How to Add and Customize Polls in Your Newsletter

This article explains how to create, customize, and track polls in Letterhead to engage your readers and gather feedback directly within your newsletters.

If you run into anything that doesn't match what you see in the app, reach out to support — we'll help you sort it out.

What changed

Polls used to live at the organization level under a separate Polls tab and could be reused across all newsletters in an organization. That's no longer how polls work.

Polls are now created directly within the Composer (the newsletter editor) and scoped to individual channels. If you navigate to the old org-level Polls page, you'll see a banner explaining that org-level polls have been deprecated and pointing you to the channel's Composer.

If you created polls under the old system, their metrics are still accessible at the original URLs — but new polls follow the flow below.

Before You Start

Polls are now channel-scoped, not organization-scoped. A poll you create lives inside one channel and can be reused across newsletters in that same channel.
A poll can appear at most once per newsletter edition to keep results clean.
Polls cannot be added to company-level templates. If you build a template at the company level that includes a poll block, the block will create a new poll only when the template is applied to a channel newsletter.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Open a newsletter draft in the Composer

Navigate to your channel's Newsletters list and open or create a draft. Polls are created from inside the Composer — there's no separate "Polls" tab to visit first.

2. Drag in the Poll Block

From the block library on the right-hand side, drag and drop the Poll Block into your layout where you'd like the poll to appear.

3. Create a new poll or select an existing one

In the Block Settings panel that opens on the right, use the dropdown to either:

Select an existing poll from this channel, or
Create a new poll (type a title and press Enter to start a new one).

4. Choose a poll type

There are three poll types:

Vote — a simple one-question poll. Readers choose one option and see a confirmation message.
Quiz — a poll with a single correct answer. When Show Poll Results on Response Page is enabled, readers find out whether they were correct.
Feedback Scale — a rating-style poll for collecting sentiment. Variants include star ratings, a 0–10 numeric scale (commonly used for Net Promoter Score), and emoji ratings.

5. Fill in the required fields

Depending on the poll type, you'll fill in the title, question, response options, confirmation message, and (for Quiz) the correct answer. Missing required fields will block the save.

6. Customize the look

In Block Settings, you can adjust:

Button Color
Text Color
Alignment — Left, Center, Right, or Full Width

These styling choices apply to how the poll buttons render inside the newsletter.

7. Save

Save the poll from the Block Settings panel. Once it's attached to a newsletter, the poll is locked: you won't be able to edit the question, options, or correct answer after that point. This is intentional — it keeps response data accurate.

8. Preview and send

Use Preview to confirm how the poll renders on desktop and mobile. When the newsletter sends, readers can respond directly from the email — clicking a poll option opens a confirmation page where their response is recorded.

Editing and Deleting Polls

Edit: You can edit a poll only before it's been attached to a sent newsletter. Once it ships, the poll is locked to preserve response integrity.
Delete: Deleting a poll removes it from the dropdown of available polls in the Block Settings panel going forward. Past response data stays intact — you can still view metrics on previous newsletter editions that used it.

Viewing Poll Metrics

Poll metrics live on the Newsletter Edition Metrics page for each newsletter that contained the poll. After the newsletter sends, open its metrics to see:

Total responses
Response breakdown per option
Response rate — responses ÷ recipients × 100

Poll metrics may take up to an hour after send to appear.

You can also export poll data from the metrics page, similar to how you export Promotions data.

The legacy "aggregate poll metrics across all letters" view is no longer the primary way to look at poll performance. Each newsletter edition's metrics page is now the source of truth. Polls that were created under the old org-level system still have their detail pages available at their original URLs for historical reference.

Tips

Polls are channel-scoped. A poll created in one channel isn't visible in another. If you need the same poll in two channels, create it in both.
One poll per edition. A poll can be added at most once to a single newsletter edition.
Editing after sending isn't allowed. Once a poll has been added to a newsletter that's been sent, it's locked. Plan your wording carefully.
Deleted polls keep their history. A deleted poll won't appear in the dropdown for new newsletters, but you can still view its results on past editions.

💡 Pro Tip: Always use Preview Mode before sending to confirm your poll renders the way you expect on both desktop and mobile.

FAQs & Troubleshooting

Why can't I edit a poll anymore? Once a poll has been attached to a newsletter that's been sent, it's locked to preserve accurate results.

Can I reuse the same poll in multiple newsletters? Yes — within the same channel. A poll lives at the channel level, so it can be added to any newsletter in that channel, but no more than once per edition. Polls are not shared across channels.

Where's the old "Polls" tab at the organization level? That tab has been deprecated. If you visit the old URL, you'll see a banner pointing you to the channel's Composer, where polls are now created and managed.

Can polls stay fully inside the email? At this time, polls cannot remain fully interactive within the email itself. Most email clients limit or block embedded form-style interactions for security and compatibility reasons. To ensure polls work reliably across all inboxes, clicking a poll option opens a web page where the response is recorded.

What happens to polls I created under the old org-level system? They still exist and their metrics are still viewable. New polls follow the channel-scoped flow described above.

Need Help?

If you have questions or need assistance, contact support or log a support ticket through the Help Center.