Create an Automation for Welcome letters & Recurring newsletters

Letterhead has two ready-made automation options for hands-off sending:

• Welcome Email — a one-time welcome email that goes out when someone new joins your list.
• Recurring Email — a newsletter that assembles and sends itself on a daily, weekly, every 2 weeks, or every 3 weeks schedule, to your whole audience or a dynamic segment.

Both are built on templates, so create or pick a template first. For recurring sends, use RSS or Curations blocks in the template so each edition fills itself with fresh content; welcome templates can use personalization fields to greet each subscriber by name. For everything else the Automations area can do, see Working in Automations.

Create a welcome email

Welcome emails introduce you, set expectations, and are a good moment to ask readers to add you to their contacts so you stay out of spam folders.

1. Go to Automations and choose Welcome Email.
2. Give the automation a title (required — subscribers never see it).
3. Create or select the template for your welcome email.
4. Choose Save and activate later, or Activate to turn it on immediately.

If you later change the template’s content, deactivate and reactivate the automation so it picks up the new version. More detail: When are welcome letters triggered?

Create a recurring newsletter

1. Go to Automations and choose Recurring Email.
2. Give the automation a title (required — subscribers never see it).
3. Optionally enable Dynamic subject and Dynamic preview text so each edition’s subject updates automatically. This pairs well with RSS blocks: Letterhead uses the first heading in the newsletter as the subject.
4. Select the Audience — your entire audience, active openers/clickers, or any saved segment.
5. Set the Frequency: daily, weekly, every 2 weeks, or every 3 weeks, plus the publication day(s) and time. Weekly and multi-week options let you pick several days.
6. Choose when to receive a test email — from 1 hour up to 23 hours before the send — and add one or more test email recipients who should review it.
7. Select your template (or create one from a blank template), then Activate, or Save and activate later.

How dynamic subjects work

Letterhead scans the newsletter for the first heading (h1–h6) and uses it as the subject; if there’s none, it uses the first title from your RSS blocks. Very long subjects are trimmed to the last complete word with an ellipsis, capped at 150 characters.

Timing matters

The test email’s send time is when the final content is locked in. Stories published after the preview is generated won’t appear in the final send — so if freshness matters, keep the preview window short, and set the publication time at least 1–2 hours after content creation so your latest content and dynamic subject load correctly.

Deactivating a template that’s in use

If you deactivate a template that an active automation uses, Letterhead warns you; confirming also deactivates the automation, so nothing keeps sending from an outdated template.

FAQ

Can I test my automation first? Yes — review the test email, preview the newsletter from the editor, or temporarily send to a test segment containing just you. You can pause the automation anytime.

Can I change the newsletter later? Yes, but changes only affect future sends, not emails already sent or in progress.

What happens if I pause? Sending stops until you resume. See Manage an automation series.

Tip

Curious what the Letterhead assistant can help with? See how the assistant works.