How to Add a YouTube Video to Your Newsletter

The YouTube block showcases a video inside your newsletter with a clean thumbnail and optional play-button overlay — promoting video content while keeping your email lightweight, with no heavy embedded HTML.

Add the block

Open your newsletter in the composer, find the YouTube block in the blocks panel, and drag it where you want the video preview to appear.

Customize it

In the block settings panel:

• Source — paste the YouTube video URL; this is where readers go when they click the thumbnail.
• Thumbnail Image — upload a custom image or replicate the YouTube thumbnail look.
• Overlay Image with a Play Button — adds a play icon over the thumbnail; it makes the block feel interactive and increases click-through rates.
• Alt Text — a short description of the video for accessibility and for email clients that block images by default.
• Alignment — Left, Center, Right, or Full width (great for bold, visual layouts).

You can also style the block’s border and background — see How do I use the new design settings?

Drop in the block, add your link, choose a thumbnail, and you’re ready to go.

Why can’t the video play directly in the email?

Email isn’t a web browser. The major email clients — Gmail, Outlook, and most corporate inboxes — strip out the HTML5 <video> tag and JavaScript that real video players rely on, largely for security reasons. Support is inconsistent (a few clients like Apple Mail will play embedded video, but most won’t), so building a true embed means most of your readers see a broken box or blank space. Embedded video files also bloat the email, which slows load times and can hurt deliverability.

The YouTube block sidesteps all of this: it shows a lightweight thumbnail with a play-button overlay that links out to the video where it actually plays — YouTube, in the reader’s browser — and you get the click-through tracking as a bonus.