LetterPop

So you’ve found the perfect template for your newsletter, but now you’re wondering how to separate yours from any others that might use that same template. The key to making your newsletter stand out against the rest is the customization of your additional pages.

Adding Additional Pages:
You’re already familiar with LetterPop’s beautiful selection of newsletter templates, but did you know that each template has it’s own set of 10 alternate pages that allow for even greater customization. Adding one of these alternate pages is easy. After you’ve dragged a template into the builder, a new navigation will appear giving you the option to select between, add, delete, and reorder the pages in your newsletter. Clicking the add button will open a new menu allowing you to select one of the 11 options below:

As you can see, a template’s alternate pages can be anything from one giant block of text, to multiple columns containing both text and images.

Further Customization:
Incorporating several different alternate pages will do a lot to give your newsletter a unique feel, but many of these pages can be even further customized. For each alternate page containing an image frame with a text block next to it, the frame can be dragged horizontally to alter the layout of the page.

In the above example, the picture on the left is the default layout of this alternate page, while the picture on the right demonstrates a custom layout where the bottom image frame has been dragged from the left side of the layout to the right.

The key to a beautiful newsletter is finding that perfect template that shows off your content just right. When searching for a suitable template you should already have an idea of the images you’re going to showcase Understanding how the Letterpop newsletter builder handles your images will give you a better idea of which templates will best suit your image selection. Here are a few quick tips on how to better match your images to a template and how make adjustments to them once they’ve been selected.

Aspect Ratio & Orientation:
When selecting a LetterPop template, you want to consider the aspect ratio of the images that you plan on using. If you look at the example below, you’ll notice that when you drag an image into the frame of a template, it is automatically centered and then scaled so that smallest dimension (height or width) becomes equal to that of the frame.

Take notice of the aspect ratio and orientation of the frames in the templates you choose. If your desired template contains mostly portrait frames, choosing portrait image is going to yield the best results. Likewise, if your desired template contains mostly landscape frames, choosing a landscape image is going to yield the best results.

Of course, matching the aspect ratio and orientation of your images to the frames in your template is not absolutely necessary. Looking at the example above, most images can be  made to work in any frame with minimal adjustments.

Adjusting Your Image:
When you add an image to a frame of a template, you’ll notice a little menu appear in the upper lefthand corner of the frame. This menu allows you change the image’s position by moving it up, down, left, right, or rotating it within the frame. Once you’ve made your adjustment, click the green checkmark button to save the adjustment.

Changing or Readjusting an Image:
If you later decide that you don’t like they way you placed a particular image, simply locate it under “My Pictures & Images” in the sidebar and drag it into the frame again. This will reset the image and allow you to make all new adjustments.

If you instead decide that you’d like to use a completely different image all together, simply locate it under “My Pictures & Images” in the sidebar and drag it into the frame. This will replace the current image with the new one.

We’ve just released a slew of new changes including a few on the back-end that will allow us to create new templates faster. But the biggest improvement (and one of our most requested) is the ability to re-order your newsletter pages. You can now change the order of each of the pages in your newsletter.

To move a page:

• Go to the page you want to move.
• Click the up arrow to move the page towards the first page or the down arrow to move the page towards the end.
• That’s it!

You can now easily keep track of the conversations you’re having with other members in your newsletter comments. On your home page, at the bottom of the comments section, is a new link called “View recent comments you’ve made.” This link shows all of the recent comments on every newsletter you’ve also commented on.

Editable text areas are now more distinct with a special “Click to edit” background:

Finally, you can add a personal note to the email that is sent when you mail a newsletter. The notes are saved so sending the same newsletter again retrieves the old note. And they become part of your RSS feed as well.

We’ve heard through the grapeville that some schools and other organizations have put on LetterPop.com workshops.  And we think that is a great idea.  In fact, we are willing to help.  If you have a school, business, club, blog, or organization that would benefit from an in-person hands-on workshop, let us know.  We would be glad to arrange for Dave, John, or Cory to drop by your office and put on a  FREE workshop for your organization.  LetterPop is a powerful tool for communicating with elegance and simplicity over the web.  Our personalized workshops are a great way to learn all the benefits of using LetterPop for your organization.  Here is what your organization will receive:

• Personalized instruction from one or more of LetterPop’s founders including
• Advanced Template Creation: multi-page templates, creating a business or organization template, embedded email and url links, advanced use of pictures, using flickr.com for picture management, using website images in your template
• Advanced Profile Usage: creating and using a public profile to promote your organization, tapping into the power of RSS
• Advanced LetterPop Techniques: embedding templates in blog posts and other webpages, importing emails lists to LetterPop, managing LetterPop email lists
• Advanced Eating Techniques: we’ll bring along pizza and soda for everyone

For now we’ll need to restrict our workshops to organizations where there will be 5 or more attendees and that are within 81 miles of LA or San Diego.  Though, if your organization really really wants to fly us to Hawaii or France and put us up in a nice hotel, we’ll flex

Don’t be shy! Email support@letterpop.com with your request.

Available immediately, every member now has a syndication feed (RSS) for your published newsletters. RSS feeds are a way for readers to subscribe to your newsletters and be automatically updated whenever you publish a new one. This is a great alternative for members who don’t want to email out newsletters and for readers who don’t want to share their email address.

All you need to take advantage of this feature is an active, public profile. To activate your profile, just visit your profile management page in the account section and follow the instructions. Be sure to make it public if you want other people to see it. Incidentally, that also allows your profile to be featured on the LetterPop Explore page.

For advanced users who want to track how many people subscribe to their feeds, we’ve added the ability to integrate your newsletter feed with FeedBurner. Just enter your full FeedBurner URL on your profile page and your feed will be redirected automagically.

If you’ve published your newsletter (every user now has a personal Profile page where public, published newsletters appear) and you’ve made the newsletter public, then your readers will be able to leave comments for you. When you sign in, you’ll see any new comments left on your newsletters on your home page.

Of course, registered LetterPop members can leave comments for you, but so can anyone in your personal address book by just entering their email address on the comment form. We DO NOT keep those addresses on file—they are only used to verify that the reader is someone known to you so that we can prevent comment spam.

Starting right now, you can use your Flickr photos with LetterPop. If you have a Flickr account, you now have access to every photo in your Flickr account for use in your newsletters. There are two ways to link your Flickr account with LetterPop:

Go to My Account and click Images. Then click the link at the bottom of the page to link your Flickr account. Or click the link Click to view Flickr Images in the My Pictures & Images tab while you are working on a newsletter.

From there, just follow the instructions and in a couple of clicks you’ll be able to browse your Flickr photos while working on a newsletter. Just click the Click to view Flickr Images link while working on a newsletter. You’ll see your most recent uploads and a tag search box. Enter a list of tags separated by commas to find photos with all of those tags.

You can revoke your permissions at any time from within your Flickr account or by simply signing out.

We know a lot of you have a ton of photos in Flickr accounts so we hope this will make your LetterPop experience a lot more fun.

Please let us know if you experience any issues with this new feature.

(And to the Flickreenos: Thank you!)

So are you confused a little bit about what that “publish” button is on the Create Page between the email button and print button? The publish button is also found in your My Account Page under your My Newsletters tab.

One wife of a LetterPop! co-founder rolling her eyes exclaimed, “I don’t get it. What is the publish thing about?” (She wasn’t the only one who asked, so her husband is not picking on her.)

Well, here is the short of it. Right now, all of our beta users receive a LetterPop! account that includes a “profile page.” It looks like this, guynameddave. A profile page is a place where you can put a picture of yourself, write a little bit about yourself, link to your blog, and link to your published public newsletters.

Here’s how it works. You create an exceedingly creative newsletter (or announcement or mini-photo album or whatever) and save it. From either the Create Page or your My Newsletters Page, click on the “Publish Button”. Your newsletter is now published, i.e. you think it looks great and you want to do things with it. Now, if you want your beautiful creation to be visible to everyone who visits your profile page you need to click the “Make Public” link next to your newly published newsletter on your My Newsletters Page.

Why? And cannot you make this more intuitive? Good questions. Well maybe you want to use LetterPop! as a sort of mini-blog or website. Maybe you are a Real Estate Agent or High School Teacher and want to update people regularly in newsletter fashion. A LetterPop! profile page is the perfect solution! And, yes, we are working on smoothing out publishing public newsletters on your profile. For now, though, practice!

First, some of you were having trouble mailing newsletters because the buttons that were supposed to appear in “Step 3″ weren’t there. That has been fixed.

Second, some of you are still having trouble mailing newsletters. Here’s a quick tutorial:

1. First, create a great looking newsletter.
2. Then, go to your address book. Use the Quick Add link to add some contacts. We’ll be adding address importing soon.
3. Click the checkbox next to each contact you want to add to a mailing list then click the green add button (looks like a plus sign) beneath your contact list.
4. A new contact list is created on the right side. Name it and save it.
5. Now you can send newsletters to those contacts simply by clicking the envelope icon next to the contact list name.

Keep those suggestions and error reports coming in. You guys are really helping out! Thanks a bunch.