Guidelines for bulletin length

• Keep your bulletin as short as possible ('1 single page of content' if that’s possible). The longer your bulletin, the more likely your bulletin will get cropped, read below for more info.
• Most email readers begin to crop a bulletin if the bulletin has lots of content. This means users will typically see a message in their email reader (Gmail, Apple Mail, etc) that says ‘Click here to read more’ or similar message, and 'hide' the rest of that bulletin after a certain length.  In some cases, the user mistakes this for the end of the bulletin and stops reading.
• Avoid large attachments if possible, as now the recipient's virus scanner might need to scan the email before delivery.
• Try to optimize (create smaller) bulletin images, especially if there is no need to reuse the image on your website. An image specifically for the bulletin has no need to be larger than 600 pixels wide, as 600 pixels is the maximum width of all ClubRunner bulletins. The larger the total file size of your entire bulletin, the more likely email readers might try to crop your bulletin.

Videos and Animations in the Bulletin

Many desktop and web-based email clients used to support video in email. However, as security tightened and spam became a bigger problem, video support became a thing of the past. The following items cannot be sent in the body of an email:

• Videos
• Flash
• Quicktime
• Windows Media
• Java Applet
• HTML5

Here are some options you can use instead of video:

• Use animated gifs
• Take a screenshot of the video and then make a clickable link to where the video file is stored.

Placing Forms in the Bulletin

Most email clients consider email forms to be a security risk. While some email clients simply warn you of potential  danger, others outright disable the forms. Below items are not permitted when sending an email:

• Cannot use Forms (<form>, <select>, <input> etc.)

As a result, we recommend using a link to the form so the viewer can just click on the link and be taken directly to  the form to submit.

Choosing a Bulletin Font

When you are sending an email message, it's important to use a font that is clear and easy to read. Be sure to make your font large enough so that the reader doesn't have to squint to read your message, but not so large that the reader has to scroll a long way down to read all the message.

It's also important to use a plain font, because not all email programs view messages the same way. You don't  want the content of your message to be jumbled or strangely formatted because the reader's email program didn't view the font the same way yours did.

Below is not recommended with regards to fonts:

• Cannot use sophisticated, uncommon fonts as email clients may not recognize it

Basic fonts like Arial, Verdana, and Times New Roman work well. Depending on how much content you have in your email message select a 10 or 12 point font size for legibility. 

Including Stories within your Bulletin

When working on a bulletin, you are able to use the Bulletin Stories and Bulletin News widgets to include stories and news articles within the bulletin itself, just like you can on your homepage. 

When adding stories for your bulletin, or homepage for that matter, we recommend to always create a new story instead of editing the existing stories from your previous bulletin. By editing your existing stories and replacing them with a new story, they are overwritten, lost and unable to be recovered.

As a result, bulletin stories should only be edited when making a small change to the content, and new stories should be created for additional content in order to preserve the organization's historical data.