Newspack Newsletters - Newspack Publisher Support

Newspack Newsletters allow you to create and send email newsletters directly from Newspack to your ActiveCampaign, Constant Contact, or Mailchimp, without leaving the platform.

Installing the plugin

If “Newsletters” doesn’t appear in the left navigation on the back end, install and activate the plugin.

Go to Plugins.
Find Newspack Newletters listed in the plugins to install under Newspack.

Select Install, then search for it again and Activate.

If you’re not using Newspack, download the Newspack Newsletters plugin, upload it to your WordPress site, and then Activate it.

Adding API keys

Once the plugin is activated, add the API keys for your email service provider. Newspack Newsletters supports Active Campaign, Constant Contact, Mailchimp, or a “manual” provider, which allows you to copy the email code for use with any other provider.

Add your API keys by following these steps:

Go to Newsletters > Settings.
Select your service provider:

Fill in only the information relevant to the provider you selected.
- Active Campaign: Enter an API URL and key. Find more details here.
- Constant Contact: Enter a Constant Contact API key and API secret. Follow these instructions to obtain them here.
  - In the Redirect URI settings, add the following URLs to authorize your site’s API connection: https://<your-site-url> and https://<your-site-url>/wp-admin/index.php?cc_oauth2=1
  - After saving your API credentials and redirect URIs, save the credentials on your site’s Newsletters Settings page and click the button to Authorize the application.
- Mailchimp: Enter a Mailchimp API key. To get this, log into your existing Mailchimp account or sign up for a new one, and select the Generate Mailchimp API link below the text field. You can learn more about Mailchimp API keys here.

Select Save Settings.

Now you’re ready to create newsletters. To access these settings again, go to Newsletters > Settings to make changes.

Newspack Newsletters comes with nine example layouts to use as a starting point for your newsletters. You can use these layouts, edit them, or start with a blank slate to create your own.

Using layouts

When creating your first newsletter, you will be prompted to choose from existing layouts or start with a blank editor:

Go to Newsletters > All Newsletters > Add New Newsletter.

Each layout includes instructional filler content and will use the logo set under Customizer > Site Identity for the newsletter header.
Select the layout you would like to start with and click Use Selected Layout to begin editing your newsletter. (You can’t just double-click on the layout.)
Alternatively, if you want to create your own layout, select Blank Newsletter.

Once you make your selection, you will be taken to the editor of your newsletter.

Adding layouts

You can create custom layouts for future newsletters. These can be based on existing layouts or created from scratch:

Just like when creating a new newsletter, go to Newsletters > All Newsletters > Add New Newsletter.
Pick the layout you would like to start with or select Blank Newsletter.
Make changes in the editor.
To save, make sure you’re in the Newsletter tab of the settings column.

Scroll down to the Layout panel and click Save New Layout.

Give your layout a descriptive name in the prompt that follows:

The next time you create a new newsletter under Newsletters > All Newsletters > Add New Newsletter, the default view will be Saved Layouts, and your custom layouts will be available:

Editing layouts

Once you have added your own custom layouts, you can also edit them.

Go to Newsletters > Add New.
From the layouts screen, pick the layout you would like to edit from the Saved Layouts tab and click Use Selected Layout.
Make changes in the editor.
To update the layout, make sure you’re in the Newsletter tab of the settings column.
Scroll down to the Layout panel and click Update Layout.

Your changes will overwrite the original layout. If you would like to keep the old layout, click Save New Layout instead.

Resetting layouts

After making changes in the editor, you can roll back to your original selected layout by following these steps:

To reset, make sure you’re in the Newsletter tab of the settings column. Note: All of your changes from that session will be lost.
In the Layouts panel, click Reset Layout.

If you’re using Mailchimp, it will automatically include a footer on the sent newsletter with information about you and links to unsubscribe or forward the email.

This information is required by anti-spam laws, and MailChimp’s Terms of Use.

You can create your own footer in the newsletter editor, and as long as you include Mailchimp’s required content, it will replace the footer Mailchimp adds. Below is an example with all of the required links—the placeholders like *|EMAIL|*, *|ABOUT_LIST|*, and *|LIST:ADDRESSLINE|* will be automatically populated by information in your Mailchimp account:

This email was sent to <a href="mailto:*|EMAIL|*">*|EMAIL|*</a>.
<a href="http://*|ABOUT_LIST|*">Why did I get this email?</a>
<a href="http://*|UNSUB|*">Unsubscribe from this list</a>
<a href="*|UPDATE_PROFILE|*">Update subscription preferences</a></p>
<p>*|LIST:ADDRESSLINE|*</p>

You can learn more about Mailchimp’s email footers here.

Building newsletters

Getting started

To create a new newsletter:

Go to Newsletters > All Newsletters > Add New Newsletter.
Pick a layout to start with, or begin fresh by selecting Blank Newsletter.

When editing a newsletter, you will have a few more options than you usually would when editing a Page or a Post. These are divided between the Settings menu and Styles menu (accessed by selecting the icon in the top right corner).

Settings

You’ll have the option to make your newsletter a public page on your site when you send it. If you choose to do so, many panels in the Settings column will be useful and will be noted. If you choose not to, you can ignore those panels.

From the top of the Settings column.

Under the Summary panel:

Visibility: Choices are public, private, or password-protected.
Publish: Default is Immediately. Click “Immediately” to schedule.
- Note: Newsletters can only contain posts that are published on the site when the newsletter is created. Nothing published between the creation date and scheduled publishing date will appear.
URL: Clicking on the blue URL will let you change the last part of the URL, which defaults to your newsletter’s subject line.
Pending Review: Optional for internal workflow.
Move to Trash: Self-explanatory.

Under the Authors panel:

If you choose to make the newsletter a public page, this will appear there.

Under the Ads Settings panel:

Covered in depth at this help page.

Under the Excerpt panel:

This will appear only if you choose to make your newsletter a public page, and then only if it’s included in a Homepage Posts block with the Excerpt turned on.

Under the Newsletter panel:

Campaign Name: Only seen by you internally in your email service provider.
Subject: The email subject line for your newsletter. By default, it will be the date you started composing your newsletter.
Preview Text: The text that will appear in your recipient’s inbox, usually longer than the Subject.
Folder: For internal organization in your email service provider.
From: The name and email the newsletter should appear to be from in a recipient’s inbox. The name can be anything. The email must be associated with your website. Generally, publishers use a generic email such as info@yourgroovydomain.com.
- Important note for Mailchimp and Constant Contact users: You must click Update Sender after filling out the two fields under From, or you’ll be unable to send later.
Send To: Displays the available mailing lists or audiences you have set up in your current email service provider.
- If you have the lists or audiences further segmented, another dropdown will appear.
Public newsletter: If toggled on, this will add the newsletter as a published page on your site when you send it, using a URL format such as https://newspack.com/newsletters/[newsletter-slug].
- You can change the last part of the URL under the Summary panel at the top of the settings; otherwise, it will default to your newsletter’s subject. Public newsletters will also appear in post category and tag archives if you assign any categories or tags to the newsletter.

Under the Testing panel:

Send a test to: A text field for one or more comma-separated email addresses to receive a test email. Use this field to ensure your email displays as expected before sending it to a larger audience. Select Send Test to send the preview.

Under the Layout panel (more details here):

Save New Layout: Save your current editor changes as a new layout. Learn more.
Update Layout: Only available when you’ve started with one of your custom layouts; saves changes to a layout you’ve already saved. Learn more.

Under the Revisions panel:

Takes you to a two-column page of HTML, showing what was changed each time you hit Save Draft. At the top left of that page, there’s a Go to Editor button that will bring you back.

Under the Categories and Tags panels:

This panel comes into play for advertising, with details at this help page.
If you make your newsletter a public Page, it will appear in the archive page of the selected Category or Tag.

Under the Advertiser panel:

Covered in depth at this help page.

Under the Featured Image panel:

If you choose to make your newsletter a public Page, this will be the Featured Image shown in a Homepage Posts block, if images are turned on. It can be set to Hidden so it doesn’t also appear on the page.

Styles

You can access these panels by selecting the icon in the top-right corner.

Under the Typography panel, you will have the ability to change the Headings and Body fonts in your newsletter to a different web-safe font.

Under the Color panel, you can change the background and text color of your entire email, either by using a color picker, or manually entering a hexadecimal value.

Under the Custom CSS panel you can access an advanced feature which lets you enter CSS that will be appended to the newsletter template. This way, you can provide custom styles or overwrite default template styles, if necessary.

Any custom CSS you enter here will apply only to emails sent via your selected email service provider. The editor preview will update to show custom CSS to help with composing the styles, but because of the wide variation between email clients, it’s not guaranteed that your styles will render the same way in the sent email. We recommend sending test emails often if using custom CSS.
If you want to apply custom styles to newsletters when viewed as a public post on your site, we recommend using the Customizer to do so. This is because theme styles can differ substantially from newsletter styles.

Available blocks

Newspack Newsletters supports several blocks and their configurations, but there are some limitations to make sure the blocks display as expected in different email clients. The following blocks and block options are available:

Paragraph
Heading
List
Quote
Image (without the left and right alignment)
Buttons
Columns (can nest one level of blocks inside)
Group (can nest one level of blocks inside)
Separator
Spacer
Social Icons (with icon support for Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Tumblr, Twitter, X, and WordPress).
Embed — modified to display email compatible content. The fully-featured embed is preserved to be displayed on a published newsletter viewed on the web.
Share — Inserts a link to the newsletter’s public post (if published as a post) for easy content sharing.
And the Post Inserter block — an email-friendly version of the Content Loop block available in Newspack. The Post Inserter block lets you add posts to your newsletters; once they’re inserted they turn into regular header and paragraph blocks, so you can edit the post titles and excerpts to target them to your newsletter audience.

Dynamic Content

Message personalization

ESPs usually accept wildcards in the message to allow you to personalize the message to the recipient.

These merge tags, or personalization fields, work out of the box without the need of any additional setup.

For example, just type Hello *|FNAME|* (for Mailchimp) or Hello %FULLNAME% (for Active Campaign) and these strings will get replaced with the recipient’s name.

Any other dynamic content should also work out of the box, like Message variables, for example.

Email or web blocks

If you are writing a newsletter that is going to be made public on the web, you can change a block visibility to be displayed for the email version or the web version only.

With the “Make newsletter page public?” option toggled on, you’ll be able to edit through the block toolbar or sidebar its “Visibility options”.

If a block is set to be visible only to a specific version of the newsletter, you should see a notice surrounding the block.

Conditional tags

ESPs also support conditional tags. This allows you to make a block visible depending on the recipient’s profile data.

To use conditional tags, select the block you want to add the condition to and add the conditions on the sidebar.

Each ESP will have a different syntax to define the condition. The sidebar will display inline examples and link to the docs in your active ESP site.

Tip: If you want to apply a condition to multiple blocks at the same time, use a Group block.

Sending newsletters

Once you are finished editing and testing your newsletter, you will need to configure the target audience and sender information.

Choosing audiences

The way you select the audience of your newsletter varies, depending on the email service provider you are using.

ActiveCampaign

Use the autocomplete input in the Send To area to select the List that should receive the email. Once the list is selected, a new input will appear, where you can optionally select one specific Segment.

Note: ActiveCampaign has strict limits on the ways a single email campaign can be edited and sent. For that reason, email campaigns are generated in the email service provider dashboard only when sending them. So it’s not possible to save a draft in Newspack Newsletters and edit it further in the ActiveCampaign dashboard.

Additionally, the Newsletters plugin cannot automatically create an ActiveCampaign segment on the basis of a Subscription List tag created in WordPress admin. To send email to these lists, you need to first manually create a segment.

Constant Contact

Use the autocomplete input in the Send To area to select the List or Segment that should receive the email.

Mailchimp

Use the autocomplete input in the Send To area to select the Audience that should receive the email. Once the audience is selected, a new input will appear, where you can optionally select a specific Group, Segment, or Tag.

Note: Mailchimp does not support Advanced Segments to be used in automations and external integrations, so they will not be available here.

Sending your email

Once everything is set, you can select the Send button at upper right in the editor to send the newsletter to your selected mailing list.

If you have chosen to make your newsletter a public Page, your newsletter also will be saved on your site when you send. It will always be available under Newsletters, too.

Sending newsletters manually

If you selected the “manual” provider, you’ll be prompted to copy your HTML code to paste on your email service provider. Once you’ve successfully sent your newsletter, select “Mark as sent” to keep track of your published newsletters.

Managing subscription lists

Subscription lists are the lists to which readers can subscribe. When you enter your email service provider’s credentials in your settings, Newspack Newsletters pulls all of the lists you have set up into Subscription Lists. (In Mailchimp, these are called “Audiences.”)

You will be able to manage your Subscriptions Lists under Newsletters > Settings.

There, you can enable and disable each list that is pulled in from your email service provider, as well as optionally add a different name and description for those lists on your site.

The lists you enable will be available to use in the Newsletter Subscription Form block.

The Newsletter Subscription Form block can be added to any post or page. This block works with every email service provider that’s integrated with Newspack.

In the block’s settings, in the Subscription Lists section, you should see toggles for any lists that have been pulled into Newsletters and enabled.

On the front end of the site, readers will see checkboxes to select lists you have enabled, allowing them to choose which of your email lists to join. Once a reader signs up for one or more Subscription Lists, they will be added to your email service provider under the corresponding Lists or Audiences.

Note: You can use as many Newsletter Subscription Form blocks on your site as you need. Each one can be configured to offer different Subscription Lists to readers.

Creating additional subscription lists

If you are using Constant Contact or Mailchimp, you can create additional lists that will be tied to Tags in your email service provider. This means you don’t need to have a full List or Audience in your email service provider to correspond to a Subscription List.

Note: For ActiveCampaign, you must segment your audience at the ActiveCampaign interface, and it will be synced to Newspack.

Under Newsletters > Settings, scroll down to Subscription Lists section. To create a Subscription List, select the “Add New” button.

Give your list a name in the “Add title” field and a short description in the Description field. In the “Provider settings” meta box, use the drop-down to select the Audience (in Mailchimp) or List (in other email service providers) that you want to segment.

To use your Subscription List, be sure to select the Publish button to make it live on the site.

Once the Subscription List is live, you will be able to see it listed in the Subscription Lists settings at Newsletters > Settings.

You can check or toggle on the Subscription Lists you want to use to enable them. Once you do, be sure to save your updates by selecting the Save Subscription Lists button.

Subscription Lists created this way will appear in each list with wording to distinguish them (e.g., “Mailchimp Group under the Newspack Newsletters category”). An Edit link is also provided for each to update its settings directly.

When you edit an already published Subscription List, you’ll see wording in the “Provider settings” that clarifies how the list functions.

Screenshot of Provider settings meta box on a published Subscription List, indicating its use

Beyond these differences, Subscription Lists you create work exactly the same way as the other lists that are automatically pulled in from your email service provider.

ESP-specific considerations

Each email service provider treats lists/audiences, segments, and tags differently. These are some of the most notable differences.

ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp: After creating a local Subscription List, you will only be able to see the corresponding tag in the ESP dashboard if there’s at least one contact added to it.

Constant Contact: For these ESPs, you may send to either a List or a Segment. These sending options are mutually exclusive in those ESPs.

Mailchimp: You must select an Audience to send to before you’re able to select a group, segment, or tag. In Mailchimp, groups, segments, and tags are tied to a specific audience.

Links inside newsletter content authored in the Newspack Newsletters editor will automatically get certain UTM parameters appended. This can be helpful for analytics purposes. All links in newsletter content will have the following parameters appended:

utm_campaign – Matches the value of the Campaign Name field (but URL-encoded)
utm_source – The ID of the top-level send list or audience the newsletter is being sent to (but URL-encoded).
utm_medium=email – This will always have the value email.

Note that the connected ESP or other third-party integrations may overwrite some or all of these parameters with its own. For example, if using Mailchimp with the Google Analytics extension, the GA extension will set its own utm_campaign and utm_source values, overwriting our defaults.

Newspack Newsletters let you create and manage ads that are automatically injected in your emails. See this Help page for full details.