After a lot of brainstorming, development work, beta testing, and a few headaches, we are finally launching our new newsletter tool.

Our in-house newsletter management tool, integrated with SendGrid, a cloud-based email service provider, will replace the previous system that used our membership management software “Webling” and offers a number of advantages.

The requirements were demanding: high adaptability and flexibility, data security, a look and feel that reflected "more VDT" (colors, design, etc.), as well as long-term usability and the ability to expand the range of functions according to specific needs. One of the biggest advantages is that the tool operates directly from the MyVDT backend and automatically retrieves a range of information from there. This will save us, the office staff, a lot of tedious manual copy-and-paste work in the future—for example, with dates, which will now be automatically imported from the calendar.

The tool also offers several advantages for you. The newsletter will continue to be sent in two languages (German and English). You can now choose which version you’d like to receive in your MyVDT profile. The newsletter is also sent in both HTML and plain text formats. Here, too, you can decide for yourself which option you prefer. To do this, you’ll need an email client (such as Mozilla Thunderbird) that supports this setting.

We’d like to thank VDT employee and programmer Christoph Thelen for his great work, and we look forward to many exciting newsletters using the new tool.

We welcome your feedback.