Send your first newsletter

This article walks you through everything you need to do before your newsletter goes out for the first time. If you've already set up your account (Setting up your account), you're ready to start here.

1. Open your newsletter

Go to Messaging in the top nav and click into your newsletter. You'll see the newsletter edit view with eight tabs across the top.

The eight tabs:

Identity — name and description
Email — subject line, template, sender info
Audience — who receives the newsletter
Content — filters, article counts, sections
Schedule — frequency, day, time, cutoff
Forms — sign-up forms, embed widgets, unsubscribe page
Notifications — your personal email notifications
Tools — view in browser, top articles RSS feed, languages

We'll walk through what to set on each before your first send.

2. Identity

Set the Name (this is internal, what you and your team see in the dashboard) and Description (also internal, for your team's reference). Your subscribers don't see these.

3. Email — subject, template, and sender

This tab consolidates the three things most newsletters need to look right.

Subject & Preview:

Section for Subject — pick which section's article supplies your subject line (not required if using Custom subject)
Date Format — choose how the date appears in the subject
Subject Line Source — pick one:
Selected Article — the top article in your chosen section
Featured Article — your featured article from the content pool
Custom — write your own
Preview Text — the snippet that shows next to the subject in inboxes

You can also click any merge tag chip to insert dynamic values into the subject.

Template: Click Change to pick a layout for your newsletter. The currently published layout has a badge so you can see which one is live.

Sender Information:

From Name — who the email appears to come from
From Email — the address shown in inboxes. To use your own domain, authenticate it first in Settings → Domain Authentication.

By default, sender info inherits from your organization. You can override it here per newsletter if you send for multiple brands.

4. Audience

Choose who receives this newsletter.

Include Lists — lists of contacts to send to
Exclude Lists — lists to suppress (e.g., customers who shouldn't get a marketing newsletter). Not required, but if a contact appears on both an Include List and an Exclude List, the Exclude wins and they won't receive the send.
Subscription Type — pick the subscription type and how it behaves (e.g., "Opt-out — send unless the subscriber has opted out")
Segments — optional, for advanced filtering

The Audience Summary at the bottom shows how many contacts your settings will reach.

5. Content

Decide what shows up in the newsletter.

Filters — keyword filters per topic (Whitelist for must-include terms, Blacklist for must-exclude)
Article Counts — minimum and maximum articles per newsletter, and max per source
Sections — if your newsletter is divided into sections (e.g., "Industry News," "Inspiration," "Events"), define them here

⚠️ Important: If you don't have enough articles to meet the Min count, the newsletter won't generate and your send will fail. Make sure you have content in your content pool before your send time.

6. Schedule

Set when your newsletter sends.

Frequency — Weekly, Biweekly, or Monthly
Days — which day(s) of the week
Delivery Time — what time of day
Timezone — defaults to your org timezone
Cutoff Offset — how many hours before send rasa.io stops automatically pulling new content from your sources. Defaults to about 4 hours. You can still manually add content after the cutoff until the newsletter generates.

The Next Send panel shows your automation status. You can Turn Off Automation if you need to pause sends temporarily.

Want to send manually? You can trigger a one-off send directly from the calendar page on your landing page — click any future date to schedule a custom issue without changing your regular schedule.

7. Send a test

Before going live, send a test email to yourself. This lets you preview exactly what subscribers will see.

⚠️ Important: To generate a preview or send a test, your newsletter must have a list attached in the Audience tab. The preview tool asks you to select a contact to view the email as — without a list, it can't generate a preview and will return an error.

⚠️ The preview also won't generate if your Article Counts minimums aren't met. Make sure you have enough articles in your content pool first.

See Sending test emails and previewing for details.

8. Confirm everything and let it send

Once everything looks right, no action is needed — your newsletter will send automatically at the scheduled time.

⚠️ Heads up: There's a 1-hour newsletter generating window before your scheduled send time. During this window, the newsletter is locked while it's being assembled and you can't make any changes. Plan to have all your edits done well before this window opens.

If you want to walk through every detail one more time before your first send, see First send checklist.

What happens next

After your newsletter sends, you can see results in Analytics. Each send is recorded in your sending calendar (click the rasa.io logo to go to the landing page) so you can scroll back through past issues.

Welcome — you're sending!