Come together with the global Drupal community in Rotterdam, 28 Sept – 1 Oct 2026. Sessions, contribution, connection, and Early Bird savings until 8 June.In a nutshell I'd like simplenews to have the option to associate zip & postal codes with mailings/mailinglists so that admins could target recipients by area. I assuming that zip/postal codes are required upon registration... this can be an extremely valuable feature.
I've been waiting around for this feature (or something like it) to pop up since the development of massmailer ceased. Prior to that, the only solution for targeting mailinglist recipients aside from using phplist (w/massmailer) was an organic group work-around in civic... which really just isn't an option for most of us.
Over the past two months I've been in communication with several drupal users who are quite interested in this feature. Some are willing to contribute financially, others monetarily. The point being... I feel there is a definite need for this feature, one beyond my own personal needs.
If I sent you a link to this node, it's because I'd like you to chime in and add your two cents. I think if enough users show a genuine interest someone will step up and get the ball rolling. Thanks in advance!
-Ciao
Mec J. Zilla
Creative Director/Rock Slinger
gp® / Rx / $™
mj[at]meczilla[dot]com
| Comment | File | Size | Author |
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| zuki.jpg | 2.8 KB | dualdiesel |
Comments
Comment #1
mgifford+1
I do think that this would be a very useful feature - one I would plan to use for our own lists (and promote to our clients). Would be nice to see simplenews get more complex features - such as those offered by phpList. The ability to match users by interest or geographical interest would be key to allowing campaigners to send targeted emails based on their supporters specifics.
Potentially tying something into the profile module would be good - although it would be nice to be able to collect this targeted information from both logged in users and anonymous users. Certainly it would be useful to tie in any data so that there would not be inconsistencies between the address available to a simplenews mailing and the address available in the profiles (or CiviCRM for that matter).
The need for this is high, but the complexity in building a module to interact with simplenews/profiles & possibly CiviCRM is pretty high. Hacking in something to provide a field for a postal code would be interesting, I would think that targeting cities would be more useful. It is useful to look at how phpList's user interface.
Comment #2
RobRoy commentedWe did a rewrite of Simplenews for Drupal 5.x so it uses the proper FDrupal hooks/API. I'd like to keep Simplenews...simple and leave more complex features as contrib modules. This could probably be done as another contrib module. If there are any roadblocks for extending simplenews with a new simplenews_zip or whatever, let me know. You could try posting a bounty for this to see if there are any takers.
Marking won't fix as this should be worked on outside of Simplenews. Please reopen if you have compelling reasons otherwise or find an issue with implementing this as another module.
Comment #3
sutharsan commentedI agree with RobRoy that this functionality will not be implemented in Simplenews (core) since we want to keep Simplenews simple. But dualdiesel is actively collecting support for this feature and I like to keep the discussion alive. Maybe this is not the right place to discuss, maybe it is, but lets talk.
I like to know what future users of this feature intend to do with collected subscriber data. Does is need to be fed back into simplenews in some way, or is a list of data sufficient?
Comment #4
mgiffordAgreed that the only way to keep simplenews true to its name is to build another module to extend it and set that up as its own project. Also think that this should be a place to discuss this until there is critical mass to spin off the extension module (notsosimplenews).
As far as the functionality. Collecting geographic data on individuals in the mailing list is useful, but you also need to be able to filter the mailings by it. If you want to send a message to everyone in Toronto and make it different from the one you send to folks in Vancouver you need to create sub-lists for each list. phpList does this quite well and there is much there to be emulated (in a Drupal native environment).
Mike
Comment #5
dualdiesel commented"I like to know what future users of this feature intend to do with collected subscriber data. Does is need to be fed back into simplenews in some way, or is a list of data sufficient?"
I'm too well versed in the route of the data, but it would most likely need to be fed into a module. Likely the new one... if things in simple news are to stay the same. In essence the need for this module is to collect zip codes from readers upon mailing list subscription which would later allow specific recipients to be targeted based on their zip code. Being able to select more than one zip code would ideal, but not necessary. Small steps first.
Comment #6
wasirwin commentedHas there been any new developments on a PHPList/Postal code integration?
I want this feature and I'm willing to contribute $$ if there is a chance to see it completed within a reasonable time frame.
My needs are not only zip code but other criteria, although the incorporating the zip code feature would lay in a code base where slight modifications would allow other segmentation to occur.
Where does this stand?
Comment #7
sutharsan commentedSee #127178: Make Subscribers fieldable for a recent discussion. For payed service or funding to accelerate the development you can also contact the module maintainer (that's me ;) )