Each newsletter post can be emailed to its subscribers once, after it's published. The email carries the post's content, with a link to the full post for anything email can't show. You decide when it goes out: publishing a post never sends it by itself.
Who can do this
- Only owners and admins can send. Staff and viewers can click Send and see how many subscribers it would reach, but Send now shows them "You don’t have permission to send newsletters."
- The email goes to everyone with active access to the newsletter whose email preferences allow marketing email from you. People who unsubscribed from your emails, and people whose access was removed, are left out.
Send a post
- Publish the post, and make sure the newsletter itself is published (Publish newsletter on the Posts tab). While the newsletter is a draft, Send stays off and the toolbar says "Publish the newsletter to send": readers who followed a link in the email couldn't open the post.
- In the post editor, click Send. It's available only when the post is Live and hasn't been sent.
- The toolbar asks "Email this post to 3 subscribers now? This cannot be undone." with your real number. If the post has blocks that can't appear in email, it also says subscribers get a link to the full post instead.
- Click Send now, or Cancel to stop.
- The emails go out in the background. The toolbar counts them, "Sending… 120 of 2,400", and when it's finished shows "Sent to 2,400 of 2,400 subscribers" (with your numbers) and a Sent badge. You can leave the page while it sends.
Big lists take a few minutes. Send stays off while a send is running, so it can't be started twice.
What the email looks like
- The subject is the post's Email subject, or its title when that's left blank. The title is the heading at the top, and the Preview text, if you set one, is the line inboxes show after the subject.
- The content is your published post. Blocks that can't appear in email are replaced by a Read the full post link to the post in the member area.
- The footer says "You're receiving this because you subscribed." with an Unsubscribe link, and many email apps also show their own unsubscribe button. Unsubscribing stops all your marketing email to that person, not just this newsletter.
- It's sent from your own sending domain if you've verified one. See Sending domains and deliverability.
What happens next
- On the Posts tab, the post's row shows how many emails went out, out of how many subscribers, and the date, for example "3/3 on Oct 1".
- That number counts emails handed over for sending, not emails delivered. Addresses we've stopped emailing (for example after a hard bounce or a spam complaint) are skipped and not counted as sent, and so is every address while your sending domain is paused. If your sending domain is paused, sort that out before you send: the send can't be repeated.
- Each post can be sent once. Once it has finished, the post is marked as sent and Send stays off. Unpublishing the post and publishing it again doesn't make it sendable again.
- If some emails couldn't be delivered (the email service refused them), the toolbar says "3 couldn't be delivered" with a Retry 3 failed button (with your number). Click it, then Retry now: those people get one more try, in the background. Each failed email is retried once. People who unsubscribed or lost access since are left out, and so is anyone who joined after the send.
- If a send stops partway, for example in an outage, the toolbar says "The send didn't finish" and the button becomes Send again. Sending again retries the emails that failed, then reaches the rest of your subscribers. Nobody who already got it gets it twice.
- People who get access later don't receive earlier posts by email; they read them in the archive.
Common errors
- "No subscribers yet — sending now would reach no one. The post stays sendable for later.": nobody with access receives your marketing email yet. Nothing is used up; send later.
- "Publish the post before sending.": click Publish first.
- "Publish the newsletter before sending (Publish newsletter, on its Posts page) — subscribers can’t open posts from an unpublished newsletter.": the newsletter itself is still a draft. Go to its Posts tab, click Publish newsletter, then send.
- "Could not check the newsletter.": try again in a moment.
- "Nothing to retry — every email went out, or was already retried once.": each failed email gets one retry; there are none left to try.
- "Could not start the retry — please try again." or "Could not count the failed emails.": nothing was sent. Try again in a moment.
- "This post has already been sent.": each post can be sent once.
- "This post is already being sent.": a send is running. Wait for it to finish.
- "Could not start the send — please try again.": the send didn't start and nothing went out. Try again in a moment.
- "Nothing to send — the post has no published content.": publish the post again, then send.
- "Could not count subscribers." or "Could not resolve subscribers.": try again in a moment.
- "You don’t have permission to send newsletters.": only owners and admins can send. If you're the owner and see this, check whether your free trial has ended.
- Send is greyed out: the post isn't live (the button's tooltip says "Publish first"), the newsletter itself isn't published ("Publish the newsletter to send"), or it was already sent ("Already sent").