Creating a Newsletter Issue

Owned by Mark Albis
Last updated: Oct 13, 2023 by Denise Meyer
6 min read

Create an Issue

When creating a newsletter issue there are two ways you can get started:

  1. Click the “Add New” button from the Newsletter Issues page

  2. If you happen to be editing a Newsletter Template, you can click the “Create Issue” button at the bottom of the page

  1. The “Add new” button on the Newsletter Issues page

  1. The “Create Issue” button on the Newsletter Template editor.

 

Choose a template and set the issue date and time

The first step in creating a new Newsletter Issue is choosing the template and setting the date and time for when the issue will be sent.

The time doesn’t have to be exact, it can be approximate, but do know that the time you select will affect which news and events can be included in your newsletter. For example events that will have ended before the issue date will not be eligible to display.

Add content to your newsletter

This part of the process is the most involved, and will vary widely from person to person depending on the settings for the Newsletter Template they are managing and the content types used.

Below are some of the more commonly used content types.

Header

You will notice that the Header section of the Newsletter Issue Editor is collapsed and not shown by default. The assumption is that most newsletters will keep the same header content for every issue, which is helpful for the recipients so they can recognize the newsletter.

However, you can edit this information if needed, including the title, subtitle, layout, and image that appears in the header, by clicking the expand arrow to the right side (or anywhere on the heading).

This same behavior applies to all headings you’ll find in Beatrix.

News

You can include any published, publicly -viewable news article in your newsletter. To make finding and selecting these articles easier, each news section can be limited to a single organization.

To add an article, simply click “Add Article” and use the search tool to find and select the article(s) you want to add.

If the news section is filtered to an organization, you also have the option to “Add articles in date range.” This allows you to add all articles that appear in that organization’s news feed between the dates you select.

Please note that you will not be allowed to add news articles to your Newsletter that are scheduled to be published after the Newsletter Issue date.

Events

Managing events that appear in newsletters is very similar to News. You can add any published and publicly-viewable event to your Newsletter.

Like News, you can search for and add events individually, or you can “Add Events in Date Range” if you have filtered your newsletter events section to a single calendar.

Please note that you will not be allowed to add news events to your Newsletter that are scheduled to have ended before the Newsletter Issue date.

Publications

Another content type that is similar to news and events, but allows you to display a list of publications in your email. This data is pulled from the Dimensions data that is approved by Yale faculty, so please keep in mind that you can add any publication in Beatrix to your email, but it must be imported from Dimensions and approved by one of the Yale faculty authors in order to be eligible for display.

Like News and Events, you can filter this list by an organization, and if you do, you can use a “Add by publication date range” option which will allow you to add all publications approved by the members of a given organization and published within a given date range to the newsletter.

 

CTA

If you want one, big, impactful link in your email newsletter, like a link to register for an event or apply to a program, a CTA is the way to go. The CTA can have it’s own heading if you want a separate section for the CTA in your newsletter, or you can suppress the heading so that the CTA will appear associated with the content that appears just before it in the newsletter, whether it’s static content, news, events, etc.

Link List

The link list is pretty straightforward, it’s helpful if you need to link to several resources on the web from your newsletter without a lot of explanation.

We will be updating the appearance and adding the ability to add subtitles for each link (so you can add at least a short description) soon.

Edit Sections of the Newsletter

The biggest improvement that arrived with the Newsletter Builder upgrade is the flexibility you have within each issue. While we do set up some default header information, content section types, and other information at the newsletter template level, now you can mix and match content however you want from issue to issue.

At any point while editing an issue, you can click “Edit Issue Sections” to open a menu where you can add, edit, or remove content sections from your newsletter issue, including those that appear by default.

When you click this button, a pop-up will open. In this pop-up you can drag and drop on the “dots” icon to resort the sections of your newsletter, click the name of the section to edit things like the title, layout options, or delete the section, and lastly add a new section.

To add a new section, click the “Add Section” button at the bottom of the pop-up, select the content type, title, and other required info, drag-and-drop the section to the place where you’d like it to appear, then close the modal and start editing!

 

 

Watch our Training Video.

Adding a Web Newsletter Listing to Your Website

The web team can add a newsletter listing to your website. This not only serves as the “view on a browser” option but will create an automatic archive of your issues. The listing is updated automatically upon publication of the newsletter issue.