Talking Drupal #057 HTML Email

Description

Uses of Email

Transaction/Service E-Mails - one email to the single person for a particular purpose. ie. Reset Password, Shipping Confirmation...
Bulk Email - send to the group of people. ie. Newsletter, Forum subscriptions…
User communication - personal contact or something like basecamp
Impact the type of service and tools you will use

Getting Started With HTML EMails

Drupal out of the box will only send plain text emails
Need an SMTP server setup on your web server or use this:

SMTP Authentication Support Module

Structure of HTML email
HTML E-Mails From Drupal (Creating and Sending)

Simple News (Module)

Create E-mails content

Mime Mail

Enhances the abilities of Drupal to send HTML Emails
Allows for email attachments

Mandrill / Mail System

(service by Mailchimp)
Can replace the need for an SMTP server
Has statistics for e-mails sent
Can setup rules (within the Mandrill service) to change e-mail attributes before sending

HTML E-mails From Outside of Drupal (List Signup Only)

Mailchimp

Allow Drupal visitors to signup for emails
List Management for users
E-commerce and webform integration
Service is easy to use
Allows RSS Auto Send
Use site content to build newsletters

Constant Contact

Allow Drupal Visitors to signup for emails
Limited List Management
Some E-commerce and Webform integration

Campaign Monitor

Great reseller program
Easy template generation

Zurb Foundation

Responsive templates
http://zurb.com/playground/responsive-email-templates

Module of the week

Table Field - https://www.drupal.org/project/tablefield

This module allows you to attach tabular data to a node in Drupal 6 or any entity in Drupal 7. The input form allows the user to specify the number of rows/columns and allows entry into each table cell using text fields. Tables can be defined globally or on a per-node/per-entity basis, so every node can have multiple tables of arbitrary size. Enter data by hand or by CSV upload. Table data can also be downloaded as CSV files by your users if you so choose. Tables are multi-value and revision capable.