How to Add a YouTube Video to Your Newsletter

The YouTube block showcases a video inside your newsletter with a clean thumbnail and optional play-button overlay — promoting video content while keeping your email lightweight, with no heavy embedded HTML.

Add the block

Open your newsletter in the composer, find the YouTube block in the blocks panel, and drag it where you want the video preview to appear.

Customize it

In the block settings panel:

• Source — paste the YouTube video URL; this is where readers go when they click the thumbnail.
• Thumbnail Image — upload a custom image or replicate the YouTube thumbnail look.
• Overlay Image with a Play Button — adds a play icon over the thumbnail; it makes the block feel interactive and increases click-through rates.
• Alt Text — a short description of the video for accessibility and for email clients that block images by default.
• Alignment — Left, Center, Right, or Full width (great for bold, visual layouts).

You can also style the block’s border and background — see How do I use the new design settings?

Drop in the block, add your link, choose a thumbnail, and you’re ready to go.

Show the video’s title

The block can also display the video’s title, so your readers see what they’re about to watch — and you don’t have to retype it.

Turn on Import Title from YouTube in the block settings. It’s off by default, and with it off the block looks and behaves exactly as before, even if a title was added earlier.

With the toggle on:

• The title fills in automatically. Paste a YouTube link and the video’s title arrives with the thumbnail; turning the toggle on when a link is already in place fetches the title too. The automatic fill only ever lands in an empty title — anything you’ve typed stays yours.
• Edit and style it right on the block. Click the title on the canvas and edit it like any text in your newsletter: it starts in your newsletter’s regular paragraph style, and you can make words bold, change their size, or add a link with the usual text toolbar. What you see is what your readers get.
• Choose where it sits. Under Display order, drag Title and Thumbnail to put the title above or below the video image. Above is the default.
• It follows the source. Clear the Source link and the title clears with it, ready for the next video’s title to fill in. If you delete the title yourself and want the original back, switch the import toggle off and on again.

Turning the toggle off hides the title everywhere — the block and the sent email — without losing what was there; switch it back on and the title returns.

Why can’t the video play directly in the email?

Email isn’t a web browser. The major email clients — Gmail, Outlook, and most corporate inboxes — strip out the HTML5 <video> tag and JavaScript that real video players rely on, largely for security reasons. Support is inconsistent (a few clients like Apple Mail will play embedded video, but most won’t), so building a true embed means most of your readers see a broken box or blank space. Embedded video files also bloat the email, which slows load times and can hurt deliverability.

The YouTube block sidesteps all of this: it shows a lightweight thumbnail with a play-button overlay that links out to the video where it actually plays — YouTube, in the reader’s browser — and you get the click-through tracking as a bonus.