Updates from August
Streamlining the publishing workflow
For a while there, the New Email window was a tad cluttered. But no longer! We removed the Tags, Audience, and Scheduling buttons from the bottom of the screen and moved everything into a handy review pane that appears after clicking Send:
It just didn’t feel right throwing all of the writing and sending options onto your same screen and asking you to sort it out. Now, you’ll write, then configure, and finally send. It’s like a newsletter assembly line.
We don’t like changing big things for no reason, and this is a big change. It also feels like a correct change, but we’re always happy to hear your thoughts. If you have any questions about it (or want to tell us what you think), hit reply!
Send to more specific audiences
There’s so much useful info stored in your subscriber lists. Tags to remind you of a subscriber’s attributes, whether or not they’re a paid subscriber, and how much they pay each month. And now, with the Custom option under the Audience selector, you can combine as much of that data as you want to write for highly targeted groups.
Now you can stack as many conditions as you want, including negatives. Want to send to every subscriber who isn’t tagged as a reactivated subscriber and isn’t on your free tier? Go for it!
More audience filtering options and filtering for automations are both in the pipeline. Keep an eye out on our Changelog to be the first to know when they’re ready.
From the blog
This month’s articles were (unofficially) to our software developer users. I wrote about how to send a Buttondown newsletter from terminal, if that’s the type of thing you’re into. I also included a bit about skipping terminal altogether and adding Buttondown code directly to your project.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned “building in public,” it’s that there’s always more to do than I realized. Especially when it comes to email. So I went ahead and rounded up a list of every email your company needs to send, with scrappy startups in mind, specifically.
Although I did build a changelog page for the Buttondown site, I still love the idea of starting off with just a basic changelog newsletter. With newsletter archives turned on, you’ve got a low-lift published history of everything you’ve added, removed, or fixed.
Other stuff
Need to get really in the weeds with your newsletter design and templates? Turn on naked mode to edit the underlying HTML and CSS.
Twitter (X?) loyalists, rejoice! You can now automatically post newsletters to Twitter with our newest integration.
Speaking of integrations, Buttondown has two new Zapier triggers: When a subscriber upgrades to paid, and when a subscriber churns from a paid plan.
On the list management front, we recently added the ability to filter and browse subscribers based on when you imported them from another source.
Tell your friends and family! Buttondown’s interactive no-signup-required demo site just went live. It has all the functionality of the platform, and none of the marketing headlines. You can’t send emails, but you can do almost everything else to get the feel for sending newsletters before jumping in and starting your own list.