A newsletter is one email sent to everyone on a list who has opted in. You write it once, 53° fills in each person's details, and the results show you who it reached.
Newsletters are part of the Orbit and Landing plans.
Everyone except guests can see newsletters and their results. To write, test, send or cancel one, you need to be an owner, admin or manager.
Before your first send, your organisation needs a verified domain to send from and a postal address. See Set up email addresses for the domain. The Postal address is under Branding in your organisation's settings.
On the Newsletters tab, type in the search box to find a newsletter by its name or subject. Use Sort to order them by when each was last changed or sent, or by name, and Filter to narrow them by status or list.
To act on several at once, tick them and choose Actions:
Duplicate copies each into a new draft, up to 20 at a time.
Delete removes the ones that reached nobody, after you choose it again to confirm. A newsletter that was sent is kept with its results.
Go to Marketing, then Newsletters, and choose New newsletter.
Give it a Name. This is for your own reference, and the people you send to don't see it.
To begin from a layout you've saved, choose it under Start from. Otherwise you start with a blank email.
Choose Create newsletter. The composer opens.
Add a Subject line. The count beneath it shows how long it is. Phones show about the first 60 characters.
Add Preview text if you'd like to choose the line a mail app shows after the subject. Without it, the app shows the start of your email.
Under Send to, choose a list. The line beneath says how many people it reaches now.
Write the email.
Everything saves by itself about a second after you stop typing. Saved appears beside the name when it has.
Type to write. Select text to make it bold or italic, change its alignment or add a link.
Type / on a new line to add a heading, a list, a quote, a button, a divider, a section or columns.
Choose Add image to upload a picture, or paste or drop one in. Pictures can be PNG, JPEG or WebP, up to 8 MB, and count towards your file storage.
Choose Preview to see the email as it will arrive. Switch between Desktop and Mobile, and Light and Dark. Mail apps darken emails in their own ways, so the dark preview is a guide.
A merge tag is a placeholder that's filled in for each person. Choose Insert merge tag and pick one:
Tag | Filled in with |
|---|---|
| Their first name |
| Their last name |
| Their full name |
| Their email address |
| The company they belong to |
| Your organisation's name |
Add a fallback after a bar for when the detail is missing: Hi {{first_name|there}} reads "Hi Sam" for Sam and "Hi there" for someone with no first name. Merge tags work in the subject line and preview text too. Proposals and replies in the inbox use the same tags: see Personalise proposals and emails with merge tags.
Under your email, 53° adds a footer you can see in the composer but can't edit or remove. It has three things:
Why the person is receiving the email.
Your organisation's name and postal address.
An Unsubscribe link.
Anti-spam laws ask for all three on marketing email, and mail services such as Gmail treat senders without them as spam. Keeping them there protects your emails' chances of arriving. See Unsubscribes and consent.
Choose Send test to me. The newsletter is sent to your own email address, with [Test] before the subject and the merge tags filled in from your own details. A test needs your sending domain to be set up, doesn't count in the results and doesn't use your email allowance. You can send a few in a row while you adjust things, up to 20 an hour.
Choose Send. A checklist shows what will happen:
whether your domain and postal address are ready, with a button to where each is fixed
how many people the newsletter goes to
how many marketing emails you have left this billing month, and what it costs if this send goes over
a note if opens and clicks won't be recorded
Choose Send now, or Schedule and pick a date and a time. Times are in your organisation's time zone. A scheduled send has to be at least 5 minutes away and no more than 90 days ahead.
Choose Send to … people or Schedule send.
Anything that would stop the send is marked on the checklist, and the button stays off until it's fixed.
A newsletter goes to the people on the list who can be emailed at the moment it sends. Someone who unsubscribes before then is left out. If two people share an email address, that address gets one copy.
Scheduled: open the newsletter and choose Cancel send. It goes back to a draft, so you can change it and send or schedule it again.
Sending: open it and choose Stop sending. Emails already sent can't be taken back. Nobody else receives it.
Paused: a send that paused part-way can be stopped for good the same way, from the newsletter's menu.
Once a newsletter has been sent, it can't be changed or deleted, so its results are kept. Choose Duplicate from its menu to start a new draft from it.
Open a sent newsletter to see its results:
Recipients: everyone it was sent to.
Delivered: emails the person's mail service accepted.
Opened and Clicked: people who opened it, and people who followed a link in it.
Bounced: emails that couldn't be delivered.
Marked as spam: people who reported it as spam.
Unsubscribed: people who unsubscribed from it.
Beneath the figures, Recipients lists each person with where their copy got to. Search by name or a whole email address, sort by name, email, status or when it was sent, opened or clicked, and filter by status, or by whether they opened or clicked, to find, say, everyone whose email bounced. To put people on one of your lists, tick them, choose Actions, then Add to list. What was sent shows the email itself.
Opens and clicks are only recorded while tracking is on for your sending domain. To turn it on, open your organisation's settings, go to Integrations, and switch on Track opens and clicks under your domain. With tracking off, those two figures read Not recorded. Opens are an estimate even with tracking on, because some mail apps load emails without anyone reading them.
Each person's page has an Email marketing tab listing the newsletters they were sent. Use Sort to turn it oldest first, and Filter to narrow it by status.
Your plan includes a number of marketing contacts and a number of marketing emails each billing month. Orbit includes 1,000 contacts and 8,000 emails. Landing includes 3,000 contacts and 30,000 emails.
Every newsletter sent to one person uses 1 email.
If a send needs more emails than you have left, it adds a block. A block is 1,000 more contacts and the emails that go with them: 8,000 on Orbit, 10,000 on Landing. The checklist tells you how many blocks a send adds, and what each costs, before you send.
During a trial you can't go over, so a send that's larger than what's left isn't sent.
If you've set a spend cap and a send would pass it, the send isn't sent until you raise or remove the cap.
See Plans and billing for prices and the spend cap.
An address that bounces or reports an email as spam is blocked from marketing email, to protect your sending. See Why a contact can't be emailed.
If too many emails from one send bounce or are marked as spam, sending pauses and the newsletter's page says why. Check where the list came from before you send to it again.
A send that pauses part-way (for example, at your spend cap) can be sent to the people who haven't had it yet, from the newsletter's page.
You can delete a draft, or a send you cancelled before any email went. A newsletter that reached anyone stays, with its results.
If a scheduled send can't go when its time comes (for example, your domain needs attention), it goes back among your drafts and the person who scheduled it is told.
