To register an account with Zinester please visit our "Start an Ezine" page.
There you should submit your contact email address, the name of your newsletter and its description.
Make sure to mark the box "Subscribe to Zinester's Publisher News" to receive regular information on
new features and updates from Zinester.
Make sure to provide valid contact information as we will send you the instructions to the indicated
email address.
When registering the password will be generated for you automatically. You can change it (as well
as your name & email address) in the "Update Profile" section of your account.
Where to get the instructions
The "Getting-Started" instructions will be emailed to your email address right after you submit "Start an Ezine" form.
In case you missed them or deleted the message, these instructions could be found in your account in
the 'Help' section at the left.
How to move an existing list
If you already have an ezine and would like to move it to Zinester, we need you to submit
this form. After this is done please
email us
the list of subscribers, including the ID of your ezine in the message.
Note: You can send us only those emails, whose owners have personally requested subscription.
How to set up the account properly
Zinester offers you a long list of things that could be customized to get the most from your mailing
list.
Make sure you have chosen the variant that suits your needs, otherwise Zinester defaults will be
used.
Confirmational Messages
These messages are sent automatically when somebody joins or lefts your mailing
list.
To change these messages go to the "Custom Messages" section of your
account.
You can use the Welcome Message to introduce yourself to subscribers, tell
about the topics discussed in the ezine or refer subscribers to your web-site for more info.
Farewell Message not only confirms unsubscription for the user but also is
used to request feedback.
Your subscribers will recognize your messages better and open them more often
if you use your company name and email address in the From and Reply-to lines of
your newsletter.
To specify which ones we should use, please visit "Ezine Settings" section of your
account
Also you can choose the delivery format of your ezine (HTML Only, Plain Text Only
or Both) here.
Headers & Footers
In this section of your account you can adjust the appearance of your newsletter
Header & Footer, so that you only will have to insert the message itself when sending the issue to
subscribers.
Also our default headers & footers are available in this section: you can change
them to suit your newsletter better.
If you want to schedule your messages in advance you should set up the timezone for
your account first. Otherwise there could be delays in sending or (in the worst case) the issue will
be sent out immediately.
You can choose the right timezone in the "Posting" Section of your account.
2. Free and Premium Services
Difference
Zinester offers two variants of services: Free and Premium.
Free Services are ideal for those
new to ezine publishing and small ezine owners, whereas Premium version is recommended for experienced
newsletter publishers.
Free or Premium? Not sure if it worth upgrading your account to the Premium One? Use our feature comparison guide to see the
difference!
Ads in the Newsletters
The free version of our service is ad-supported. But we place ads only to the bottom of messages and
they aren't indeed that ugly.
How to upgrade
If you made your mind to upgrade your account to the Premium one, use our Price Calculator for cost estimation or contact
us at sales@zinester.com to receive the pricing.
As soon as we receive your payment, your account will be upgraded and all Premium Options will be activated for you.
How to pay
Currently we can only accept payments via credit cards or wire transfer. The following
link should be used to perform the payments:
Make payment.
If you are not sure about purchasing our Premium
Services, we offer you a Free 15 days Trial. Simply send us a message requesting a trial and we will have everything
set up (please make sure to include your ezine ID).
3. Posting Issues
Posts via web-interface
To post a newsletter through web-interface, please login
here with your email and password and click on the link with the name of the newsletter you would
like to use.
The new page will be opened and there you should submit the following:
Subject (by default your newsletter name is used)
HTML copy
Into this field you should copy the prepared HTML-code. Use "Html Preview" button at the bottom of
the page to make sure
the issue looks fine. You will not see this filed if your newsletter format is set to 'plain text
only'.
Plain text copy
Into this field you should copy the prepared plain text version. Use "Text Preview" button at the
bottom of the page to make sure
the issue looks fine. You will not see this filed if your newsletter format is set to 'html only'.
Use "Post Test" button to send the newsletter to your own email address only and to check once again
that
everything is correct and displayed in the right way.
Press "Post to Subscribers" button to send the newsletter to all people in your mailing list.
Note: As the author of the newsletter you receive two versions of each newsletter (HTML and
plain text copies) to make sure
both are fine.
After your submit "Post Subscribers" button, you can see the on-line
status of your message: you will see when you message is delivered to
our server, waits for its turn to be sent and is delivering to
subscribers.
Posts via email
All you need to do is to copy&paste the newsletter you want to post in the body of the message and
send this message to your_ezine_id@zinester.com
(replace your_ezine_id with real ID of your newsletter).
If your message is in HTML format, the text variant will be automatically generated by our system and
vice versa. The subject of this message will be used as the subject of your newsletter.
Important! After this, you should log into your account and confirm that it was you who sent
the message by pressing the "Post" link (it is required in order to prevent you subscribers from
receiving spam messages).
Deferred posting
If you want to schedule postings in advance you will certainly like our "Deferred Posting" option.
It is quite easy!
Simply copy the prepared code as described in "Posts via web-interface" and choose the desired date
and time in the "Scheduling" section in the middle of the page. Please make sure that you have chosen
the right time zone!
After this is done press "Post to Subscribers" button, several minutes later you message will appear
in the "Deferred Postings" table in your account.
Html templates
Most ezine publishers create their own html templates to make the newsletter stands out from the
others and to make it cognate.
In case you do not have your own template or not sure whether you like publishing newsletter in HTML,
we have created a set of Html Templates
that you can use absolutely for free! Simply insert the prepared text into the code and the new issue
is ready!
Archives
All issues you send through Zinester are saved in the Archives and are available for your subscribers and
our visitors
to read the issues online. Zinester will not in any way and never change or modify the issue's
content.
4. Statistics
It is important for the ezine publisher to carefully track the number of new subscribers and
unsubscribers he has daily. In the "Statistics" Section of your account
the following information is available:
- how many new subscribers you have each day;
- how many people leave your mailing list each day;
- how many bouncers you have each day;
- how many subscription requests you have each day (that is how many subscribers did not confirm
their subscription);
The statistics is calculated for Html and Plain text subscribers separately.
5. Bounces & Invalid Subscribers
We use the automated bounce system that temporary blocks the email address after it bounces
back several times. After some time it will be unblocked in case there were some temporary problems
(for example mailbox is full) and only if it continues to bounce back it will be finally blocked and
removed from your mailing list.
There is a possibility of downloading the list of bouncing email addresses for our Premium Members.
6. Manage Subscribers
Add\Remove Subscribers
To add (or remove) subscribers from you mailing list, you should go to the "Manage Subscribers"
section and choose the
option "Add\Remove Subscribers".
Currently it is only possible to add (or remove)100 email addresses a time and we will send messages
to subscribers asking them to confirm their subscription.
For the trusted publishers direct addition is available, but subscribers will still receive
notifications about being added to the list.
Note: The "Add\Remove Subscribers" option is not available by default, to activate it you
need to contact us.
Find Subscribers
For our Premium Members the "Find Subscribers"
option is available in the "Manage Subscribers" section.
Here you can check the status of subscription for each subscriber, the format of subscription and to
change them if needed.
Subscribers lists
To be aware what changes happen to you mailing list, we provide you with the following lists in the
"BackUp Subscribers" section of your account:
The list of active subscribers
You will always have an
up-to-date version at your computer.
The unsubscribe list
To be compliant with CAN SPAM you should keep the list of those who
have ever unsubscribed from your newsletter. To make the task easier
we provide you this list on a regular basis.
And the following Reports are available for our Premium Members:
The list of new subscribers
You can track the dynamics of subscriptions for your ezine.
The list of the disabled subscribers
The bad and invalid email addresses are available.
You can choose to receive those lists via email if it is more convenient for you.
Subscription\Unsubscription links and email addresses
You can include the subscription\unsubscription links and email addresses in the template of your
newsletter or locate them at your web-site
to make it easier for your subscribers to join or left the mailing list.
Please make sure to replace your_ezine_id with the real ID of your newsletter!
7. Tracking Email Campaigns results
If the main purpose of your ezine is to generate some profit then it is absolutely necessary for you
to have the full statistics for each email campaign you send out.
In the "Tracking Reports" section of your account the following reports could be found:
Open Rate - shows how many subscribers actually open your message. It is also possible to
download the list of those who opened the issue.
Clicks-through Statistics - shows how many clicks your subscribers make and how many times
they click on each of the links in your message.
You can also download the list of those who clicked on the links in your messages.
Number of bounces (to download the list of bounces follow the link
with the number of bounces);
New subscribers (to download the list of new subscribers, follow
the link with the number of new subscribers);
Unsubscribers(to download the list of unsubscribers, follow the
link with the number of unsubscribers);
Use these reports to get to know which of your campaigns are successful and how your subscribers
respond to different types of email campaigns.
As a publisher of the ezine you always look for the new ways to increase your subscribers list. Here
is two things that are proved to work:
Subscription web-forms
Place a Subscription web-form on all pages of your web-site so that your visitors can easily join
you! We have created an automated
Subscription Form Generator - simply insert
your newsletter ID and the form is ready!
Ezine directory listing
Apply for having your ezine included in Zinester's
Catalogue - it is visited by thousand of potential subscribers daily! But you should post at least
one issue of your ezine through our system before applying.
Here is a list of Ezine Promotion Tips that will
help you to gain even more new subscribers.
9. Closing account
If you decide to close your account at Zinester, simply unsubscribe from your newsletter and it
becomes inactive. We would appreciate your feedback about
why you decided to leave us very much.
