Newsletters are fast becoming one of the most popular ways for individuals and businesses to engage with their subscribers. By sending valuable, content-rich newsletters, you can create a brand that people want to engage with (as opposed to corporate-y, salesy emails).
Because Gmail is so widely used, you may want to consider using it for your newsletter. While it’s not the optimal tool for newsletter creators, it’s still certainly possible to do it.
Let’s talk through how to set up and send a Gmail newsletter.
How to Create & Send a Gmail Newsletter
Sending newsletters in Gmail isn’t as intuitive as using an email service provider (ESP) designed for it, but you can still get the job done—albeit with a few workarounds and limitations.
1. Choose a Template in Google Docs
Gmail itself doesn’t have any newsletter templates, nor does it allow you to design one. However, you can use Google Docs to create your newsletter and then copy + paste it into your email.
Step 1: Go to Google Drive, and click on New.
Step 2: Scroll down to Google Docs and then select From a template.
Step 3: Select the newsletter template you’d like to use.
Note that there are lots of templates and it can be hard to find what you’re looking for. Do a handy “Ctrl (or Command) + F” and search for “newsletters.”
Here’s an example of an available newsletter template:
2. Edit Your Template in Google Docs
At this point, go ahead and edit your newsletter within Google Docs. You could bring it over to Gmail to finish up the content, but Google Docs is better equipped for this.
When it comes to building your newsletter, there are five essential elements to include:
- Your header
- Introduction
- Content blocks
- Closing
- Subject line & preheader (you’ll set this up after importing to Gmail)
The step that trips up most newsletter creators is figuring out the meat of your newsletter. Here are a few content ideas to get you started:
- Industry news
- Polls & quizzes
- Your opinion on a trend
- Infographics
- Recommendations
- Advice
- Top 10 lists
There are plenty of other content ideas—in fact, we put together 58 of them.
Why Do We Have to Build the Newsletter in Google Docs?
One of the reasons Gmail isn’t ideal for sending newsletters is that there’s no way to write or paste in any HTML code.
Now, you might be thinking “I don’t know how to code…so does this matter?” The answer is yes! If you use an ESP, you can create your email in their builder, which codes the email for you.
Gmail has no HTML function, meaning no email builder or templates.
There are a few workarounds to try to get HTML-built newsletters, but they often don’t format correctly.
For example, you could build an email in your ESP, copy the code into Notepad (or TextEdit for Macs), save as a .html file, open in a browser, and then copy + paste what you see into Gmail. However, every time we tried this, it resulted in poor formatting in Gmail that couldn’t be edited.
3. Bring Your Template into Google Docs
At this point, you’ll just do a Ctrl + A and then a Ctrl + C to select and copy your document. Click Compose in Gmail, and then hit Ctrl + V to paste your newsletter.
It actually formats well, likely because we’re copying between Google properties. Here’s what that looks like:
4. Select Your Contacts
Now, you’re going to choose who you’re sending the email to. To mass-select your list, you’ll want to create a group of contacts that you can email to.
You’ll have to select and add your contacts to your group one by one, which isn’t ideal.
You’re also very limited with how many contacts you can send to. With a personal Gmail account, you can send to 500 contacts per day.
With a paid Google Workspace account, that limit increases to 2,000 per day (or 1,500, if you’re personalizing emails using the mail merge feature).
Either way, that’s a serious limitation. Even if you’re new, you’re certainly hoping to have more than 2k subscribers in a fairly short amount of time.
Mail Merge Feature
Mail merge allows you to personalize the email to each recipient by adding in a placeholder field that pulls in contact-specific information.
For example, you can start your email with “Hello @firstname” and your recipients will see “Hello John” or “Hello Susan” based on the information in your Google Contacts. If you message a person who’s not in your Google Contacts, the information entered in the “To” field will be used to populate the merge field.
In fact, you can even link a spreadsheet and have every column be a custom merge field, giving you great flexibility in customizing your emails!
To use mail merge, click on Use mail merge in the “To” line.
Mail merge is only available to users with Google Workspace plans.
5. Send Your Email
While Gmail lacks many advanced functionalities, you can at least schedule your email. This is handy if you want to build it in the evening but send it in the morning when more people are checking their email.
You’ll just click the down arrow next to Send and select the day/time you want it to go out:
Pros and Cons of Using Gmail Newsletters
When it comes to sending newsletters in Gmail, the cons outweigh the pros—but it still may be a viable option for your specific situation.
Pros
- Familiarity - You’re getting to use a tool that you might already have been using for more than a decade. That seems less scary than learning a new software.
- Add-ons - There are services (such as Mailmeteor or Streak) that plug right into your Gmail interface and turn it into a more powerful email and CRM software.
- Google Contacts - You can tap into your already-existing network of contacts.
- Clean follow-up - If a contact replies to an email, it’s going straight to your Gmail inbox.
Cons
- No tracking
- No A/B testing
- Difficult contact management
- No HTML (no email builder)
- Restrictive sending limits
- No segmenting your audience
- No deliverability help - Most email sending platforms auto-remove bounces and unsubscribes. They also usually let you know if your email is going to be marked as Spam by inbox providers.
How to Send Newsletters Without Gmail
With the incredible software available for sending newsletters, there’s really no reason to use Gmail for this. ESPs aren’t overly expensive and provide massive functionality upgrades.
For example, Letterhead was built specifically with newsletter creators in mind. With our plethora of templates, automated ad-fills, AI for content creation, and easy content aggregation, you can put together beautiful emails with little effort. You’ll get full reporting, A/B testing, and tools to scale to multiple newsletters.
Schedule a call today, and we’ll show you how Letterhead can help you start and scale your specific newsletter.
