Newsletters
Write once, send to thousands.
Creating a newsletter
From your publication page, click New Newsletter. Give it a title—this becomes the email subject line. Newsletters auto-save as drafts until you send them.
The editor
Everything is a block: paragraphs, headings, images, quotes. Type / on an empty line to see the slash menu:
Hover over any block to drag it around or access the menu for duplicating and deleting.
For text formatting, select some text and a toolbar appears. Or use keyboard shortcuts: Cmd+B for bold, Cmd+I for italic, Cmd+K to add a link.
Media embeds
Paste a YouTube, Spotify, TikTok, or Apple Music URL and it automatically converts to a rich embed with a thumbnail preview.
Click an embed to access the toolbar where you can:
- Align — left, center, or right
- Resize — drag the handles on either side
- Add a caption — click below the thumbnail to add or edit
- Convert to link — turn the embed back into a plain URL
- Open in new tab — view the original content
Captions auto-populate from the video or track title, but you can edit them to say whatever you want.
In emails, embeds display as clickable thumbnails with a play button overlay. Clicking takes the reader to the original content on YouTube, Spotify, etc.
Personalization
Make your emails more personal with placeholders that auto-fill with subscriber data:
{{first_name}}— subscriber's first name{{last_name}}— subscriber's last name{{email}}— subscriber's email address
Just type the placeholder directly in your content. When you send, each subscriber sees their own info. If a subscriber doesn't have a name on file, the placeholder is replaced with an empty string.
Web-only & email-only content
Sometimes you want different content for email subscribers vs. web readers. Click the grip handle on any block and choose:
- Web only — appears on your public page but not in emails
- Email only — appears in emails but not on your public page
- Show everywhere — default, appears in both
Blocks with visibility set show a colored bar on the left edge: blue for web-only, amber for email-only.
Use this for things like "Subscribe to get more content like this" CTAs (web only) or exclusive subscriber notes (email only).
Templates
If you've set up a template, select it from the dropdown in the editor. Your content gets wrapped in the template's header and footer when you preview or send.
Sending
Go to the Delivery tab. Your newsletter will be sent to all active subscribers of your publication. You can filter by tags if you want to target a subset.
Set your from name and email (if you have a custom domain, you can send from that). Then either send immediately or schedule for later.
Always send a test email to yourself first.
Send without publishing
When sending, you can choose between Publish article (appears on your public site) or Send only (email-only, not visible on your site). Use "Send only" for subscriber-exclusive content or announcements you don't want publicly visible.
Scheduling
Instead of sending immediately, pick a date and time. Scheduled newsletters show a small clock icon next to their title—hover over it to see when it's set to send.
To unschedule a newsletter, open it and go to the Delivery tab. You'll see a banner like this:
Click Unschedule to return the newsletter to draft status so you can edit or reschedule it.
Version history
The editor auto-saves as you write. Click the History icon in the toolbar to see previous versions and restore one if needed.
Publishing to the web
Sent newsletters are automatically published to your public homepage where anyone can read them. If you want to hide a newsletter from your public page, click Unpublish in the newsletter settings.
You can also edit and republish a sent newsletter. This updates the web version only—the emails already in people's inboxes stay as they were. Useful for fixing typos or updating links after sending.
Replies
Subscribers can reply directly to your newsletters. By default, replies go straight to your email address (the one you use to log in to Joyful).
Your email appears in the Reply-To header of every newsletter you send, so when a subscriber hits reply, it opens a new email addressed to you.
Reply tracking
If you'd rather keep your personal email private, enable Reply Tracking in Publication Settings → Email. When enabled, your newsletters use a proxy reply address instead of showing your real email.
Replies still reach you—they're forwarded to your actual email address. You'll see who sent it and can reply directly to continue the conversation.
Monthly limits
Reply forwarding has monthly limits based on your plan:
- Free — 100 forwarded replies per month
- Pro — 1,000 forwarded replies per month
- Team — 4,000 forwarded replies per month
Replies that exceed your limit are still recorded but not forwarded.
Custom CSS
Pro / Team
Add custom CSS to style your newsletters beyond the default formatting. Click the CSS button in the editor toolbar to open the CSS editor.
Your CSS applies to both the email version and the public web page. Target the .newsletter-content class to scope your styles:
.newsletter-content {
font-family: Georgia, serif;
line-height: 1.8;
}
.newsletter-content h1 {
color: #1a365d;
}
.newsletter-content blockquote {
border-left-color: #3182ce;
}CSS is sanitized for security—dangerous patterns like javascript: URLs and expression() are blocked.
You can also set CSS on templates so all newsletters using that template share the same styles.