How Do News Digests Work?

Personalized News Digests, Personalization Process, News Digest Send Date, Newsletter

Maria Steinberg avatar
Written by Maria Steinberg
Updated over a week ago

The News Digest allows your organization to send a regularly scheduled email which includes your published Content that is of interest to your Subscribers. News Digest are unique to every Subscriber, changing from week to week based on their interactions with published stories, personalized preferences, and your own content priority and segment settings.

In addition to this article, we recommend reading: Understanding Personalized News Digest Logic

How Does it Work?

News Digests are generated and sent out automatically for every opted-in Subscriber. Personalized Subscribers will receive their News Digest at their selected Date and Time, and selected format. Non-personalized subscribers will receive the News Digest at your Organization's default date and time, using your default format.

News Digests include a selection of new Content stories, curated for each subscriber by their preferences, our AI algorithm, and your Story Distribution Settings.

What is Automated

By default, Content is shared only until it tracks an engagement, which includes simply opening the News Digest email the story was included in. If the subscriber doesn't open the News Digest for one week, they will receive some of the same stories again in the next News Digest.

The AI will prioritize personalizing each News Digest based on the Subscribers’ weighted implicit and explicit interest in Categories. For more information about Categories, please review: Categories Explained

Please Note: Subscribers will still receive Content inside of their News Digest that are not relevant to their interest Categories. These pieces of Content will populate in any of the story spots available in a Subscribers’ News Digest, but they will only be added after the most relevant Content has been added.

What Can I Control?

First, you can decide which stories are published and in an approved state. The more stories you have, the more you'll see the AI work it's magic. If you have only a small number of approved stories, you'll know they are more likely to be included - however, if a user has already seen the stories and your count of new stories is below your threshold, they might not get a News Digest.

Using Story Distribution Settings, you can configure specific Content be sent "To Everyone" or "To Everyone as the First Story", which will ensure that even if a Subscriber's interests don't align with the content, they will receive it.

When selecting either of those two options, you'll be presented with the option to send the story multiple times, even if the Subscriber has already seen it. For more information about these settings, please review: Story Distribution Settings.

When Will Content Be Sent Out?

Subscribers who have not personalized their delivery preferences will receive their Content based on the date, time, and frequency default set in your Instance settings. This default can be seen and adjusted inside of your News Digest Settings.

If your Subscribers are personalized, they will most likely be getting their Content at different times, different days, and in different frequencies. The News Digest send time is listed on Subscribers Details: Delivery Preferences window (shown above).


If you have any questions at all, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at support@cerkl.com or use the support Chat toward the bottom right-hand corner of any cerkl.com page.

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