Ghost is a CMS that has a built-in email newsletter feature. When you want to publish content in Ghost, you have three options: publish it as a blog post, send it as an email newsletter, and publish it as a blog post and an email newsletter. New to Ghost? This post will show you how to send an email newsletter in Ghost.

If you have no Ghost blog yet and want to create one, you can read our previous article to learn how to create a blog with Ghost.

A crucial thing to note. Ghost uses the email delivery service from Mailgun. If your blog is hosted on Ghost.org, you don’t need to set up the Mailgun integration yourself. If you install Ghost on your own server, you need to set up the Mailgun integration yourself (Mailgun is a paid service, by the way).

Sending Email Newsletter in Ghost

As said above, you need to set up the Mailgun integration before being able to send an email newsletter in Ghost (if your blog is not hosted on Ghost.org). Also, you need to make sure the email newsletter feature is enabled. To check it, you can login to your Ghost dashboard and click the gear icon to open the Settings scree. On the Settings screen, click the Email newsletter menu.

On the Email newsletter screen, make sure the Enable newsletter sending option is enabled.

From the Email newsletter screen, you can also design the look of your newsletters. Also, you can set the member types that can access the newsletters, set the email address of the newsletter sender, and enable the tracking feature.

Designing the Newsletters

To design the look of your newsletters, you can click the Customize design button.

Clicking the button will open a window where you can set things like newsletter header, footer, enable/disable featured image, and so on.

Once you are done making the settings, you can click the Save and close button to apply the changes.

Setting the Default Newsletter Recipients

There are three user types in Ghost: regular users/non-members (those who don’t sign up), free members, and paid members. You can set which user type to be default recipient of your newsletters.

To set the default newsletter recipient, select the user type from the dropdown on the Default newsletter recipients section.

Setting Sender Email Address and Enabling the Tracking Code

By default, Ghost set the email address of the newsletter sender to noreply@yourdomain.com. If you want to use a different email address, you can click the Expand button on the Email address option.

While to enable the email tracking feature, you can simply enable the Enable newsletter open-rate option.

The newsletter open-rate is displayed on the stats section on the main dashboard of Ghost.

Start Sending Newsletter

Once everything is ready, you can start to send a newsletter in Ghost. You can use the Ghost editor to write the newsletter. Click the plus icon on the Posts menu on the Ghost dashboard to open the editor.

Give your newsletter a title and write the content. Once done writing the content, you can click Publish on the upper-right corner of your screen. To send the content as a newsletter only, you can click the dropdown and select send.

By default, Ghost will send the email right away once you click the Send button. If you want to schedule it instead, you can set the sending schedule on the Schedule it for later option. Click the Send button to send/schedule the newsletter.

Before sending the email, you can also preview it first. Simply click Preview on the top bar. On the appearing window, click the envelope icon to preview the newsletter.

Adding Newsletter-Only Content to a Blog Post

Ghost gives you options whether you want to publish the content as a blog post or newsletter (or both). On a certain occasion, you might want to publish the content as a blog post and newsletter but want to add a piece of content that is only visible on email.

Ghost allows you to add a piece of content that is only visible on email. To do so, add a new card by clicking the plus icon and select Email content.

Once the card is added, you can add the content you want to be visible only on email.

The Bottom Line

Email newsletter is one of the default features in Ghost CMS. With the feature, you can send newsletters to your members, be it free members or paid members. Ghost itself uses the email delivery service from Mailgun. If your Ghost blog is not hosted on Ghost.org, you need to set up the Mailgun integration yourself in order to make the email newsletter work, unless you use a managed Ghost hosting service like Gloat or Midnight.