Magento e-commerce has a standard newsletter function that is useful if you get it to work. This post will highlight the major reasons why your newsletter is not sent to your customers.

  1. Magento schedules and sends the newsletters using a cronjob script called “cron.php” in your Magento installation root folder. To schedule this cronjob you need to access your web server using SSH (You can use for example Putty). For more information see the Magento wiki.
  2. If you don’t want to schedule the cronjob you need to go twice to the cron.php file in your browser e.g. www.yoursite.com/cron.php every time you want to send your newsletter. The first time it will schedule the newsletter and the second time it will send it.
  3. After login with ssh type: crontab -e This will open an editor. The contents may be empty if you have never set up crontabs for the current user.
  4. To schedule the cronjob every 5 minutes you should enter: */5 * * * * php /absolute/path/to/magento/cron.php
  5. Save and close
  6. Now you can create a newsletter template at Newsletter / Newsletter Templates.
    Create Newsletter
  7. After creating and saving the template you can schedule it by selecting “Queue Newsletter” in the Action pull-down.
    Queue newsletter
  8. Select a date and time at “Queue Date Start” when you want to start sending your newsletter.
  9. If you have multiple store views make sure you select at least one store view at “Subscribers From” otherwise you will have no recipients.
  10. Click on “Save Newsletter” and you will see the scheduled newsletter at the Newsletter Queue.
    Queue Newsletter
  11. If everything goes right you will see that after a while all the recipients will receive the newsletter and the status should be “Sent”