Merge Plugins for Monthly E-Newsletter

If you publish a lot of blog posts or just want to offer your reader a monthly/weekly email newsletter instead of the standard one email per post, read on to find out how to set it up quickly and easily using 2 awesome WordPress plugins.

The first is the Post Notification Plugin which allows you to create an html template including your logo, branding and custom formatting. Whenever you write a blog post, it is sent to your subscriber database as an email newsletter. The second is the List Category Posts Plugin which allows you to display posts from a particular category on either a page or a post. The latest version lets you include excerpts and thumbnail images too.

Click on the plugin names above to read my previous posts about how to setup these 2 plugins on your WordPress website.

Creating a Monthly Newsletter Post

There are several different ways to do this, depending on whether you want your newsletter on a page or a post and which subscribers you want to receive it. See my sample page or my sample post.

1. Create a new post category called ‘Monthly Newsletter’ or ‘Weekly Update’
2. Add a new post with “My Newsletter – November 09″ as the title
3. Write some text at the top summarising the newsletter
4. Add the list category posts code for the category or categories you want to include, the number of posts and whether you want an excerpt or not (see image below as an example)
5. Add some text at the bottom if you want to
6. Tick the monthly newsletter category or other relevant categories and publish [Read more]

Sample Monthly Newsletter

Yesterday I wrote a post on how to use the Post Notification Plugin to create a monthly newsletter containing any number of posts from the categories you choose instead of just one newsletter per post. This post is a sample monthly newsletter to show you what it might look like on your website. 

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If you would like to receive my newsletter once a month instead of whenever I publish a new post, please subscribe here. When you confirm your subscription via a link in an email, select the “Monthly Newsletters Only” category and save your settings. If you are already subscribed, just click the link at the bottom of this newsletter to change the categories you are subscribed to.