A newsletter video maker that ships in 15 minutes every send
Record a 90-second take or paste this week's draft. A newsletter video maker built for creators hands you back a polished clip with captions, brand polish, and a thumbnail ready for Substack, Beehiiv, or ConvertKit.
Or pick a video type to get started
Trusted by teams at
Newsletter Video videos made with ngram
Real videos created by teams using ngram for newsletter video.
“I love writing the newsletter. I drop video the second editing eats my Tuesday evening.”
- Tuesday 8:14am
Final pass on the issue. Two thousand words, three callouts, a tight headline. You've spent six hours of writing time on it already. Now just the polish and the schedule before lunch.
- 9:02am
You hit record on Loom and talk through the main idea for 90 seconds. It's fine. Two filler words, one tangent about a Slack notification, a doorbell at the end. You stop and open iMovie.
- 10:45am
An hour and a half in. You've trimmed the doorbell, removed two umms, added a title card, and lined up auto-captions that broke on the word "churn." The clip is still 78 seconds. You wanted 45.
- 12:20pm
Export. Re-export at lower bitrate because the file is too big to upload. Render a square version for LinkedIn and a vertical version for the Reels test you keep meaning to run. None of them match each other.
- 2:08pm
Drop a thumbnail link into Beehiiv. Schedule the send. Tell yourself the time was worth it. Open the calendar for next Tuesday and feel the editing block already booking itself in.
- +3 weeks
Issue eleven goes out as text only. The video version was supposed to be the consistent thing. It lasted three issues. The CTR sits at 1.9% again. The creators who kept it up are already two thousand subscribers ahead.
Emails with a video thumbnail roughly double the click-through rate of plain-text sends in most creator benchmarks — but only if you can keep the cadence past issue three.
“And the issue I'm proudest of opens at 38%, clicks at 1.9%, and replies basically never.”
From "I'll add video next week" to shipping a clip every Tuesday
Tuesday recording. Edit until 11pm. Auto-captions misread three nouns. Render a square cut for LinkedIn that drifts out of frame, then a vertical cut for Instagram that does the same. The publish slot moves to Wednesday.
Tuesday 90-second take. Drop the .mov into ngram before lunch. Smart zooms land on the punchline, captions style themselves to the newsletter brand, and the thumbnail comes out ready for Beehiiv. Wednesday is for the next issue.
Three issues into the video experiment, you skip a week. Then two. Then it quietly becomes the thing you used to do. The list opens an article, sees a blank header where the play button was, and scrolls past faster than before.
Eleven issues in, every one shipped on the same Tuesday. Subscribers know there is a video at the top of the email. Open rates hold; click-through doubles; a LinkedIn cut runs as a separate post and pulls 30-40 new subscribers a week.
When a subscriber asks for the older issue on a specific topic, you send the text archive. They never reply. The good thinking lives in a paragraph six of an issue from March that nobody scrolls to.
Every issue's video lives at a /watch link. Reply with the link and the subscriber actually watches. Older issues earn second readings because the clip on top makes the topic obvious in ten seconds.
A newsletter video from whatever you already have
Bring a quick take you recorded between meetings, or paste the draft you were going to send anyway. Either input lands in the same captioning, smart-zoom, and brand-kit pipeline.
Record a 90-second take on the main idea
Talk through the headline insight from this week's issue. Stumbles, filler words, the cat — leave it all in. ngram cuts the dead air, removes the umms, holds the smart zoom on the punchline, and styles captions to the newsletter brand before you finish a coffee.
Screen Recording to VideoOr paste the draft and skip the camera
Drop in this week's newsletter draft or a link to the published issue. ngram pulls the spine of the argument, writes the script, generates visuals, and renders a voiceover-led video. Useful for creators who would rather stay off-camera or repurpose older essays as video.
Blog to VideoOne newsletter video plus the thumbnail
Polished enough that subscribers think you hired a producer. Yours alone — voice, framing, captions, and color.
Starting from a podcast clip or a long-form video instead? Run it through Audio to Video or Webinar to Clips first — the polish step downstream is identical.
What changes when newsletter video takes 15 minutes
The email stops competing with text. It starts competing with attention.
Top benefitEvery Tuesday gets a 60-second video at the top of the issue. Subscribers see a face, hear a voice, and click through at numbers a plain newsletter can't reach. The video doubles as a LinkedIn or Instagram post by Wednesday morning.
Creator and SaaS marketing benchmarks consistently report roughly double the click-through rate on emails with a video thumbnail vs. a plain text or static-image alternative.
The cadence finally sticks
Fifteen minutes per issue, not two hours. The reason creators quit weekly video is the editing tax. Remove the tax, and the habit stays alive past issue three — where the audience growth actually starts to compound.
Every issue ships as three posts
The email gets the 16:9 thumbnail. LinkedIn gets the 1:1 cut. Reels and Shorts get the 9:16. One recording, three channels — without the manual re-export step that quietly killed last quarter's video plan.
Tuesday draft → polished newsletter video in 3 steps
Record the 90-second take
Hit record. Talk through the main idea like you would on a Loom to a friend. Don't re-take. The rougher takes give ngram more to cut and the final clip more natural rhythm.
Review the polished cut
ngram trims dead air, drops captions in your brand colors, frames the punchline with a smart zoom, and assembles a thumbnail. Scrub the storyboard, tweak any line that landed flat, and approve.
Export and drop into the email
Pull the 16:9 cut for the email thumbnail, the 1:1 for LinkedIn, and the 9:16 for Reels and Shorts. Embed the thumbnail in Substack, Beehiiv, or ConvertKit and link it to the hosted /watch page.
Built for newsletter video, specifically
Who ships newsletter video in your operation?
Content Creators
Indie writers, podcasters, and analysts who run a weekly send. Newsletter video stops being the thing you'd add next quarter and starts being part of the same Tuesday block you already protect. Subscribers stay; LinkedIn pulls in new ones.
Solopreneurs
Bootstrapped founders publishing every week alongside running the business. The newsletter video has to ship without a freelancer or a Tuesday evening. ngram handles the editing so the only thing you spend is the recording time itself.
Founders
Founder-led newsletters where the voice is the brand. The video on top of every issue keeps the founder's face in the inbox — useful for fundraises, hiring posts, and customer renewal touchpoints that happen between formal updates.
Growth & Marketing
Marketing teams running a lifecycle newsletter alongside paid acquisition. The newsletter video doubles as ad creative for the LinkedIn and Meta tests already in market — same script, same brand, no second production cycle.
Product Marketing
Customer newsletters and product roundup sends that need to feel curated, not auto-generated. Pair the newsletter video with the launch announcement so the same scene assets carry across the email and the changelog.
Customer Success
Monthly customer newsletter that summarizes account activity, upcoming features, and the next training session. A 60-second video on top makes the recap watchable; the rest of the email captures the receipts the account team needs.
Educators
Course creators and instructors publishing a weekly cohort newsletter. Subscribers see the teacher's face, hear the framing, and click through to the next module. Useful for cohorts that lose engagement between live calls.
Developer Relations
Engineering and devtool teams running a developer newsletter. The video covers the new SDK or API surface in 60 seconds — the kind of explainer that gets shared inside the subscriber's eng channel before the text gets read.
Explore more use cases
Other ways creators and teams use ngram to keep the publish cadence without an editing tax.
You don't need a recording to ship a newsletter video.
Bring the draft, the audio, or the link you would have shipped anyway. Each converter drops you into the same captioning, brand-kit, and thumbnail pipeline.
Every tool the newsletter pipeline runs on.
The old way vs. the ngram way
| Text-only Send | DIY Newsletter Video | ngram | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to add video | N/A — no video | 90-120 min editing | Under 15 min |
| Click-through baseline | ~2% on text | Higher — if cadence holds | ~5% with video thumbnail |
| Weekly sustainability | Easy | Drops off by issue 3-4 | Holds past issue 50 |
| Channels per recording | Email only | Manual re-export per format | 16:9 + 1:1 + 9:16 in one render |
| Subscriber loyalty signal | Faceless byline | Inconsistent — face + voice optional | Same face, voice, brand every Tuesday |
Wire the newsletter pipeline into the tools you already publish from.
Each integration ships with a working recipe. Trigger a polished newsletter video from a draft, a schedule, or a chat agent — or build your own with the REST API.
whenA new draft lands in /newsletter/inbox or your Beehiiv outbox
thenRender the 16:9 + 1:1 + 9:16 newsletter video and post the thumbnail URL back to Slack
whenClaude or ChatGPT calls the newsletter-video tool with this week's draft
thenReturn a finished newsletter video plus a hosted /watch link for the inbox tile
whenYou hit 'Newsletter video' on the Beehiiv or Substack draft tab
thenGet a polished MP4 + thumbnail back in a new tab inside fifteen minutes
whenThe weekly issue moves to 'Scheduled' in your editorial pipeline
thenRender the matching newsletter video and attach it to the campaign in ConvertKit or Beehiiv
whenA self-hosted CMS publishes a new newsletter draft
thenAuto-render the newsletter video on your own VPC and post the link back to the issue
whenThe Wednesday 1:1 newsletter cut finishes rendering
thenSchedule the post to your company page with the issue's headline copy as the lead-in
whenThe short-form newsletter cut finishes rendering
thenSchedule the social variant with copy A/B and a thread reply teasing this week's full issue
whenThe long-form version of the newsletter video is approved
thenUpload to the channel with chapter markers per section so the archive doubles as a YouTube series
“But will it work for my situation?”
Your next newsletter video is 15 minutes away
Skip the editing tax. Ship a polished newsletter video every Tuesday with captions, brand polish, and a thumbnail ready for Substack, Beehiiv, ConvertKit, or whatever ESP is running this week's send.