Newsletters let you design and send branded email campaigns to the people connected to your space. You build the email visually from a set of content blocks, choose who should receive it, preview how it will look, and send. This article covers the editor, every block type, audience selection, header and branding options, previewing, unsubscribes, and the send process.
Who can use newsletters
Newsletters are an admin tool. Access requires the workspace management permission, so only workspace owners and admins can see the Newsletters area, create drafts, edit them, and send. Members, guests, and other roles do not have access. See Roles and permissions for how these roles work.
Everything you do with newsletters is scoped to your current workspace. Drafts, sent newsletters, audiences, and unsubscribes all belong to the workspace you are working in. If you operate more than one workspace, see Workspaces and locations.
Creating a newsletter
The Newsletters page lists every newsletter in the workspace, newest first, with its status, audience, subject, send date, and recipient count where applicable. Use New Newsletter to start one.
A new newsletter is created as a draft and pre-filled with smart defaults pulled from your workspace profile:
- The title and subject line default to the current month and year (for example, the subject becomes your company name followed by the month, year, and the word Newsletter).
- It starts with three blocks already in place: a header (using your company name and logo), an empty text block, and a footer (pre-filled with your company name, address, country, email, and website where those details exist in your workspace profile).
- The default audience is All Active Members.
These defaults come from your workspace branding details. Keeping your company name, logo, address, and contact info up to date in Branding and custom emails means new newsletters start out correctly branded.
From the list you can also duplicate any newsletter, which creates a fresh draft copy of its content and audience, and delete drafts. Deletion cannot be undone.
The block-based editor
Opening a draft takes you into a two-panel builder: a settings and blocks panel on the left, and a live preview on the right. The builder is designed for larger screens, so use a desktop or tablet rather than a phone.
At the top of the editor you set the basic campaign details:
- Title is the internal name shown in your newsletter list. It is not part of the email itself.
- Subject line is what recipients see in their inbox. A subject is required before you can send.
- Preview text is the short snippet many email clients show next to or under the subject line in the inbox. It is rendered as hidden preheader text inside the email.
- Audience selects who receives the newsletter, covered in detail below.
Below the settings you assemble the email body as a stack of blocks. Each block represents one section of the email. You can:
- Add a block with the Add Block menu. New blocks are appended to the end of the list.
- Reorder blocks by dragging them into a new position.
- Expand a block to edit its settings, then collapse it again.
- Duplicate a block to copy it directly below the original.
- Delete a block you no longer need.
Changes save automatically a short moment after you stop editing, and a Saving indicator appears while a save is in progress. You can also press Save at any time to save immediately. Only drafts can be edited. Once a newsletter has been sent, its content is locked and shown read-only.
Editing lock for shared workspaces
To prevent two admins from editing the same draft at once and overwriting each other, opening a draft acquires an editing lock. If someone else already has it open, you will see who is editing and can either go back or take over. Taking over moves the lock to you, and the other person is told their session was taken over and that unsaved changes may be lost. The lock refreshes automatically while you keep the editor open and is released when you leave, so an abandoned session frees up on its own after a short period.
Export and import layouts
The editor includes Export and Import actions. Export copies the current block layout to your clipboard as data. Import reads a layout back from your clipboard and replaces the current blocks with it. This is useful for reusing a design across newsletters or moving a layout between drafts.
Block types
Newsletters support nine block types. You can use each one as many times as you like and combine them in any order.
Header
The branding block at the top of your email. It holds a logo, a title, and an optional subtitle or tagline, with control over colors and layout. Header options are described in detail in the next section.
Text
A rich text area for your main content, edited with a formatting toolbar. It supports headings, paragraphs, bold, italic, underline, links, bulleted and numbered lists, and block quotes. This is where the body of your newsletter usually lives.
Image
A single image. You can upload an image (up to 10MB), add alt text, and optionally make the image a clickable link to a URL. You can set the width to full or contained, and choose an aspect ratio of auto, 1:1, 16:9, or 4:3.
Video
A YouTube video presented as a clickable thumbnail with a play button overlay, since email clients cannot play embedded video. Paste a YouTube link and the block generates the thumbnail automatically. Clicking it in the email opens the video on YouTube. Only YouTube links are supported.
Button
A call-to-action button. Set its label, the URL it links to, its background and text colors, and its alignment (left, center, or right).
Divider
A spacer or separator between sections. You can choose whether it shows a horizontal line, and when the line is shown, set it to span the full width or be padded within the content margins.
Event
A formatted card promoting one of your published events. Pick from your upcoming, published, active events and the block fills in the title, date and time, description, and image automatically. You can override the description with your own custom text and choose whether the event image sits on the left or right. The card links through to the event's public page. Events are managed in Events, and only currently upcoming published events are available to choose.
Social links
A row of links to your social profiles. Add as many as you like, choosing from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok, and provide the URL for each. Links without a URL are skipped.
Footer
The closing block, typically your company name, address, and contact details. New newsletters pre-fill this from your workspace profile, and you can edit the text freely.
Header and branding options
The header block gives you the most branding control. Its settings include:
- Layout, which arranges the logo and title. Options are title on the left with logo on the right, logo on the left with title on the right, a centered stacked layout, and a two-logo co-branded layout.
- Logo upload. In the centered and two-logo layouts you can add a second logo as well, useful for partner or sponsor co-branding.
- Title and an optional subtitle shown beneath it.
- Background color and text color, each chosen with a color picker or by entering a value.
- Logo size, adjustable with a slider between 16 and 120 pixels tall.
Logos and images you upload are stored against your workspace. Beyond the header and footer, the overall email frame is a clean, centered, white card on a light background, sized for good display in email clients and on mobile.
Audiences
The audience controls who receives the newsletter. Deskie builds the recipient list from your workspace data at the moment you send. There are five audiences:
- All Active Members: members with an active profile in this workspace.
- All Past Visitors: anyone with an email address in your visitor log. See Visitors and check-in.
- All Past Tours: people who booked a tour, regardless of the tour's status, where an email is on record. See Tours.
- All Leads (Unconverted): lead records that have not yet been converted to a member. Leads in the lost or archived stages are deliberately excluded. See CRM pipeline.
- Disabled Members: members whose profile has been disabled in this workspace, useful for win-back outreach. See Pausing and disabling members.
As you pick an audience, the editor shows a one-line explanation and a live recipient count so you know how many people will be emailed. The list is automatically deduplicated by email address so the same person is not emailed twice, and recipients who have unsubscribed are removed from the member-based audiences (All Active Members and Disabled Members).
Preview
The right side of the editor shows a live preview that updates as you edit. You can switch the preview between desktop, tablet, and mobile widths to check how your layout reflows on different screens. The preview reflects the same rendering used for the actual email, so what you see closely matches what recipients receive. Clicking a block in the preview opens its editor on the left, and text, footer, and header titles can be edited inline directly in the preview.
Unsubscribe
Every newsletter that is sent includes an Unsubscribe from these emails link in the footer area. The link points to a public unsubscribe page on your workspace's address where the recipient enters their email to opt out. The page always confirms success without revealing whether an email or account exists, which protects your contacts' privacy.
When someone unsubscribes, their newsletter preference for your workspace is turned off. From then on they are filtered out of the member-based audiences, so subsequent newsletters skip them automatically. If the person is a member, the unsubscribe is also recorded on their member activity. Recipients are told they can re-subscribe at any time from their account settings. Newsletter opt-out is part of the broader notification preferences described in Notifications.
Sending
When your draft is ready, press Send. A confirmation dialog summarizes the subject, the chosen audience, and the number of recipients before you commit. The current draft is saved automatically just before sending.
A few rules govern sending:
- Only a draft can be sent. A newsletter that is already sending, sent, or failed cannot be sent again.
- A subject line is required.
- The audience must resolve to at least one recipient. If the selected audience is empty, the send is blocked.
During a send, the newsletter moves to a Sending status, which also prevents an accidental second send of the same newsletter. Emails go out in batches, and each recipient's outcome is logged. The newsletter is sent from your workspace's name, and where you have a company email on file it is used as the reply-to address so replies reach you.
When the send finishes, the newsletter is marked Sent and records who sent it, when, and how many recipients were successfully emailed. If no email could be delivered, it is marked Failed. After a newsletter has been sent it becomes read-only, and from the list you can open it to review its details. You can still duplicate a sent newsletter to reuse its design for a new draft.
Because newsletter delivery relies on your workspace's email configuration and sender details, make sure your branding and sending email are set up correctly first. See Branding and custom emails.