Sending an Email Newsletter
The following sections describe the process for sending an email to a list of contacts in HubSpot.
Create a new email
In your HubSpot account, go to the Marketing dropdown menu in the main navigation bar and select Email.
Click the Create email button in the upper right corner.
Select Regular email or Automated email from the dropdown menu and give your email a name.
Note: Regular emails will be used for sending one-time, scheduled emails, such as ministry newsletters. Automated emails will be used in workflows. This can be changed later if needed.
Click the Create button.
Choose a template
After creating a new email, you'll be taken to the email editor.
Click the Choose a template button on the right side of the screen.
Select the appropriate template for your Email, i.e. Via Families template.
Select Subscription type
Click the Settings button
Click Select Subscription Type
Choose or select subscription type, i.e., Via Families Updates
Customize your email
Edit the email content to fit your needs by clicking on any of the elements in the template.
Change the text, images, colors, and fonts to match your brand and content.
Use the personalization tokens to add personalized information, such as the recipient's name.
You can also set a default value in case a property is blank.
Segment your audience
Go to the Send or Schedule tab at the top of the email editor.
Choose the email list or segment you want to send your email to, i.e. All Marketing Contacts.
Note: If you are setting up an Automated email you can stop here. The email will only be sent out using system automation (workflows, etc.)
Schedule and send
Once you've customized your email and selected your audience, you can schedule the email to be sent at a specific time or send it immediately.
Go to the Settings tab at the top of the email editor.
Confirm the From name and From address are correct. HubSpot will default to your name and email so you may need to update it to a generic ministry name/email.
Go to the Send or schedule tab at the top
Select the date and time you want the email to be sent.
Preview the email and make any final changes if necessary.
Click the Send button.
How are contacts added to newsletter subscriptions?
Contacts are added to newsletters through automated workflows. If a contact is not correctly added to a newsletter through a workflow, please reach out to [email protected].
Change Email content after scheduling
To change the content of an email after you have scheduled it, but before it is due to go out:
Navigate to the desired email
Cancel the scheduled sending by:
Select the Actions dropdown in the top right of the email view
Choose the Cancel scheduled email option in the dropdown
OR
Select the Edit option in the top right of the email view
Select Cancel send in the top right of the edit view, then confirm the cancel by selecting Cancel scheduled email
Make desired edits
Reschedule the email to send
Lists
List are sets of contacts filtered by specific properties for easy organizational access
Contacts are added to lists either manually, automatically through their properties meeting the criteria for a given list, or annually for certain lists.
For more information on lists, see HubSpot Lists
Subscriptions
Subscriptions are essentially lists that contacts can be added to to show their consent to receive certain types of marketing emails. Adding a contact can generally only be done with consent. Consent to market is generally gathered through GDPR compliant text at the bottom of each form we have, stating that by submitting the form they give us consent to market to them.
Generally we have workflows trigger upon submitting these forms that add the contact to any appropriate subscriptions. For example, if they fill out a bootcamp registration form they get added to the Via Generosity Updates subscription type.
Marketing Contact
Marketing contacts are a specific type of contacts that we are allowed to send mass marketing communications to. Making a contact a marketing contact requires explicit consent from the contact to conform with GDPR requirements. We pay to have a certain amount of marketing contacts we can use.
Transactional Emails
Transactional emails are a type of email that can be sent to users regardless of email subscriptions or marketing contact status. To set an email as transactional, select transactional at the bottom of the subscription type dropdown in the email’s settings. This can only be used for emails that count as transactional according to GDPR, meaning that they contain information only about some transaction the user made, such as registering for a course or purchasing a resource.