Momentum Media

High-volume newsletters mailings (2009)

Momentum Media retained GORGES in late 2008 to bring all it's subscription-based newsletters in-house. Momentum Media is the leading publisher of competitive athletic magazines, reaching more than 200,000 professionals by print and 70,000 by online newsletters.

GORGES customized a php and MySQL based, open-source newsletter package and an open-source php ad server to create a powerful solution that tracks all subscribers and their behaviors. The newsletter package was enhanced to associate "click-throughs" by users on video and static ads back to individual ads, providing rich marketing information to Momentum Media and their advertisers.

All newsletters are sent using GORGES servers located at our co-location facility. The servers have been optimized for this operation, and hardened against intrusion attempts.

(click the numbers to see more) Example Screenshots

An example of a weekly Momentum Media newsletter entitled "Tools of the Trade"

GORGES Process

Our proven process for developing sites was applied to the Momentum Media project requirements. We researched existing online newsletter services versus developing our own fully-custom solution versus using open-source packages before selecting the open-source option as the best solution for our client.

Integrated Packages

Here are the packages integrated together to create the Momentum Media newsletter service:

MoveableType version 4.23 for newsletter creation
OpenX version 2.6.4 for hosting ads and tracking impressions and clickthroughs
PHPList version 2.10.8 for sending emails containing weekly newsletter
Custom API created for controlling PHPList remotely (changes available under GPL license)

All packages have been developed over years by the open source community, and are both stable and secure. The Momentum Media solution integrates these packages by controlling them with a custom application called PubSoft.

To publish a newsletter, a rich-text editor is used to edit and style the content. Next, advertisement slots are created within the newsletter. An advertisement campaign is created using the OpenX package, and specific tags are embedded into the newsletter that refer back to images from the ad package.

The newsletter is then added to the PHPList newsletter package, and is sent to all 70,000 subscribers at a rate of 75/minute. We conform to the CAN-SPAM requirements and all e-newsletters have opt-out links. The pruning process of eliminating e-mail addresses that bounce is done daily.