How to send a teaser email

If you have a paid newsletter, you might want to send a "teaser" version of the email to your free subscribers.

A teaser email displays an abbreviated section of a newsletter email to free subscribers, with a prompt to subscribe to continue reading. This can encourage free subscribers to upgrade to a paid subscription.

Here's how to send a teaser email:

1. Navigate to the "Emails" page of your Buttondown account and start a new email draft.
2. Insert an empty line at the point in your email where you'd like to hide the remainder of the text.
3. Type /paywall and press Enter.
4. Everything below the paywall block will only be visible to Premium subscribers. Regular subscribers will see only the text above the paywall, followed by a link to pay for a subscription.
5. Send the email to a Public audience. This way, the email will be sent to both paid and unpaid subscribers—but the different types of subscribers will see different content.

If you're coming from a platform like Buy Me a Coffee or Ko-fi, you may be familiar with the concept of a "tip jar", which is a way to collect donations from your readers without gating access to your writing.

You can do the same for your newsletter by using the "Pay what you want" pricing model. This model allows you to set a minimum price for your newsletter (if you want), and subscribers can pay any amount they want on either a recurring or one-time basis.

To set up a tip jar for your newsletter, you'll get started by setting up a paid newsletter.