How to create a Newsletter site with Notion and Super

Are you looking for a marketing tool with full control over your content? Why not launch a newsletter? Build yours with Notion and Super and get it published fast.

Why you need a newsletter

Email newsletters are a direct way for creators and businesses to engage with their audience. Think of it as a personal conversation with your audience without the noise and limitations of other platforms.

Newsletters are the way to go if you want full control over your content. Whether you’re someone who enjoys writing, a creator, or a business owner, newsletters offer:

Direct relationship with your audience
A path to monetization and sales
Freedom to share content that interests you
Full editorial and creative control
Option to scale your newsletter

Overview of how to create a newsletter site

If you’re looking for a straightforward process to set up a newsletter, you can follow the steps below:

Create a Newsletter page in Notion
Add Notion databases to organise and publish your content
Sync the newsletter page to your Super site
Add newsletter email signup links on your Super site

Set up your newsletter master database

The best way to set up a newsletter is to use one Notion master database to store all your content and add different linked database views to design your newsletter site.

Start from scratch by following our instructions or duplicate our free Narrative template, which already has databases set up and are ready to use. (Learn more about Notion databases here)

First, create a Notion page where you will store your newsletter by pressing the Add a page button (+) in your Notion sidebar and giving the page a title, like “My Newsletter”
Click on the more icon (three dots) on the top right of your Notion page and toggle Full width for more space for your newsletter
Add any introduction text, images, or embedded content your readers will see when they click on your newsletter
Under your introduction content, type /toggle and select Toggle list
Inside the toggle, type /page to create a new subpage to store your master database and title it “Newsletters”
From the suggested templates, click on the Table database

Under Select data source, click on New database
Add your first entry to the database and give it a title, like "Newsletter One” (you can change this later)
Add any content to your first entry or leave it blank while you set up your newsletter. You can populate the new page with any content — it can be a simple text entry, images, videos, and other Notion blocks (different headings, bulleted lists, quotes, links, embeds, and more)
In the Tags section, add your first newsletter tag (you can add more than one and update them later). Add tags based on a topic or type of content, for example, "Guides” or “Featured”

⚡

To save time, you can set up a newsletter template with content you want to include in every newsletter. For example, the author's information, links, resources, and anything else.

Press the dropdown button (🔽) next to New on the top right of your database and select New template. Add any content you want to repeat.

The next time you start a new newsletter entry, select the template in the database dropdown menu or apply it by opening the newsletter entry page and selecting the template.

Hide your master database

One advantage of using Super for your website is that you can hide your master databases and only display the content you want to show using database views. This gives you the flexibility to create different views to help people easily find the content they are looking for.

You can hide your master database by making it a subpage of the homepage you have connected to your Super site, adding it to a toggle on the page, and then adding a custom code snippet (you will need a paid Super site subscription) or the Super Theme Designer to hide the page.

Hide using brown toggles

Create a ► toggle list block in Notion (type /togglelist) and move your page(-s) inside
Set the whole toggle block to have a brown background color — click on the “hidden” toggle, and under Color, select Brown background
Add a custom code snippet below by heading into your Super site dashboard, clicking on Code, and pasting the snippet below in the CSS section

.notion-toggle.bg-brown { 
  display: none !important; 
}

Learn more…

Super will hide any brown Notion blocks on your site using this custom code snippet.

Hide using the Super theme builder:

Drag the master database page outside the toggle and delete the empty toggle
Head into your Super site dashboard
Click Design
Press either Create a new theme (if you don't have a theme set up yet) or Edit this theme if you already use one
Head into Layout
Under Notion page links, press Hide

Note this option will hide all Notion page links on your site.

Add linked database views

Design your newsletter site for a professional look using different linked database views.

For a classic setup, add one large database view for all posts and a compact one for a select few, like featured or top posts.

Go back to your "My Newsletter site" page, and under your introduction content, type /linked and select Linked view of database
Under Select data source, click on your "Newsletters" master database
Hover over the Table section on your database and click Rename. Give the current database view a title like "All" or "All posts"

Click on the more icon (three dots), and under Layout, change it to Gallery

Gallery view displays a cover image alongside each post. By default, Notion shows a blank cover photo. To finish setting up cover photos:

Click on the more icon (three dots) of your database view, and under Card preview, select Page cover
Open one of your newsletter posts
Hover over the top section (above the post title) and click on Add cover, and after Notion has loaded a random image, click on Change cover in the same top section
You can now select a cover image by linking an image file URL, choosing one from Unsplash gallery, or uploading your own

Add a linked database view with a filter

In the second linked database view, you can show specific posts using a filter:

Under the first linked database view, create another one (type /linked and select Linked view of database)
Under Select data source, click on the “Newsletters” master database
Go to Filter, select filter by Tags, and tick one (or more) of your newsletter tags to feature in this database view
Hover over the Table section on your database and click Rename. Give this database view a title like "Top posts” or “Featured”
Click on the more icon (three dots), and under Layout, change it to List for a compact view

Organize your database views

For an easy overview of your newsletter, you can drag and drop your database views alongside each other using columns:

Type /column anywhere on your newsletter site and select 2 columns
Now you can drag each linked database view in its own column
Use the vertical column separator and drag it to either side — you can drag it to make the Gallery database view bigger

Add headings for your database views

To finish setting up your newsletter page, you can add titles above each database view using headings:

First, click the more icon (three dots) next to a database title and select Hide database title — repeat this for both database views you dragged into the columns
Above the databases, add a title by typing /H1 or /H2 and name it, for example, "All newsletters"
Click and drag your title into the first column above the database view
Repeat the steps above for the second database view by giving a title, like "Top posts" or "Featured”

Publish and sync the newsletter to your Super site

You have two ways of publishing and syncing your newsletter content to your Super website: setting up an additional database filter or using the manual publishing feature, only available to Pro site users.

Add a filter to show only finished posts

To make sure your newsletter site only shows publish-ready content, you can set up an additional database filter or checkbox. Doing so will only show posts that meet all filters, like a particular tag and a ticked checkbox:

In your master database, click to add a new property (plus sign)
Select Checkbox for a simple checkbox you tick when your newsletter post is ready for publication
Click on the Checkbox property in your database to rename it as “Published” (or leave the default title)

To add the new filter to your linked database views:

Navigate to any linked database views on your newsletter site
Click on Add filter
Select Checkbox and click on Checked
Repeat the process for all linked database views on your newsletter site

Each linked database view will now only display posts that fit the criteria of all added filters. When your drafted content is ready for publication, you need to add the correct tags (or any other properties you use for filtering posts in each linked database view) and tick the checkbox.

Enable page properties and Database views

To show properties like the author’s name, the published date, and allow users to see the different views of your posts, you need to enable page properties and database views:

Head into your Super site dashboard and click on Options
Enable Page Properties and Database views

You can add a custom code snippet if you want a more polished look for your property views (when readers click to filter particular categories or topics). Follow our simple guide here. Note for custom code, you will need a paid Super subscription.

Add newsletter signup links on your Super site

The final step is to add a newsletter signup link on your website to encourage people to subscribe. Use form builders, like Tally, to embed a newsletter signup form on your Notion page and collect subscriber data:

Create your form from scratch or use a template (like this one)
Copy and paste the generated URL on your Notion page and drag the size of the block to best fit your site

If you want a pre-built newsletter landing page to go with your Tally form, Notion has a free template you can duplicate and customize for your site. Don’t forget to replace the signup form in the template with yours.

To add a newsletter signup link as a button in your Navbar:

Head to Navbar in your Super site dashboard
Press Add a new link or add a Call to Action Notion button by pasting the URL to your newsletter subscription form

Similarly, to add a link in your Footer: