Newsletter tools

Permission scope: EVERYONE

Tell Alphie what you want to say and it writes the monthly mailout. “Open day on the 20th, bring a friend” comes back as a proper paragraph, laid out with headings, pictures and a button, saved as a draft broadcast in the usual place.

He never sends it. The draft sits in Scheduled Broadcasts exactly as one somebody typed by hand: open it, read it, change what you want, choose when it goes, press send. Alphie has no way to do that last part and cannot be talked into it.

Alphie asks for everything in one question rather than working through a list – what you want to cover, who it goes to, and the subject line – then shows you the running order and waits. A few minutes later the draft is there and you get an alert with a link to it.

Example questions and prompts

• Write me a newsletter for this month.
• Put together a mailout about the open day.
• I need to email everyone about the car park works.
• Draft something for our members about the new timetable.
• Send it to all members and the open day list.
• Add another bit about the new coach.
• Actually, drop the second one.
• Is that newsletter ready yet?

What a Ask Alphie newsletter contains

• A picture across the top, then a greeting using the reader’s first name.
• An opening paragraph, if you want one.
• Up to six topics, each a heading and a few sentences.
• A button on any topic that needs one, with the address you give it.
• A closing paragraph and a sign-off.
• Your contact details at the bottom, pulled from your gym’s own record.

Worth knowing

• It expands your words; it does not invent facts. Told “open day on the 20th” Alphie will write a warm invitation – and he will not add a start time, a venue, whether to book, or that there will be refreshments. If a paragraph reads oddly without a detail you have not given, it asks for it rather than filling the gap.
• The greeting works for members and enquirers alike. One tag covers both, so a mailout to a mixed audience is not a special case and nobody gets “Hi ,”.
• You choose the audience by name – All Members, or any of the gym’s own lists. Alphie writes those onto the draft, and the actual recipients are worked out when you press send, so somebody who joins in between is included. See groups and lists for what a list actually contains.
• Emailing enquirers needs a custom sending domain. Gyms without one can mail members but not leads, and Alphie says so plainly and offers to send to members instead rather than failing later.
• It is dated 24 hours ahead as a starting point, rounded to the quarter hour. That is a date on a draft, not a schedule – nothing is going anywhere until you send it.
• Six topics is the limit, and beyond that Alphie asks which six matter most or whether to split it in two. He never quietly drops any.
• Every photograph is a placeholder. They are stock images of a gym that is not yours, chosen to show what kind of picture belongs in each slot. You are expected to swap them for their own, and doing so is the main job left after Alphie has finished.
• Read the copy. It is a first draft. It is well written and it is not checked, and it is going to a lot of people.
• Outlook sometimes splits a long word across two lines with a hyphen. This is Outlook’s own typesetting, it affects every GymOS email rather than these, and two attempts to suppress it did not work.