Newsletter templates

Pro plugin feature. Templates give your daily edition a structured layout instead of the plain-prose default — a dated masthead, a sensory opener, a feature article with subhead, named sub-sections with eyebrow labels, a referral prompt, and a styled footer.

Where to find it

One Two Three Send → Templates. Menu entry only appears once the pro plugin is active.

Newsroom — the shipped template

Editorial daily-edition format inspired by the Love Netherlands / Picardi master format. The structure, top to bottom:

1. Dated masthead — today’s date and your brand name, centred above a thin rule.
2. Italic opener — “Dear [audience],” followed by 2–3 sensory sentences setting today’s mood. Serif font (Georgia / Iowan Old Style). Rotates each issue — never the same opener twice in a row.
3. Feature article — large headline, italic one-sentence subhead/dek, 2–4 paragraphs of body, a “Read the full story” call-to-action.
4. Three named sub-sections — each with an uppercase eyebrow label (e.g. TACTIC, READER QUESTION, FROM THE ARCHIVE), a sentence-case heading, 60–100 words of body, a verb-led CTA.
5. Referral prompt — “Know someone who would like this?” forward CTA in a cream-coloured callout.
6. Footer — site name, unsubscribe link.

Style

• Headings sans-serif, navy, 800 weight, slight negative letter-spacing.
• Eyebrow labels uppercase, light grey, 1.5px letter-spacing, 700 weight, with a thin top rule.
• Italic body uses Georgia / Iowan Old Style, 17–18px, line-height 1.7.
• Brand accent colours: navy #1a2744, orange #FF6B1A, cream #fff4eb, link blue #1a6ac2.

Travel — daily-edition format

Travel is the second shipped template, designed for travel / culture / regional newsletters running a daily-edition format. Original layout — dated masthead, italic opener, sponsor callout, table-of-contents, themed sections, around-the-web links, cultural close, cross-promo widget, footer. Original markup and CSS; does not reproduce any specific newsletter publishing platform’s email code.

• Brand colour — defaults to a deep green appropriate for the original Love Ireland use case. Override via the otts_pro_travel_brand_color filter.
• Sections — masthead (dated), opener (italic, 60–80 words), feature article with subhead + CTA, three themed sub-sections (operator-configurable themes via spec), around-the-web links block, cultural close, cross-promo widget, footer.
• Best fit — places-and-stories newsletters that run daily or near-daily and have a strong sense of regional voice. Less appropriate for transactional / product-update newsletters where the Custom template is better.

Custom templates and pipelines

The Custom template is the operator-defined alternative to Newsroom and Travel. Available under One Two Three Send → Templates → Custom, it lets you specify section structure, brand voice, audience adjectives, sponsor blocks, and pipeline flags directly via a YAML-like spec.

Three generation pipelines

Custom templates can opt into one of three generation pipelines via spec flags:

• Legacy / free-form (default) — single Claude call returns the full HTML body, image search keywords are inferred from the prose. Lowest cost, lowest determinism. Works for newsletters that don’t reuse heavy structure across issues.
• Structured generation (use_structured_generation: true in the template spec) — Claude returns structured JSON with per-section body_html + an image_search block that Claude itself writes for each section. The image picker uses those keywords verbatim, so “asparagus from the intro” can’t leak into the canal section. A Haiku-vision Judge pass spot-checks the assembled HTML and triggers surgical regeneration of any section that fails (regenerate_image, regenerate_section, edit_h1, remove_section). Best for travel / culture / regional newsletters where image-prose mismatches embarrass the brand.
• Curated pipeline (use_curated_pipeline: true) — zero AI calls in the body path. Today’s feature is whatever recent blog post hasn’t been featured in the last few days. The opener / food / venue rotate through per-brand libraries. The result is deterministic, repeatable, and never duplicates because the source is bounded site content, not Claude’s priors. Mirrors the proven Python script used to ship Love Netherlands’ daily edition. Best when you want consistent voice and zero per-issue Claude spend at the cost of less prose flexibility.

The legacy free-form path remains the default for back-compat. Switching to structured or curated is a one-line edit in the template spec; the plugin transparently dispatches to the right pipeline at generate time.

When to pick which

• You want creative-feeling prose, can tolerate occasional image mismatches: legacy / free-form (default).
• You want creative prose AND consistent image-section matching: structured generation. Adds one Sonnet + one Haiku call per send (a few cents per newsletter).
• You’re producing a daily edition where consistency matters more than novelty, and you want zero per-issue AI spend: curated pipeline. Free per-send.

Generating with a template

1. One Two Three Send → Templates.
2. Pick a template (Newsroom is the only one shipped — your custom templates appear here too).
3. Set tone, length, optional topic / focus.
4. Click Generate with template. Claude is called with the template’s structured prompt; the response is parsed into Subject + body.
5. Draft opens in the editor like any other newsletter. Subject line is set, body contains the full structured HTML, sub-section CTAs have placeholder # hrefs for you to fill in.

Per-newsletter template selection

The chosen template is stored in _otts_template post meta. The free plugin’s One Two Three Send → Add New page still produces plain (unstyled) drafts; only drafts created from Templates carry the template marker.

Send-time rendering

The HTML body in post_content uses semantic class names (otts-opener, otts-feature-title, otts-eyebrow, otts-cta etc.). At send time, the pro plugin hooks otts_render_for_subscriber at priority 5 and wraps the body in the template’s styled email shell — masthead, brand-coloured CSS, footer. Plain-template (or no-template) newsletters use the free plugin’s default shell.

Editing template drafts

Drafts open in the standard WordPress visual editor. The HTML structure is visible — eyebrow headings, sub-section bodies, CTA links — and you can edit text, swap CTAs, reorder paragraphs. Avoid stripping the class attributes on tags (otts-opener, otts-eyebrow, etc.) because the send-time renderer keys off them. If you remove a class, the affected element falls back to default styling.

Voice rules baked into the prompt

• British English throughout
• No emoji
• No “ultimate / epic / must-read / game-changer / unleash”
• No “in this issue” boilerplate
• Vary the opener every issue — Claude is told never to start two issues the same way
• Sub-section CTAs are verb-led (“Read more”, “See the breakdown”, “Try it yourself”)

To override these rules for your own brand, write a custom template (next section) or extend the directive via your Site Context manual description.

Adding custom templates (developers)

Subclass OTTS_Pro_Template_Base and call OTTS_Pro_Templates::register() at plugins_loaded. Implement four methods:

• slug() — unique key, e.g. digest
• label() — human-readable name shown in the dropdown
• description() — one-paragraph explanation
• build_prompt( array $args ) — return the full Claude prompt for your template structure
• render_email( string $content_html, WP_Post $post, array $subscriber ) — wrap the stored HTML in your styled email shell

Once registered, your template appears in One Two Three Send → Templates and works the same way as Newsroom.

Next: AI Agents.

Plugin screenshots