Newsletters
You can create, customize, and send newsletters to leads and candidates within Ashby. If someone signs up for a talent pool, applies for a role, or attends a virtual or in-person event, you can send out updates and information on future roles.
Prerequisites:
- To configure a domain, you need access to manage the DNS records of the domain you're configuring. For guidance, see Email Domain SetupEmail Domain Setup.
Permissions & access
Newsletters are available on the Enterprise plan only.
Foundations | Legacy Plus | Plus | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
- Users with Elevated Access and above can access and edit newsletters.
- Users can only send newsletters to candidates considered for the jobs they have Can email/schedule candidates permissions for.
Overview
The video below gives a short overview. All steps in this video are covered in more detail in this guide.
Creating a newsletter
- Navigate to Sourcing > Newsletters.
- Click New.
- Give your newsletter a title.
The newsletter editor then opens.
Newsletter editor
Page overview
- Audience: Review candidates who have received your newsletter and track metrics like opens and clicks.
- Edit: The editing page for your newsletter.
- Desktop/Mobile view: Click between the views to see what your newsletter looks like on a desktop and on a mobile device.
- Review + Send: Once your newsletter contents, your audience, subject line, and sender are determined, you can send out your newsletter from here.
- Settings: Amend your newsletter title, add filters to create your audience, and add your subject and sender for your newsletter email here.
- More: Create a copy of your newsletter, or archive it.
- Content: Drag and drop blocks to add content to your newsletter.
- Rows: Click and drag row structures for your content.
- Settings (Newsletter Content): Set content-specific settings like the default font and background color here.
Adding content to your newsletter
When building your newsletter, you can drag row structures over from the Rows tab to create your structure. Once you have rows in place, you can drag your content blocks over to start adding in text, videos, images, and more.
When dragging and dropping a row into your newsletter, drag it to the very bottom of the previous row or between two rows. A Drag it here message appears before you drop it. If you drag and drop a row without seeing the Drag it here message, Ashby does not add the row.
Once you've added a new row, the spaces to drop content blocks in appear. Click the Contents tab to access your content options, then click and drag the blocks as needed.
Click the Save button to save your newsletter as you make edits.
Content block options
- Title: Add a heading to your newsletter or titles throughout.
- Paragraph: Add text in a paragraph format.
- List: Add text in a list format.
- Image: Add an image.
- Button: Add a button. The button can send users to a web page, prompt them to send an email, make a call, or send an SMS. Ashby tracks clicks using buttons you add to your newsletter.
- Divider: Divide content with a single line.
- Spacer: Add space between content blocks.
- Social: Add icons that link to social pages. You can amend the icons and URLs as needed in the content properties tab.
- HTML: Add your own code to one of these blocks. Adding your own code can affect how the code renders.
- Video: Add a Vimeo or YouTube video link to generate a preview image in your newsletter. This image then links to the video in question.
- Icons: Configure and add any company-specific icons you'd like to use in newsletters.
- Menu: Configure a menu with options that can link out to a website or prompt the user to complete actions like sending an email, sending an SMS, or making a call.
- Text: A text block with no specific structure.
Substitution tokens cannot be used in newsletters.
Previewing a newsletter
Once you've added content and saved your newsletter, preview it by clicking Actions, then Preview.
On the preview screen, you can view how the newsletter looks to candidates, both on a desktop and a mobile device. To exit the preview screen, click the X icon.
Clicking YouTube and Instagram social links in a newsletter preview leads to an error. These links function correctly when the email is officially sent.
Content settings
The Settings tab in the editor allows you to make adjustments to how the content is displayed in your newsletter. You have the following options:
- Content Area Width: Determine how wide the area the content is contained in should be.
- Content Area Alignment: Determine whether you'd like content to be left or center-aligned.
- Background Color: Determine the background color of the newsletter.
- Content Area Background Color: Determine the background color of the area content is contained in.
- Default Font: Select the font that should be used by default in your newsletter.
- Link Color: Confirm the color that hyperlinked text shows in.
You can also add a preheader in the Optional Properties section.
Settings and adding an audience
Once you've added your newsletter content and structure, you can set up your audience, or determine the candidates and leads that should receive this newsletter.
To start setting up your audience, click the Settings button above the editor.
You see the following options:
- Title: Adjust your newsletter's title.
- Audience: Add filters here to determine the candidates that you would like to send this newsletter to. Ashby automatically excludes candidates who have already unsubscribed or are marked as Do not contact.
- From: Determine the sender of the email from the drop-down.
- Subject: Add in the email subject here.
- Include unsubscribe link: Newsletters are required to include an unsubscribe link, so you cannot uncheck this box.
If you send your newsletter from an email that doesn't have an inbox that's regularly monitored, you can set a custom reply-to address here by unchecking the Use this email as the newsletter's reply-to address checkbox. The reply-to address added receives replies to the newsletter instead.
The Unsubscribe link appears in the bottom-left corner of your newsletter.
Using filters to create your audience
To set up your audience, click Add Field To Match and add in filters as needed. In this example, the filters search for leads and candidates that have been added to a specific project (for more on projects, see ProjectsProjects).
Once you have filtered for your audience, click View Audience to see the full list of leads and candidates and confirm this is the correct audience for your newsletter.
Sending your newsletter
To start the process of sending out your newsletter to your audience, click Review and Send. From here, you can review your settings and view the newsletter contents and your audience one more time.
If you need to make any adjustments to the settings or the content, click Cancel to return to the editor. To ship out your newsletter, click Send Newsletter.
If you are sending out your newsletter to a large audience, Ashby sends the emails over a longer period of time. You can track the send status for each candidate on the Audience tab for your newsletter once the sending process has started.
If your organization's bounce rate for newsletter emails becomes too high, Ashby may disable your ability to send newsletters. To maintain a healthy email sending reputation and ensure continued delivery of your newsletters, keep your bounce rate low by only sending newsletters to candidates that have actively signed up to receive newsletters from your organization.
To build a list of newsletter subscribers, we recommend using Sourcing FormsSourcing Forms.
Tracking open rates and click rates
You can track the size of your newsletter audience, how many emails have been sent, and your open and click rates for your newsletter on the Audience tab of your newsletter. You can add filters or search by specific candidate name as needed.
You can also use the Audience tab to track the status of each candidate's email when sending out newsletters.
To track clicks, add a link or button to your newsletter.
Looking to build up an audience? Check out our guide on Sourcing FormsSourcing Forms.