recipient unsubscribes from an email sent via a Mailing List, they are removed from that specific list. This means they will no longer receive emails from that particular campaign or newsletter. However, they may still receive emails from other mailing lists or direct communications if they are subscribed to those separately.

Unsubscribing from Non-Mailing List Sendings

If a recipient unsubscribes from an email that wasn’t sent via a Mailing List (for example, a direct email to a Partner), Odoo handles this differently. In this case, the email address is added to a blacklist. Being on this blacklist means the recipient will no longer receive any future emails from your Odoo system, regardless of the campaign or mailing list. This helps prevent any further communication with recipients who have opted out.

Sending. Ensuring Deliverability with Odoo On-Premise

If you're using Odoo on-premise with your own mail server, follow these best practices to avoid being marked as spam:

1. Authenticate Your Domain: Implement SPF, DKIM, and DMARC protocols.
2. Maintain Reputation: Clean your email list regularly and avoid spammy content.
3. Configure Your Server: Ensure reverse DNS is set, manage your IP reputation, and use a dedicated IP if possible.
4. Test and Monitor: Regularly test your server's capacity and monitor performance.
5. Use a separate mailing server for the newsletters than your main company email server
   

By adhering to these guidelines, you can ensure your emails are delivered effectively.

Email Tracking and Analytics:

One of the best features of this tool is its ability to analyze the results of your email campaigns. You can easily track key metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and overall engagement.

Additionally, you can monitor the results of the clicks to identify the most interesting links for your audience. This data provides valuable insights into what content resonates most with your recipients, allowing you to refine future campaigns for even better performance.

Other Features

Odoo offers several additional features to enhance your email sending capabilities:

1. Automated Email Scheduling: Schedule emails to be sent at optimal times, ensuring they reach your audience when they are most likely to engage.
2. Email Tracking and Analytics: Monitor open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and other key metrics to evaluate the performance of your emails.
3. Template Management: Utilize pre-built email templates and update to your own needs.
4. Bounce Management: Automatically handle bounced emails to keep your mailing lists clean and improve deliverability.
5. DKIM and SPF Setup: Enhance email security and deliverability by setting up DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) and SPF (Sender Policy Framework) protocols.
6. A/B Testing. Segment your email lists based on various criteria to send targeted messages to specific groups within your audience. Based on test results you can create another template version to reach the better results.
   

These features help you streamline your email sending process and ensure that your messages are effective and well-received. For more detailed information, refer to the Odoo documentation

Pedro Gonzalez
Odoo Expert