Write a post, send a test to yourself, then publish it. Publishing emails it to your subscribers.
The Newsletter panel
Open a post in the block editor. In the post sidebar, find the Newsletter panel. It holds:
- Send as email when published: the switch.
- Topic: which of the post’s categories it goes out under.
- Send test to me and Preview email.
The switch works once you finish Connect Resend. Until then, it stays off and the line under it says what is missing.
Send a test to yourself
- Click Send test to me. It goes to your own wp-admin email address, with your unsaved changes. The subject starts with [Test].
- Click Preview email to open the email in a new tab.
After a test, the panel says “Sent to [email protected].” with a See it at Resend ↗ link. If Resend can’t send yet, you see its error in red instead.
The Send as email switch
On a new post (Posts → Add New Post), the switch starts on once your site can send. Turn it off to publish without an email.
It starts off everywhere else: drafts from before LetterWP could send, and posts made in the Classic Editor, by an import or with WP-CLI. Nothing is emailed by surprise.
The switch stays off and greyed out until the site can send. The line under it names the one thing to fix, with a link:
- “Connect Resend to send posts as email.”
- “Set the newsletter email address first.”
- “yourdomain.com is not ready to send yet.”
- “Run Setup once, so posts have a list to go to.”
Private posts and password-protected posts are never emailed.
Pick a topic
Each email goes out under one topic: one of the post’s categories. With one category, the panel says “Topic: News. Readers who turned it off won’t get it.” With more than one, pick it in the Topic dropdown. If you don’t pick, LetterWP uses the post’s first category by name.
Publish
- Click Publish. The publish check (“Are you ready to publish?”) shows a Newsletter panel, already open.
- Read its title. “Newsletter: email 120 readers” means it will be emailed. “Newsletter: not emailed” means it won’t.
- Check the line “Goes to 120 readers who get News. An email can’t be unsent.” and the From address under it. You can still turn Send as email off here.
- Click Publish again.
The count is your active subscribers, minus those who turned this topic off. Scheduling works the same way: the check shows before Schedule, and the post is emailed when it goes live.
After sending
The Newsletter panel replaces the switch with what happened:
- “Sending…” while Resend takes it.
- “Sent to 120 readers on” the date and time, with See it at Resend ↗.
- Results as they come in, such as “94% delivered · 1 bounced”, with a Results link. In the first minutes it says “Waiting for Resend…”
- “Not sent.” with the reason and a Try again button, if it failed. See Troubleshooting.
A post is never emailed twice. Editing a published post, or unpublishing it and publishing it again, doesn’t send it again. The only way to send again is Try again after a failure.
Email an older post
A post published without an email can still get one, once.
- Open the post. The panel says “Published without an email.”
- If it has more than one category, pick the Topic.
- Click Email this post….
- The box says who gets it, and that it goes out once. Click Email N readers.
Email results
On Posts, the Email column shows each emailed post, such as “18 sent” and “94% delivered · 1 bounced”. Click it, or Email results under the post title, to see:
- Numbers for Recipients, Delivered, Bounced, Marked as spam and Unsubscribed. Bounce and spam rates turn red above Resend’s limits of 4% and 0.08%.
- For admins, the Recipients list with each reader’s Result, and a search.
Delivered means the reader’s mail server accepted the email. It can’t tell the inbox from the spam folder. LetterWP doesn’t track opens or clicks.
LetterWP → Overview also lists your Latest newsletters, with status, how many readers each went to, and when.
How the email looks
Set fonts, colours, logo, which post details show, and the footer once, in LetterWP → Email Design. The live preview uses a real post, with Desktop and Mobile tabs.
Let readers subscribe
Add the Subscribe block to any page, post or template. It has a heading, a line of text, an email field, a button and small print. In classic themes and page builders, use the shortcode:
[letterwp_subscribe]It takes optional heading, text, note and button attributes, for example [letterwp_subscribe heading="Get new posts by email" button="Subscribe"].
New readers get a “Confirm your subscription” email from your transactional address. They show as Pending until they open the link. Then they are Active, signed in, and land on your account page, where they can pick their topics. Every newsletter has a one-click Unsubscribe link in its footer.