Newsletter
Run a mailing list properly: lists, subscribers, campaigns, and honest numbers about what happened to each message.
Lists and subscribers
A list is a group of people who agreed to hear from you. It can be public or private, and single or double opt-in.
On a double opt-in list, nobody is written to until they confirm. In several of the markets Sentrello is sold into, the difference between that and not is the difference between marketing and an offence.
Subscribers carry whatever attributes you want to keep, and can be imported from a spreadsheet or exported in full.
An import does not resubscribe somebody who asked to stop. An import is the business speaking; a subscribe form is the person speaking, and only the second undoes an unsubscribe.
Campaigns
Write a campaign, choose its lists, send a test to yourself, then schedule or send it. Templates give you a consistent header, footer and colour.
Sending happens in batches so a large campaign does not make the rest of the application unresponsive. A campaign can be paused and resumed, and nobody is written to twice — the recipients are written down before sending starts, and each moves from pending to sent exactly once.
Somebody on three of a campaign's lists receives one email.
Counting
Opens and clicks are counted only if you turn them on, and there is a third setting: keep the counts without recording who made them.
Both carry obligations in the markets this is sold into, which is why neither is on by default.
Unsubscribing
Every message carries an unsubscribe link that works from a phone, in any mail client, with no account and no JavaScript. An unsubscribe link that sometimes does not work is not a bug — it is a fine.
Subscribers are not customers
They are kept separately and linked to a CRM contact where the address already matches. Most subscribers gave you an email address and nothing else; counting them as customers would make every count of "how many customers do we have" wrong.