How do I create and schedule a newsletter?

Creating and scheduling a newsletter happens in two stages on the Emails page: build the edition in the composer, then preview and schedule it. For everything else you can do on this page, see Working in Emails.

Step 1 — Create

1. Open Emails and build from a template, or choose Start from scratch.
2. In the composer, drag blocks from the panel into your layout, then click any block to edit its settings.
3. When your content is ready, click Preview and schedule.

While the preview is being built, the status beside your avatar at the top of the composer says what’s happening — saving your latest changes, checking for promotions, rendering your email, opening the preview — and the button shows the same step beside its spinner, so a longer wait is never a silent one. Once the preview is up, the status goes back to showing when the edition was last updated.

While you’re composing, the composer auto-saves your work, and an auto-save never gets in your way. Keep typing in the title, changing styles on the Styles tab or editing a block’s settings while a save runs — nothing greys out, and nothing you change during a save is undone when it finishes; the next save simply carries it. The status beside your avatar reads Saving… only while a save is actually being written. And an auto-save never stands between you and the preview: you can click Preview and schedule at any moment — if a save is still in flight, the button reads Saving… for a moment while your latest changes land, then the preview is built from everything you’ve done. Auto-save applies during composing only, not on the preview-and-schedule step — there, use Continue editing to return to the composer with your changes kept.

To fine-tune how your edition looks on phones, open the Styles tab in the composer and adjust the Mobile Width. Multi-column blocks and layouts (RSS, Curation, URL, and Layout blocks) also have a setting controlling how columns behave on small screens — for example, whether an image-left/text-right row stacks vertically on mobile with the image on top.

Step 2 — Preview and schedule

You’ll see a live preview of your newsletter in desktop and mobile formats, and you can use Send test to send a test version to yourself or anyone else before scheduling, or to see screenshots of it in real Gmail and Outlook.com inboxes — see Preview in real inboxes. If any block is limited to certain audience segments, a Preview as control beside the desktop and mobile toggle lets you check the edition as a reader in a chosen segment would receive it — see Check it before you send.

The View in browser link inside a test email opens that same unpublished edition on the web, so you can check exactly how it reads in a browser before it goes out. The page shows a banner with the send time you’ve set and a link back to the composer to keep editing.

The unsubscribe link in a test email is different: it can’t unsubscribe anyone, because the person you sent the test to isn’t a subscriber, so clicking it shows an error page. That’s expected in a test. To check the unsubscribe link for real, subscribe your own address to the channel and send the edition to a segment that contains only you.

The right panel shows the send details:

• Smart Subjects — an AI feature that drafts compelling subject lines and preview text for you. See Smart Subjects.
• Email Subject — each edition starts with a default subject you can update.
• Preview text — required; the snippet email clients show next to your subject line.
• Audience — your entire subscribed audience or a specific segment. If a scheduled newsletter’s segment is deleted before send time, Letterhead safely stops the send, moves the newsletter back to draft so you can pick a new audience, and emails your admins to explain.
• Date and Time — Letterhead shows the current local time in your channel’s sending timezone right in the scheduler, so you can pick a send time that matches your audience’s clock without a timezone converter. Picking a different day refreshes the preview so it carries the promotions booked for that day, and the status beside your avatar reads Showing the updated preview once it’s done. The field stays yours while that happens, so you can pick the day and type the time in one go; if you change the day again before the refresh finishes, the preview refreshes once more for the latest day. Schedule waits until the refresh is finished.
• Social Card — the image, title, and preview text shown when your edition is shared on social media. Upload an image from local files or use a direct link.

The panel also carries a Content Check on the edition itself — readability, time to read, word count, and Email Weight — plus a Bounce Risk reading that flags content mailbox providers refuse for policy reasons. See What is Bounce Risk, and how do I lower it? If your account has early access, a Links row also tests every link in your draft; see What does the Links check flag before you send? With early access to the updated schedule panel, these checks sit together under Checked For You in the Before You Can Schedule card, described below.

Preview in real inboxes

Send test › Preview in real inboxes shows you what your edition looks like in Gmail and Outlook.com without sending it to anyone yourself. Letterhead emails the edition to inboxes we keep for this purpose, opens it in the real Gmail and Outlook.com web apps, and takes screenshots. You get four of them: each inbox on a desktop screen and in a window as narrow as a phone. These aren’t simulations; they’re pictures of what those inboxes actually showed. Click any screenshot to see it full size.

It usually takes a minute or two per inbox. You can close the window and keep working while it runs. When the screenshots are ready, a message pops up and a red dot appears on Send test, so you can open them whenever you like. To take a fresh set after you’ve changed the edition, click Run again.

What the screenshots tell you:

• Clipped or Not clipped on the Gmail screenshots. Gmail cuts off long emails and hides everything after the cut, including your unsubscribe footer. If you see Clipped, make the edition lighter; Email Weight shows what’s making it heavy.
• Unresolved placeholders lists any placeholder text that showed up as-is instead of being filled in, so you can catch it before your readers do.

Keep in mind what the screenshots don’t show:

• How your own email provider changes the edition. The test goes out through Letterhead, so if your channel sends through a connected provider such as Iterable, any changes that provider makes on the way aren’t included.
• Blocks limited to certain audience segments. These are left out of the screenshots. Use Preview as to check them.
• The Gmail and Outlook phone apps, or Outlook for desktop. The narrow screenshots show the web inbox in a narrow window, not the phone app.

Under the screenshots, Letterhead asks whether they look right. If something’s wrong, choose what went wrong and add a note if you like, and our team will look into it.

Screenshots are usually deleted the night after the edition is sent, and never kept more than seven days.

Before You Can Schedule

If your account has early access to the updated schedule panel, the right panel groups everything into cards: In the Inbox for your subject line and preview text, When for the date and time, Sending Settings for who it goes to and who it comes from, and your Social Card at the bottom. Above them, a Before You Can Schedule card tells you what’s left to do.

It starts collapsed to keep the panel short, showing a progress bar (for example, 3 of 5) with badges underneath: a red one counting the steps still required, and an amber one counting checks that found something for review. Click the arrow beside the heading to open it.

Inside, Needs You lists every step that’s still stopping you from scheduling, such as adding a subject line, adding preview text, choosing an audience, picking a send time, or adding a social card title. Steps you’ve already finished are ticked off. Each unfinished step has an Add button that takes you straight to that field. Problems that need fixing in the editor, like an unfinished poll block, are listed here too, marked with a warning icon. Once nothing is left, the card reads Ready to Schedule.

Below that, Checked For You gathers your content checks in one place: Accessibility, Bounce Risk, Email Weight, Links (with early access), Personalized Blocks, and Readability. A check that isn’t available on your account doesn’t appear. It reads No issues when everything looks good, or tells you how many are for review. Open any check to see what it found. These checks are advice, not requirements. They never stop you from scheduling, so you decide what’s worth fixing before you send.

See what’s driving your Email Weight number

Email Weight is the size of your rendered email. A heavier email is more likely to get cut short by Gmail’s “View entire message” link, which hides everything after the cut — including your unsubscribe footer.

Click the arrow next to the Email Weight number in Content Check to see what’s adding to it:

• Content — your text and the markup behind any images you include, not the images’ own file size. Writing less or including fewer images brings this down.
• Layout — the styling behind multi-column blocks, mobile spacing, and per-block padding. Simpler layouts weigh less.
• Old client support — extra markup that keeps your email looking right in Outlook and older email apps. You can turn this off per email.
• Click tracking — the size your email service provider adds when it rewrites your links to track clicks. Trimming any tracking parameters from your own links can bring this down too.

A category that isn’t adding any weight is left off the list, so you only see what’s actually driving the number — and a warning icon next to the total means your email is heavy enough that Gmail may clip it.

Every newsletter you send is also minified automatically before it goes out: styling that would otherwise repeat on every element is folded down so it ships once instead of many times over, with no visible change to how your email looks. That keeps a long edition further from the size where Gmail starts clipping it. There’s nothing to turn on and nothing to manage — it happens on every send.

See when this audience usually opens

If your audience is a single segment, a line reading Peak Opens for Segment appears beneath the date field — for example, Peak Opens for Segment: 8:00 AM. That’s the time of day this audience has actually opened your recent sends, so instead of typing the same guess every edition, you can pick a time when your readers really show up. It’s there to inform your choice and nothing more: it won’t fill in or change the date and time for you, and the picker stays yours.

The reading is drawn from that audience’s own history, up to its last ten sends, and it holds itself to a minimum: it only appears once the audience has at least three past sends with open data and fifty opens between them. Hovering it shows exactly what the number rests on. Changing the audience recalculates it for the new segment — and if that segment’s history is too thin to trust, the line simply doesn’t appear rather than offering a shaky number.

It’s for channels Letterhead delivers itself. If your channel sends through a connected provider such as Iterable or Mailchimp, the open times behind it stay with that provider, so nothing appears there and you pick the date and time yourself as usual.

You can see the fuller open-time rhythm behind that number for any published edition on the Opens by hour card on its report — see Newsletter Delivery and Engagement Metrics Report.

See how many people your Iterable list reaches

If your channel sends through Iterable, the list you choose shows its current recipient count just under the Audience field — for example, Weekly Digest · 12,480 recipients. It’s a quick way to catch an edition pointed at the wrong list, or at one that’s far smaller than you expected, while you can still change it.

The same line stays with the edition after you schedule it, so you can reopen a send that’s already queued and confirm at a glance who it’s going to.

Letterhead refreshes these counts about once an hour. A list you’ve just created, or one that changed moments ago, may not have a number yet — when that happens you’ll see the list name followed by recipient count updating… instead of a figure, so a list that simply hasn’t been counted yet never reads as an empty one.

When everything is set, click Schedule. A confirmation appears with your chosen date and time, and the newsletter’s status changes — see What Do Letterhead Statuses Mean?

Send at each reader’s local time

A newsletter normally goes out at one moment for everyone, so “8:00 AM” is 8:00 AM in your channel’s time zone, and the middle of the night for readers elsewhere. If your readers are spread across time zones, you can have each of them receive the newsletter at the same local time instead.

On the preview-and-schedule step, turn on Send at each reader’s local time. The time you pick is then read as a local time: a reader in New York and a reader in London both receive the newsletter at that time, their time. This option is for channels whose newsletters go out to your company-wide audience, and it doesn’t appear for other channels.

• Where each reader’s time zone comes from. If you’ve set a time zone on a reader’s profile, that one is used. Otherwise Letterhead infers it from where they open and click your emails. You can set or change it from the Time zone card on the reader’s profile in Contacts; see View and edit an audience member. A reader whose time zone isn’t known yet receives the newsletter at your channel’s time.
• It stays one newsletter. Readers who share the same local moment go out together, in what the screens call waves. In Emails and on your company home page you’ll see progress such as 3 of 5 waves out, with the time the next wave goes, and the delivery percentage rises as each wave goes out.
• A late wave is sent for you. If a wave doesn’t go out at its time, Letterhead notices within about an hour and sends it to the readers who are due. You don’t need to do anything.
• Existing readers get a time zone too. When local-time sending is turned on for your account, readers who already have an opens-and-clicks history are given an inferred time zone in a one-time catch-up, so an established audience doesn’t have to wait for each reader’s next open or click. Until a reader has one, they receive the newsletter at your channel’s time.
• Send Now is not affected. A newsletter you send right away goes to everyone at once, even if you chose local time earlier.
• Readers who unsubscribe or leave the audience before their wave don’t receive it.

See how your readers split across time zones

After a local-time send, the newsletter’s report has a Sent by time zone card. It lists each time zone with the number of readers in it and the local time they were sent to, and notes how many readers and waves the send had. Readers with no known time zone are shown as sent at your channel’s time. The figures take a moment to work out, so the card first shows that it is still working on it.

Send now, for breaking news

When a story can’t wait for your next scheduled slot, choose Send Now instead of picking a date and time, and your newsletter goes out right away — usually within a minute or two. It still carries the day’s promotions even though you never set a send date.

After you press Send Now, you stay right where you are: the screen shows a simple Sending state instead of a clock time, and Pause and edit stays one click away for the brief window while the send can still be pulled back. Once it’s too late to stop, the button disappears on its own and the screen moves to the newsletter’s report by itself — no reload needed.

A few things to know:

• Send Now only appears when the edition is ready to go — if the email is still finishing building, it stays unavailable until it’s done.
• A/B test newsletters keep their own separate send flow and aren’t sent this way.

Schedule and Send Now in one button

If your account has early access to the updated scheduling bar, Schedule and Send Now share a single button at the top of the preview-and-schedule step. Click Schedule itself to schedule your edition for the date and time you’ve set, or click the arrow beside it, choose Send Now, then confirm, to send right away. Both work exactly as described above. With early access, the bar at the top of the composer also no longer shows a step counter, at any step.

For an A/B test newsletter, the button shows Schedule on its own, with no arrow.

Prefer to have it done for you? Penpal can draft an edition or revise its subject and preview text for you in conversation — see how Penpal works.