How to Upload an Email Template in Newsletter WordPress Plugin

How to Upload an Email Template in the Newsletter WordPress Plugin

In this guide, you'll learn how to bring a Postcards email template into the Newsletter plugin for WordPress. Since the Newsletter plugin doesn't connect to Postcards through a built-in integration, the process is a quick manual one: you'll export your template from Postcards and paste it into a Raw HTML theme inside the plugin.

We'll also cover how to add Newsletter tags (like the recipient's name and the unsubscribe link) so your emails are personalized and compliant. These are added inside Postcards before exporting.

Prerequisites

• A Postcards account
• A WordPress website with the Newsletter plugin installed and set up
• A finished email template in Postcards
• Optional: A text editor like VS Code, or Notepad to open the HTML file

Step 1: Add Newsletter tags inside Postcards

Newsletter tags are small placeholders that get swapped out with real information when an email is sent. So instead of every recipient seeing a generic "Hi there," they can see their own name, and your footer can include a working unsubscribe link unique to each subscriber.

Newsletter's tags are wrapped in curly braces and look like {name}    or {unsubscription_url}   . When a campaign goes out, the plugin replaces each tag with the matching value for that recipient. There are many tags available, first name, email address, profile fields, and more and you can see the full list in Newsletter's official documentation: https://www.thenewsletterplugin.com/documentation/newsletters/newsletter-tags/

For this guide we'll use two common ones: {name}    for personalizing the greeting, and {unsubscription_url}    for the unsubscribe link.

To add a tag in Postcards, open your template in the editor and click the text element where you want it to appear, or add a new text element if needed. Type or paste the tag exactly as written, including the curly braces. You can place it inline with regular text, for example: Hey {name}, thanks for subscribing!   

For the unsubscribe link, it's best to add {unsubscription_url}    as a hyperlink rather than plain text.

• Type the word "Unsubscribe" (or whatever text you'd like) in your footer, usually in the text element where your footer links live.
• Highlight that word and click the link icon in the text toolbar.

• In the URL field, paste {unsubscription_url}    and apply the link.

Now the word "Unsubscribe" is clickable, and when the email is sent, Newsletter turns it into the correct unsubscribe link for each recipient.

Once your tags are in place, you're ready to export the template.

Step 2: Export your template from Postcards

Once your template is ready in Postcards, you'll need its HTML code. There are two quick ways to get it:

• Copy email code: In the Postcards editor, click Export in the top right corner and select Copy Email Code. This copies the full HTML straight to your clipboard.

• Download as ZIP: Click Export > Download as ZIP, and make sure Host images/fonts online is toggled on.

• Extract the index.html file from the ZIP to a folder

• Open the index.html    file in your text editor, and copy the entire code.

Either method works. The Host images/fonts online option matters here, with it enabled, your images load from absolute URLs hosted by Postcards, so they'll display correctly in your emails without uploading anything to WordPress.

Step 3: Import the code into the Newsletter plugin

Now we'll create a new email in the Newsletter plugin and drop your Postcards code into it.

From your WordPress dashboard, find Newsletter in the left sidebar and click Newsletters in its submenu.

On the Newsletters page, click the Add new (Raw HTML) option, this gives you a blank code editor instead of a drag-and-drop layout, which is exactly what we need for a Postcards template.

You'll land on the Raw HTML editor. It opens with a small placeholder snippet already in the code box. Select all of that placeholder code and delete it.

Then paste in your Postcards HTML using whichever method you copied it with above.

At the top, fill in the email subject in the subject field. You can also click the eye icon next to it to quickly preview how your template renders in mobile or desktop.

You can click Add media if you ever need to insert WordPress-hosted images (not needed if you exported with Host images online enabled).

To check how the email looks in a real inbox, click Test, this sends a test copy so you can confirm everything displays correctly before going further.

From here you have two options:

• Click Save to store the template as a draft.

It'll be ready to use whenever you want to build a campaign from it. You can find your drafts anytime under Newsletter > Newsletters in the WordPress sidebar.

• Click Next to move into the campaign setup, where you can configure sending options, choosing which subscriber lists receive it, targeting by status or other criteria, adding Google Analytics UTM tracking, sending the campaign now or scheduling it for later and more options. Once you're done, click Save in the top left to store it in your drafts.

If you just want the template ready to go, Save is all you need. The campaign options under Next can wait until you're actually ready to send.

Here's what the finished email looks like once it lands in a real inbox:

And that's it, your Postcards design is now living inside the Newsletter plugin as a reusable Raw HTML template. Whenever you're ready to send a campaign, you can pull it up from your drafts, tweak the subject if needed, and send it off to your subscribers with the personalization tags filled in automatically.

What we covered

• How to add Newsletter tags (like {name}    and {unsubscription_url}   ) inside Postcards before exporting.
• How to export your Postcards template as HTML or copy the email code.
• How to create a Raw HTML email in the Newsletter plugin and paste in your Postcards code.