Getting started with Smartletter

Smartletter is a newsletter tool. It collects email addresses on your website. Then it sends your issues to them.

It collects emails with a lead magnet: a free gift, like a PDF or a checklist, that people get in exchange for their address.

It can also draft issues with AI, send automatic sequences and send email from your own code.

When you sign up, Smartletter creates your workspace. A workspace holds your newsletters, contacts, team and settings.

A short setup then prepares your first newsletter:

1. Your site: paste your site URL. Smartletter reads it (about 30 seconds) to find your brand, your audience and your topics. It creates your newsletter from it.
2. Sending address: start with a Smartletter address (<slug>@mail.smartletter.ai), or use your own domain.
3. Template: pick one of three designs made for your site.
4. Goal: share content, or sell and convert.
5. Schedule: choose how often you send.
6. Lead magnet: pick one of three gift ideas, then choose how it shows on your site (iframe, popup, banner, exit intent).
7. Install on your site: paste the JS snippet in your pages, or connect the WordPress plugin. Then test it with your own email.

Contacts reach your list in three ways:

• Your lead magnet or signup form: each new person confirms their address by email first. This is called double opt-in.
• A CSV import: bring your list from beehiiv, Substack, Mailchimp, Kit, Ghost or a spreadsheet. See Import contacts.
• The API or MCP: add contacts from your own code. See API and MCP.

1. Open Newsletters and click New edition.
2. Write your subject and your content.
3. Click Send me a test. The test goes to your account's address, with [Test] before the subject. It counts toward your monthly quota.
4. Under Send to, choose who gets the issue.
5. Click Send now, or pick a date and click Schedule.
6. Read the last check, then click Confirm send.

Tests work on the Free plan. To send to your subscribers, you need a paid plan, from Starter.

More details in Write and send a campaign and Scheduling.

The sidebar on the left holds every part of the app:

• Dashboard: your main numbers at a glance.
• Sites: the websites where you collect emails.
• Lead magnets: your gifts and how well they convert.
• Newsletters: your issues, drafts and scheduled sends.
• Sequences: emails that send themselves, after a signup or an event. See Sequences.
• Inbox: the email your AI agents receive.
• Sources: RSS feeds, YouTube channels and Google News queries the AI uses as material.
• Media: your images and files.
• Audience: contacts, import, fields, filters and topics.
• Settings and Team: workspace, billing, domains, API keys and members.

The language picker sits at the bottom of the sidebar.