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Author Topic: help setting up a smart group mailing list  (Read 1737 times)

rdoiron

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help setting up a smart group mailing list
December 22, 2010, 11:48:19 pm
My organization is running CiviCRM 3.1.4 with Drupal and I'm trying to figure out how I can set up a smart group e-mail list that is automatically updated every time a new Drupal user registers or someone chooses to opt out.  We send out an e-newsletter every month with CiviMail and until now I've been manually creating a new group each month, but surely there's an automated to do this.  Can someone explain the steps/smart group criteria I need or point me to a place where this is explained? 

Also, to push my luck a bit, is there a way to set it up so that people can join the mailing list without joining the website?  Some people are just interested in getting a newsletter whereas others want the full website experience. 

Thanks.

Roger

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mhm

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Re: help setting up a smart group mailing list
December 23, 2010, 08:01:02 pm
For an overview of creating smart groups, see http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC33/Smart+Groups
I honestly don't remember if it worked the same way in 3.1.4, but I don't think it's changed substantially.

For allowing people to join the mailing list without joining the website, I believe your only option is to choose another type of mailing list. Drupal has a variety of modules that can take care of this, or there are other options as well (for instance, Vertical Response offers a free plan of 10,000 emails a month for 501(c)3s). Of course, that then provides a whole new challenge (i.e., regularly merging new website members with the external list). Depending on your hosting setting, this may or may not be easily accomplished (with mine - Dreamhost - there's no automatic way to do this because of their restrictions. The compromise is just that I manually do a dump every once in awhile. Not ideal, but it works.).

CiviTeacher.com

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Re: help setting up a smart group mailing list
December 24, 2010, 12:52:59 am
1. There is a function within CiviCRM to "Sync" Drupal users to CiviCRM contacts.  This will bring all user emails from the Drupal side over to CiviCRM as CiviCRM contacts.  

2. Sorry, mhm, but that is incorrect.  You can create a public form with CiviCRM to create an "email newsletter signup" for a live example of this check out one of my sites www.irest.us  (the signup is in the left sidebar).  Docs: http://civicrm.org/node/472

3. Your Smart Group/mailing list can be "all contacts".  Just do a search for all contacts (no search criteria) and stick everyone in a Smart group mailing list.   CiviCRM will automatically NOT send to anyone who is 'on hold' because they have opted out or their email is invalid/bounced.  If you want to be more granular or specific about who gets your e-newsletter that is OK too, just add some relevant criteria to your Smart group.

« Last Edit: December 24, 2010, 01:17:43 am by Stoob »
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rdoiron

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Re: help setting up a smart group mailing list
January 03, 2011, 04:59:06 am
Thanks for your replies.  Stoob: just to be sure I'm understanding you, I would need to set up an "all contacts" smart group and each month before sending out a newsletter do a drupal/civicrm sync to pull the drupal users' emails into the group. That won't happen automatically, right? 

CiviTeacher.com

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Re: help setting up a smart group mailing list
January 07, 2011, 10:07:30 am
No. The whole point of of a smart group is that you don't have to manually do ANYTHING to it.  You're not understanding Smart Groups.

Go to "Find Contacts", select Individuals.  Click Search.

Add the entire results to a new Smart Group.  Note the number of people in the group.


Any new  Individual will be added to the Smart Group automatically.  Don't take my word for it.  Experiment.  Try it yourself.  Now click "New Individual" and add a contact to the database.  Call it "Testing Person" or whatever you want.

View the "Contacts" in the Smart Group you created.  It should be one more.  All you did is add the person, they were added to the Smart Group automatically.
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Dave Greenberg

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Re: help setting up a smart group mailing list
January 07, 2011, 01:06:30 pm
Roger - One other piece of info that helps "explain" why Stoob's approach works.... With CiviCRM enabled, a CiviCRM contact will be automatically created for anybody who registers as a new Drupal user. So there will be a contact record for them and that record will automatically be picked up by the smart group.
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Simon147

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Smart group not working?
January 28, 2011, 03:59:28 pm
Maybe the setup of my smart groups is wrong, but I actually wanted to create a smart group for a mailinglist to which everyone is subscribed based on their language settings: If prefered language setting is set to "English", then these contacts should automatically be added to the smart group "newsletter english" and if the language is "french", then they should go into the "mailinglist french" smart group. However, for some unknow reason, this isn't happening. Any idea where I have to look to identify the cause of this problem? 

Simon

Donald Lobo

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Re: help setting up a smart group mailing list
January 28, 2011, 05:25:03 pm

can you reproduce this on the demo?

create two smart groups per the below and then changed the preferred languages on a few contacts

lobo
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Simon147

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Re: help setting up a smart group mailing list
January 29, 2011, 12:52:42 am
Here is what I did:
- Created a smart groupe called "smart group english" with the search criteria Preferred Language = 'en_gb' ...AND...
Contact Type - 'Individual'
- Added a new user with Preferred Language en_gb
- Changed language preference of another user
- Both users appear in the list of the contacts in that group
- But if I check in the user profile if they are subscribed to that group, they aren't ???

Donald Lobo

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Re: help setting up a smart group mailing list
January 29, 2011, 06:39:15 am

this is a missing feature and is currently on the Make It Happen list. check:

http://civicrm.org/mih (search for smart groups)

if your org can help that MIH reach its goal that would be great. We have till early feb before 3.4 goes into the alpha/beta cycle

lobo
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