Email Automation Providers

Prior to 2024, NGX-Ramblers used Mailchimp for email automation. However as of March 2024 - Brevo Transactional Mail Roll-out Part 1, an alternative email provider called Brevo was chosen as the recommended solution for email automation. The reason why this change was needed was due to a pricing policy change by Mailchimp which caused some email automation functionality needed by NGX-Ramblers to be chargeable. Whilst being similar to Mailchimp, the Brevo product is priced differently, such that all required functionality can be accomplished on a free plan, providing no more than 300 emails are sent per day.

NGX-Ramblers email automation is achieved by means of your website sending and receiving messages via APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) with the email provider. Such is the level of automation, it's often not even necessary to login to Brevo in order to create and send emails.

Configuring the mail provider

• For this reasons mentioned above, if your group wants all of the features of email automation without needing to pay a monthly charge to an email provider, it's important to choose Brevo as your Mail Provider.
• This can be configured on the System Settings page. On your website this page can be found at <your-website-address>/admin/system-settings, on the External Systems tab.

• An example screenshot is provided below showing the default selection of None:

• If your mail provider is not already selected as being Brevo, choose it fom the Mail Provider dropdown:

• If any email lists have already been created, you will seem them listed in the List dropdown to the right of the Mail Provider.
• Creating lists is covered separately in the Mailing List Configuration page.
• Below the Intialise All Brevo subscriptions button, Mail Provider stats show out of the the total members in the database, how many have mail subscriptions and whether they are valid, pending or invalid.
• Click the Save button at the bottom of the page to exit this screen back to the Admin page.