¶ PVYmailr | Getting Started
Many newsletter services, especially those based in the U.S., charge significant monthly fees based on the number of contacts and subscribers, as well as the features you choose.
If data protection and GDPR (DSGVO) compliance are important to you, using a U.S.-based service that sends customer data across the Atlantic might not be ideal. U.S. privacy laws are not as comprehensive as the GDPR, making it risky to transfer sensitive information.
PVYmailr offers a cost-effective alternative that ensures GDPR compliance and includes features surpassing many enterprise subscriptions, providing greater value for your money.
¶ What does PVY.swiss and PVYmailr offer?
PVYmailr is available in our PVY@Cloud App Store and can be added to any PVY@Cloud SaaS package for a monthly fee. There are no limits on the number of subscribers or contacts you can maintain, nor on the number of emails you can send each month.
PVY.swiss provides its own content delivery network and works with ISPs and content filters to ensure smooth and guaranteed inbox delivery for emails sent from your domain. It includes a double-opt-in feature, which is standard practice for confirming new sign-ups to your newsletter. This feature is crucial for GDPR compliance and helps prevent emails from being blocked by machine learning algorithms used by carriers, ISP security gateways, and content filters. For more information, refer to our Publisher Guide.
Additionally, PVY.swiss offers one-time services such as onboarding, training, and templates to help you make the most of PVYmailr. These services are designed to ensure your success and are often not provided by other providers
¶ Documentation Structure
Similar to other PVYapps focused on content delivery, such as PVYmedia, we offer comprehensive support beyond the ‘Getting Started’ section. This includes a User Guide, Publisher Guide, and Administrator Guide.
¶ User Interface
Once logged in, PVYmailr features an intuitive user interface with a left-side navigation menu, making it easy to access all menu items.
¶ Dashboard
The dashboard offers an overview of all your campaigns, including active lists with recent interactions, the total number of active subscribers, and the latest data on orphaned, blocked, or unsubscribed subscribers. It also displays metrics on your campaigns, such as the number and status of each campaign and the total number of messages sent.
In the campaign view, you can access the latest statistics for your most recent campaign, including the total number of views and the number of links clicked by recipients.
¶ List Views
Each list you view includes a search field at the top left of the menu bar. On the right side, you’ll find pagination controls for navigating through the list pages. Above these elements, there is a ‘+ New’ button that allows you to create a new entry.
¶ Lists
This section is for managing your lists, each of which can contain multiple subscribers. A subscriber may belong to more than one list and can opt-in to their preferred lists through newsletter preferences. Additionally, you can manually add existing or new subscribers to any list. Quick actions available for each list entry include:
- Send a campaign
- Edit the list
- Import subscribers (from a another tool, crm, erp)
- Delete the list (subscribers remain in Subscriber)
Another quick action is to send an ‘opt-in campaign’ email to all recently subscribed individuals, if the list is set to manual. You can also view subscribers assigned to the list or add additional existing subscribers to it.
Lists can be kept private for special news targeting a specific audience only, or they can be classified as public, allowing anyone to sign up. For each list, you can define the opt-in setting as follows:
- Single opt-in
- Double opt-in
Each list can also be classified with tags. Tags are a useful way to categorize lists by details such as topic, product, or service. For bloggers, tags can be used to mark blogging categories.
The description, visible on the public page and in subscriber preference settings, should reflect the content you distribute with a concise, informative sentence.
Tip: Include the frequency of updates in the description box. Acceptable values are typically every 2-3 months. If your content is highly relevant, more frequent updates can have a greater impact on your business.
¶ Confirmation email for Newsletter-Signup (double opt-in)
For lists set to double opt-in, subscribers must confirm their subscription by clicking a button in the confirmation email sent by PVYmailr. This email will include your logo, as configured in the system settings, and a footer that reads “protected & powered by PVY.swiss.” This footer appears only in the double opt-in confirmation template. All other newsletter templates will be designed entirely according to your branding.
¶ Forms
Forms are used to collect new subscribers, either through your public subscription page or as HTML code that you can embed into your website’s footer or on various pages related to different topics. You can place these forms on multiple pages of your website or within an app to gather signups for your content. Each list has its own form. By default, PVYmailr provides a public URL for subscriber signups and a tokenized URL in the footer of emails, allowing subscribers to manage their subscriptions and, if enabled, access, download, or delete their data.
If enabled, you can also allow subscribers or potential subscribers to view your publications transparently. This can help attract more subscribers by giving them a preview of what to expect.
In the backend, where you manage your lists and forms, you can obtain the HTML embedding code for your website. This code can be copied and pasted into the body or footer section of your website
<form method="post" action="https://news.pvy.swiss/subscription/form" class="pvymailr-form">
<div>
<h3>Subscribe</h3>
<input type="hidden" name="nonce" />
<p><input type="email" name="email" required placeholder="E-mail" /></p>
<p><input type="text" name="name" required placeholder="First & Lastname" /></p>
<p>
<input id="3d57f" type="checkbox" name="l" checked value="3d57fee9-61d6-4c8a-9cc2-65907af6369d" />
<label for="3d57f">Lecturing</label><br /><span>For our translation team</span>
</p>
<p><input type="submit" value="Subscribe" /></p>
</div>
</form>
The class class="pvymailr-form" in the form is used for styling with your website’s CSS. You can add this class to your websites “site.css” or “main.css” or “footer.css” files to match the form’s appearance with your site’s look and feel.
¶ PVYcaptcha built-in
With the PVYcaptcha integration, your newsletter forms will automatically have spam and bot protection. This applies to both the subscriber page and any embedded forms on your website. Simply activate PVYcaptcha in the Admin Section under Settings > Security, and you’re all set.
PVYcaptcha is a GDPR-compliant, cookie-free CAPTCHA service from PVY.swiss that does not fingerprint or track users, unlike reCAPTCHA.
Please note that if you enable PVYcaptcha (which you should definitely do), you will need to add a few extra lines of code to both the built-in website signup form within PVYmailr and the form you embed on your site. You can copy these additional lines from your PVYmailr setup instructions
¶ Subscribers
Your subscribers are invaluable—whether they are existing customers, potential customers, or simply interested in your content. Their contact details must be managed with great care, especially in an era of information overload where people are highly selective.
In addition to how you organize your subscribers into lists, the storage location of this data is crucial for data protection. Storing it in our Swiss Bunker Data Center or on your own PVY@Office Appliance is among the most secure options available.
Subscribers can have custom attributes, which you can either allow them to fill out on a special signup form or import from your CRM/ERP system. Custom attributes not only help classify and target specific newsletters to contacts based on these attributes but can also be used to personalize content within your newsletters through placeholders
¶ All Subscribers
Here, you can use the search function to browse and manage all your subscribers in detail. The list view provides insights into their status, such as subscribed, canceled, bounced, or blocklisted, based on your activated feature settings. You can also see which list each subscriber is assigned to. To learn more about the advanced features of the built-in search function, refer to our article on: How to query and segment subscribers
¶ Manage a subscriber
When browsing your subscriber list or viewing search results, you can click on a specific entry to make changes to that subscriber. This will open a modal popup where you can update their details and modify any attributes, if applicable.
Using the blue + New button in the upper right navigation bar, you can add a new subscriber to one or more of your lists. This is useful when you receive requests like ‘Send me your newsletter’ or ‘Yes, please add me.’ If the list is public, we recommend using the ‘Send opt-in confirmation’ button. This helps prevent issues with blocking, especially if the subscriber uses a public email service like Bluewin, GMX, Gmail, etc.
¶ Import
PVYmailr features an excellent import assistant that makes it easy to transfer your contacts and subscribers from other platforms or applications.
Note: If you don’t need additional attributes, you can keep it simple by using just email and name as your columns. However, based on your internal communication guidelines, you might want to add other valuable information.
If your audience speaks multiple languages, we suggest adding attributes such as language, country, and other relevant details to address their preferences:
{"language": "german", "country": "switzerland", "is_woke": false}
The import function has various use cases. If you’re not new to this, you likely have your contacts and subscribers on an existing platform or in a CRM or ERP tool where you manage customer relations. Please also refer to our Import/Export Guide to get up and running quickly.
¶ Bounces
Under bounces, you’ll find emails that are outdated, no longer in use, have invalid addresses, or contain typing mistakes. Bouncing emails can negatively impact your reputation. If the bounce rate exceeds 1% of all recipients in a campaign, it can harm your domain sender and IP address reputation.
You need to manage all bounced email addresses. Bounces can also occur if you send too many emails to the same domain within a short period. This is a standard mechanism, so it’s important to pay attention to system settings and the default values we have provided, as they are set for a good reason.
¶ Managing bounced mailaddresses
In the system settings, you can automate the handling of bounced email addresses. For instance, you can set the system to automatically disable or remove these addresses from your subscriber lists.
¶ Campaigns
In campaigns, you can distribute your content effectively to your audience, whether through email newsletters, social media, messenger platforms, or all at once. The campaign features are organized in the submenu as follows:
- All Campaigns
- Create New
- Media
- Templates
- Analytics
Begin by focusing on your email base template, which you will use to create specific content for your campaigns. After setting up your subscriber lists and adding contacts, you’ll need to choose or design a template for your campaign.
PVYmailr provides three default templates that ensure a consistent look and feel across all email platforms, both mobile and desktop:
- Announcement
- Newsletter
- eCommerce
Before modifying these templates, it’s a good idea to make a copy with a single click. This way, you can easily revert to the original if needed. PVY.swiss can also create custom templates for you. However, we provide guidance and best practices to help you design your own templates according to your desired style. Learn more in our Templates-Spamscore-Testing article.
¶ Media
In the Media section, you’ll find all your uploaded images, GIFs, and PDFs that can be included in your newsletter content. You can also use media in templates, such as including consistent elements like your logo. You can choose these media items either from the media manager or by using a URL in the HTML code for your template. For example: https://mypvymailr.com/uploads/mylogo.png
Once you have set up your PVYmailr lists and templates, you can launch a new email campaign to your targeted audience in under three minutes.
¶ Templates
Here you manage all your templates, both for newsletter and transactional mails.
¶ Newsletter Templates
¶ Transactional Templates
¶ Archives
For each campaign, either during sending or afterward, you can also publish it to the built-in Archive Page. The newsletter will appear exactly as your subscribers see it, but without any tracking IDs or attributes.
Archives are a great way to share your newsletter on social media platforms. Simply copy the URL and paste it into your news feed, where it will be properly rendered.
¶ RSS Support for Archives.
For published newsletters, we support RSS feeds, which remain popular and allow your visitors to subscribe. It might be worth mentioning this feature somewhere on your website.
Some of the best RSS readers include (note: we do not earn any commission from these recommendations):
| macOS | iOS | Android | Linux | Windows |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reeder 5 | Reeder 5 | InnoReader | InnoReader | InnoReader |
If you are someone who likes to stay organized, using RSS feeds can help you efficiently track updates on your topics of interest while also benefiting from reduced tracking of your reading habits and personal data.
¶ How to access it (example):
Public Archive: https://news.pvy.swiss/archive
RSS-ATOM URL: https://news.pvy.swiss/archive.xml
¶ What else?
First of all, having your own news tool feels great and provides a strong sense of control, as you own your data. This sense of ownership is something your customers will also appreciate.
¶ Settings - here you start first
Here, you can enable or disable features and set up your SMTP senders (for example, you might have multiple addresses like:
- europe_news@
- asia_news@
This is where all the configuration magic happens. And with the help of our video guide, you can complete this setup in just 10-15 minutes.
¶ Messenger integration
You can also distribute the same content from your newsletter or transactional emails via various messaging platforms, achieving multiple goals at once. To integrate your chosen messaging services into your news distribution, you’ll need some technical knowledge, such as working with webhooks, callbacks, and understanding the APIs of the specific messaging services you want to connect.
However, we’re here to assist you. Some of the tested messaging services include:
- Facebook Messenger
- VK Messenger
- PVYmessenger
- Slack
- Telegram
- SMS Gateways
- Push Notification Gateways
And for a small fee, we can build custom integrations to suit your needs.
¶ But there is one more thing
You can also automate the publishing of your newsletter content using PVYautomat, to various platforms, including:
- X/formely Twitter
- VK
And many more. You can publish to any medium that supports username/password login and has an API. We believe you’ll get significant value for your investment, offering features not commonly available elsewhere. Additionally, if you manage multiple blogs on different platforms, you can publish to all of them in one batch.
¶ User Guides
Configuration How to manage 500 or 5 Millions Subscribers
Content Creators - How to convey content in an appealing way
API Documentation - Automation and Integrating into other Applications