January 21, 2006

Sending your own newsletters/mailings

One of the really nice features of the NYK Newsletter service is that this service is really two services. Not only do your patients get the best written newsletter in chiropractic, but this service is also a bulk emailing service.  This means that you can create and mail your own newsletters or announcements.  You can also email any of the Echiropractic cards or letters out to your entire list.

Mailing Echiropractic or pre-created messages out to your list is relatively simple.  The instructions and choices in Echiropractic and NYK Central walk you through the process.  However, if you want to create and mail your own newsletter or flyer, there is a little more work involved.  This Tips newsletter will deal with creating a document for mailing.

The first thing you need to do is to create a document for mailing.  You can write the text in many programs, but if you want some fancy formatting, you will need to use the features in NYK Central to format your document. First you enter your NYK Central account.  Then select the "Newsletter" feature and then select, "Add, Change, or Delete a Document for Mailing"  Unless you want to use a document you have already created, you should select the link for "Create New Document".  This is where you will create your mailing document. (see picture above)

The main window in this area is where you can create or paste the text for your mailing. By using the yellow highlighted letters just above the window on the left, ( [D] [A] [E]) you can change the settings from "Default" to "Advanced" to "Expert".  This gives you extra features depending on your abilities.  In The Expert mode you can really do some interesting things. But for most people, Default or Advanced mode will be just fine.

Inserting pictures into your document requires a little more thought.  Since this is an email, pictures are inserted as links to their original source.  This means that they appear in the email, but they are actually being drawn in from where those pictures are kept. (They are not really being emailed with your mailing, but they do appear when the email is opened.) Because of this the pictures you insert can not be pictures kept in your computer, as the email your patient receives will not be able to open an image that is kept in your computer. 

The images you insert must be online somewhere.  This means that they can come from your website or from another online source. (Always be aware not to use copyrighted images).  Our E-Support section of the NYK Help area has a great step by step description of how to do this. To see this support item and learn how you can insert a picture into your document for mailing, please click here.

If you want to use an image or picture that is in your computer but not online, you will have to get that image online somewhere first.  This can be done in two ways. Your first option is to submit it to us for publishing on your website. The second option is to publish the picture yourself onto any of the free image websites, (such as Yahoo or MySpace) and then use the picture address (URL) when you insert the link of your picture into your document. The image below is one that I just posted on MySpace.  I used the address of the image (the URL) to post it here.

The picture URL can be obtained by "right clicking" on the picture and the selecting "Properties".  When you select Properties a box with the "Element Properties" appears.  The URL is the "Location" address.  Highlight that entire address (http://whatever) and use that as the address for the image in your newsletter.

Using this self publishing procedure for your images allows you the ability to decide what pictures you want when you are creating the mailing and add them to your newsletter almost immediately.

Like anything new, it may seem a bit daunting the first time you try it.  But creating and mailing your own newsletters and announcements is really simple. This newsletter was mailed using the same NYK Newsletter mailing feature that you can use.  After you have done this once, you will be hooked.  You will see how easy it really is to create and mail your own newsletter out to your entire patient list.

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