Tutorial: How to Set Up Your Blog With MyMail & Amazon SES

Recently, I talked about why I have given up FeedBurner and how I have switched to MyMail for e-mail subscriptions. It seems like there was a fair amount of interest for a MyMail tutorial, so here it is! I’ll walk you through the steps of exporting your e-mail subscribers, setting up MyMail, connecting it with Amazon SES, importing your subscribers, and crafting “new post” e-mails!

Step 1: Purchase & install MyMail

MyMail is a premium plugin, but if you read my last post, you’ll see why this one-time purchase fee is significantly better than the alternatives (MailChimp, JetPack, etc.). You can purchase the plugin from CodeCanyon for $25 USD. Then, you will be able to download the plugin and install it on your blog just like any other plugin.

A different, free option is the Wysija Newsletters Plugin, however if you use that instead then this tutorial won’t be of much use to you!

Step 2: Configure your MyMail settings

Once it’s installed, navigate to Settings » Newsletter and start filling out your settings. Decide who you want the e-mails to be sent from, which e-mail address, etc. Fill out everything you can, but skip the “Delivery” tab for now, because we’ll configure that in a minute.

Step 3: Connecting with Amazon SES

This section is for people who are going to send e-mails through Amazon SES. Using MyMail, you will be sending e-mails through your own web hosting account. But if you have a lot of blog followers, you will probably be sending upwards of 10,000 e-mails per month! Your web host might not like that… Using Amazon SES enables you to avoid any problems with your web hosting by sending the e-mails through Amazon. It’s not a free service, but it is super cheap! Amazon charges you $0.10 per 1,000 e-mails.

But, if you’d rather not use Amazon SES, contact your web host and ask them if they have a limit on the amount of e-mails you can send per hour, day and/or per month. If there is no limit, you might want to send e-mails normally and skip this section! But most web hosts do have a limit and you DO NOT want to go over it (doing so could cause your account to be suspended).

Install the MyMail AmazonSES Integration plugin.

This plugin is a MyMail extension that allows you to seamlessly integrate your settings with Amazon SES. Just install it, activate it, and move onto the next step.

Sign up for Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services is what Amazon labels all of their web services and applications. Amazon SES is connected under Amazon Web Services, so first you have to sign up for Amazon Web Services.

Once you’ve done that, navigate to My Account/Console » AWS Management Console. Then, under App Services, click “SES E-Mail Sending Service” to be taken to Amazon SES.

Setting up verified e-mails

When you start out with Amazon SES, you’ll notice that you have strict sending limits (I think it’s 200 e-mails per 24 hour period). This is just because right now you have “sandbox” access. Eventually you will apply for production access, which will significantly increase your limits (i.e. right now my limits are 10,000 e-mails per 24 hour period). But we’ll get to that later!

For now, click on the “Verified Senders” tab. Until you get production access (which we’ll set up later, I promise!), you need to verify the e-mail address you will be sending from, and any e-mail address(es) you will be sending to. So for now, add the e-mail address you will be sending from, and another e-mail address that you can test receiving e-mails.

Configuring MyMail with Amazon SES

Now, go back to your blog and navigate to Settings » Newsletter and click on the “Delivery” tab. Then, near the bottom, click on the “AmazonSES” option. This option is here thanks to that MyMail AmazonSES Integration plugin we installed earlier! Notice how it says:

You need to create Access Keys to work with Amazon SES

Click that link and check to see if you have any access keys. If you don’t have any then you’ll need to create one. Copy the access key ID and paste it into the field in the plugin. Then click on “Show Secret Access Key” for that key, and paste that into the secret key field in the plugin. Also, check the box for “auto update send limits.”

Save your settings and make sure that it comes back green saying, “Your credentials are ok!” If not, it means that your access key and/or secret key was incorrect!

Recap: Where we’re at so far, and a summary of what’s next…

Step 4: Set up your mailing list(s)

Next, navigate to Newsletter » Lists and set up the names of your mailing list(s). The default one is called WordPress Users, and I just ignored that because it has other uses. For example, if you allow people to register on your blog (so that they have their own login credentials) or have guest bloggers, this would be an easy way of adding all of your blog sign-in users to the list and mass e-mailing them with any updates or news. But that’s not something I’m interested in, so I left it alone. Here’s how I set up my lists:

My ‘primary’ list is “All Posts” because that one will e-mail my subscribers with every new post. The other two (“Bitchin’ Book Blog Posts” and “Book Review Posts”) are category specific posts, which means people who subscribe to those lists only get posts from those categories!

You can set yours up however you want. I imagine most people will just want to have one list for receiving “All New Posts”.

Step 5: Create your first campaign

It’s time to create our first e-mail campaign!

It’s important to realize that there are two different kinds of newsletters in MyMail. You can create a “Regular Campaign” which is a manually written e-mail that will go out one time. You can schedule delivery in the same way that you can schedule posts. Or, there is the “Auto Responder”, which will automatically send an e-mail any time an event occurs. This is where we will set up the e-mails that automatically get sent whenever there is a new post.

On the auto responder tab, check “send this auto responder” and from the drop down menu, change the default (“user signed up”) to “something has been published.” Make sure “Post” is selected in the next section, so that it reads: “create a new campaign every time a new post has been published”. This is where you can also configure different categories. For example, if I were creating a list for only receiving Book Review posts, I would select, “only if in Reviews category”.

My E-Mail Template
Click to Enlarge

Fill in all the other fields for the campaign title, subject, from name, from e-mail, etc. Make sure the from e-mail is the one you verified with Amazon SES! Then you can also start drafting your e-mail template. Remember to use the tags in Settings » Newsletter » Tags.

So, if you’re creating a template to showcase your latest post, you will want to use dynamic tags like this:

{post_title:-1} _ Show post title for your most recent post
{post_content:-1} – Show post content for your most recent post
{post_link:-1} – The URL for your most recent post (you will have to put this in HTML link tags!)

You can also change the “-1” to other numbers. For example, if I want to show the post title for my second most recent post (not my most recent, but the one directly before that), I would put {post_title:-2}.

You can see an example of what my template looks like on the right.

Note about {post_content} and {post_excerpt}

By default, the plugin is set up to pull the RAW post content. This means it grabs whatever you put directly into the post box. So shortcodes will not get rendered out and will just appear as shortcodes, and anything you put into meta boxes (like the UBB plugin) will not get added in.

Similarly, the post excerpt is designed to only work if you manually write in an excerpt. It doesn’t use the excerpt automatically generated by WordPress.

Luckily, I found a way to fix this!

You can download my edited plugin file here:

You will have to overwrite an existing file in the plugin. This means that if the plugin ever gets updated, your changes probably won’t be saved and you will have to upload it again. Just download the file, then navigate to Plugins » Editor and select the MyMail plugin from the dropdown. Then, on the right, look for the file called myMail/classes/placeholder.class.php and click on it. This is the file you will be editing.

Open up my file in a text editor (like Notepad++ or TextWrangler) and copy everything in the file. Then go back to that myMail/classes/placeholder.class.php file, delete everything, and paste in the new content.

My edits will ensure that the PROCESSED post content is grabbed (so shortcodes will be properly rendered out and UBB book info will be included), and if you decide to use {post_excerpt:-1} it will use the excerpt automatically generated by WordPress so that you don’t have to manually fill them out!

/* Removing spoilers from MyMail Newsletters */
function ubb_remove_from_mymail($text) {
	$return = $text;
	$old_cwd = getcwd();
	chdir(dirname(__FILE__));
	require_once("QueryPath/QueryPath.php");
	chdir($old_cwd);
	$qpref = htmlqp($return, 'body');
	$qpref->find('.ubb-spoiler')->remove();
	$return = $qpref->top('body')->innerHtml();
	return $return;
}

case 'content':
	$args=array(
	'p' => $post->ID,
	 'post_type' => 'post',
	  'post_status' => 'publish',
	  'posts_per_page' => 1,
	  'caller_get_posts'=> 1
	);
	$my_query = null;
	$my_query = new WP_Query($args);
	if( $my_query->have_posts() ) {
	  while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post();
		$cwbcontent = get_the_content();
		$cwbcontent = apply_filters('the_content', $cwbcontent);
		$cwbcontent = str_replace(']]>', ']]>', $cwbcontent);
	  endwhile;
	}
	wp_reset_query();
	$replace_to = $cwbcontent;
	break;

$cwbcontent = ubb_remove_from_mymail($cwbcontent);

Step 6: Testing your campaign

Once you have your template all formatted and your campaign details filled out, it’s time to test it! On the left, under “Lists”, make sure you have one of your lists selected (right now the subscriber number should be zero, but select it anyway). Then save your campaign. Then, go to Newsletter » Autoresponder and you should see your campaign in that list. Hover over it and click “View”. This will give you a browser preview of your e-mail. Use this to check to make sure that your e-mail looks the way you want. Now, it’s time to test the actual e-mail!

Send test e-mail

Go back to Newsletter » Autoresponder and click on your campaign to edit it. On the right-hand-side, under Delivery, look for the button that says “Send Test”. Enter in your e-mail address in the box above (the e-mail you will be sending TO, that has been verified by Amazon) and click “Send Test”. This will send a copy of your campaign e-mail to that e-mail address. If you receive it, that means Amazon SES is configured correctly! If you don’t receive the e-mail then you will need to fix your Amazon SES configuration settings. But assuming everything went well, it’s time to apply for production access!

Step 7: Applying for Amazon SES Production Access

This should be pretty straightforward. If you go back to Amazon SES, there should be a big notice at the top saying that you don’t have production access, and I think there’s a link to where you apply. All you have to do is fill out some personal information and your website URL and press submit. You should hear back from Amazon within one business day (I heard back in less than 12 hours because it was early in the day on a Friday).

Once you get granted access, you no longer have to add e-mails to the Verified E-Mail List, and your sending limits should go WAY UP! Congratulations, you can now start sending out your campaign e-mails!

Step 8: Preparing for launch

Before importing all your subscribers and officially launching your new mailing system, I would recommend testing it “normally” for at least one day. Here are the steps I would recommend:

• Ensure that your campaign is formatted, finished, and properly saved.
• Temporarily add the newsletter sign up widget to your sidebar and sign yourself. (Side note: you can also do this manually as an admin in the admin panel under Newsletter » Subscribers, but I always think it’s good to test things as “a regular user” and this is how regular readers will be subscribing in the future!)
• Assuming you have confirmation enabled (highly recommended), confirm your e-mail subscription.
• Once you’re signed up, remove the widget from your sidebar (just because we haven’t officially launched yet!).
• Then, just sit tight. If all goes well, the next time you publish a post you should get an e-mail. This is your final opportunity to ensure that everything looks and is working the way it should.

Ultimately, with the test posts we sent earlier, the above steps aren’t 100% necessary. But I always say it’s a good idea to test things how a regular user would be using them.

Anyway, once you’re 100% happy with your campaign, it’s time to import all your subscribers!

Step 9: Exporting and importing your e-mail subscribers

To export your subscribers from FeedBurner, follow these steps:

• Go to http://feedburner.google.com/ and click on your blog.
• Click “See more about your subscribers.”
• Click on “FeedBurner Email Subscriptions” and then “Manage Your Email Subscriber List”.
• On that page you should have an option to “Export CSV”. Click that to download a CSV file of all your e-mail subscribers.

I think Jetpack has a similar option to export your subscribers as a CSV file, but I don’t know the exact steps!

Once you have your file, go back to your blog and navigate to Newsletter » Manage Subscribers. You can drag your CSV file directly into the “Upload” box. This will upload all of your subscribers! Make sure they get added to the right list. Then you can go to Newsletter » Subscribers just to confirm that everyone got added correctly.

Step 10: Deactivating your old service

Once you have switched over all your subscribers to MyMail, the courteous thing to do is to deactivate your old service. This way you don’t have to force your subscribers to manually unsubscribe from the old service (like FeedBurner). To deactivate FeedBurner e-mails, go back to your FeedBurner e-mail subscription management, and at the bottom you should see something that says:

This service is active Deactivate

Press “Deactivate” and you’re done! FeedBurner should still save your subscribers just in case you want to reactivate the service, but the e-mails will no longer get sent out.

Step 11: Aaaaand you’re live!

The last thing to do is to re-add the subscription widget to your sidebar so that your followers can sign up, and then you’re officially done! Your e-mails are getting sent out automatically every time you make a new post and you have access to all kinds of awesome statistics!

For example…

When you create an autoresponder, that template always remains in Newsletter » Autoresponder. But, every time the autoresponder sends out an e-mail, it creates a new file in Newsletter » All Campaigns. You can click on that campaign to see statistics about it. You will see:

• The e-mail subject
• The date the e-mail was sent
• The preheader
• The total number of recipients
• The amount of people who opened the e-mail
• The total clicks in the e-mail
• The number of people who unsubscribed when they got that e-mail
• The number of bounces (unsuccessfully sent e-mails)
• You will have access to a clickmap, which shows you which links in the e-mail people clicked on!

Are these statistics freaking awesome or what??

Possible Problem: E-Mails not sending

Just as a heads up, I’d like to share a problem I encountered where my newsletters weren’t getting sent our properly.

All kinds of “scheduling” in WordPress work with WP-Cron. This includes scheduling posts, sending out e-mail batches, and a few other features. How it works is, every time someone loads your website, WordPress loads WP-Cron, which checks to see if anything needs to be done (if a scheduled post needs to be published, or if an e-mail needs to get sent out, etc.). However, WP-Cron is not a real cron job. It’s a fake one (since it relies on someone actually visiting your site for it to trigger).

Anyway, my problem was that I set up my campaign to go out automatically and it worked fine for 2 days. Then, after that, my campaign got stuck on “will start in 1 minute”. For some reason the WP-Cron wasn’t triggering the e-mails. Even manually pressing “Send now” just wasn’t working. I eventually fixed this by replacing WP-Cron with real cron jobs. You can read a guide on how to do this here: How to Replace WordPress Cron With A Real Cron Job. I didn’t personally use that guide, but I basically did something similar so it should work. You might want to look into it if you experience the same problem. And, in general, using real cron jobs is much better.

Note: If your host doesn’t use cPanel then the instructions may not apply. But I can’t really write a guide that factors in every single host.

Extra tip: ensuring that your e-mails don’t look like spam

There are ways to test how likely your newsletter will get caught in a spam filter. IsNotSpam is a website that will analyze your e-mail and give you back a report.

Simply compose your email and send it to the following email address, using your usual mail server. You will be able to view an online report detailing potential problems (if any) with your email. Our software automatically checks the main elements which cause emails to be rejected by recipient mail servers. The following tests will be performed:

SPF Check Sender-ID Check DomainKeys Check

DKIM Check SpamAssassin Check

IsNotSpam.com

To run a report, go to your campaign and under “Delivery” look for the test e-mail box again. In the e-mail box, enter in check@isnotspam.com. Don’t actually check the “Send to IsNotSpam.com” box because I did that and never got a report. But if you manually put in the e-mail address it works great!

Then, after a few minutes, go to IsNotSpam.com and put your e-mail address in the box at the top (this should be the e-mail your campaigns get sent FROM). Click “Go” and you will have access to your reports! Ideally you want to pass everything!

I was going to do a more detailed guide on how to set all your anti-spam settings right, but honestly, it feels next to impossible. The problem is that the steps are different for everyone, depending on your set up, your host, etc. And on top of that, it’s pretty complicated in general. However, Amazon SES does have a pretty good guide on it. So I feel like the most I can do is point you in the direction of that guide and encourage you to look through it!