Telegram to Gmail, newsletter drafts ready to send
You sit down to “just send a quick newsletter” and suddenly you’re juggling tabs, skimming half-baked articles, copying quotes, and reformatting everything so it doesn’t look messy in email. Then you lose momentum. Or you send nothing.
Newsletter publishers get hit hardest, honestly. But digital marketers chasing consistency feel it too, and a busy virtual assistant ends up doing the same tedious steps. This Telegram Gmail drafts automation turns one keyword into a ready-to-review newsletter draft delivered to your inbox.
You’ll see exactly how the workflow pulls trending angles, finds fresh news, cleans the content, and uses AI to assemble a polished HTML newsletter, then emails it via Gmail.
How This Automation Works
Here’s the complete workflow you’ll be setting up:
n8n Workflow Template: Telegram to Gmail, newsletter drafts ready to send
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Why This Matters: Sending a Newsletter Shouldn’t Take All Morning
The painful part isn’t writing. It’s everything around it. You start with an idea, then spend about an hour searching what’s actually new, opening articles that don’t deliver, and pulling out the few lines worth quoting. After that comes formatting: headlines, sections, links, spacing, and that one weird email-client issue that breaks your layout. By the time you’re done, you’re tired of the topic. Consistency dies in the “prep work,” not the publishing.
The friction compounds. Here’s where it usually breaks down.
- You lose time to research whiplash, bouncing from Google to random sources just to find 3–5 pieces worth including.
- Copy-paste formatting creates ugly newsletters, which means you end up rewriting for layout instead of clarity.
- It’s easy to miss key context when you skim fast, so the draft lacks a strong through-line and needs heavy editing.
- When you skip an issue, the next one gets harder, because now you’re catching up instead of building momentum.
What You’ll Build: Keyword-to-Newsletter Draft, Delivered by Gmail
This workflow turns a simple Telegram message into a newsletter draft you can actually send. You drop a keyword into Telegram, and the automation expands it into trending search suggestions so you’re not stuck with one narrow angle. Then it pulls recent articles from Google News (via Dumpling AI), splits them into individual items, and scrapes each one to extract clean text instead of messy web clutter. Once the sources are cleaned and merged, OpenAI writes a professional HTML newsletter plus a subject line based on the combined context. Finally, Gmail sends that draft straight to the inbox you choose, ready for review and quick tweaks.
The workflow starts with Telegram, then uses Dumpling AI HTTP requests for autocomplete, news search, and scraping. After that, OpenAI composes the newsletter, and Gmail delivers it so you can edit and publish without hunting sources or formatting HTML.
What You’re Building
| What Gets Automated | What You’ll Achieve |
|---|---|
|
|
Expected Results
Say you publish 3 newsletters per week and you normally include 5 articles each. Manually, assume about 10 minutes to find each article, then another 10 minutes to skim, pull highlights, and format your sections, which is about 100 minutes per issue. With this workflow, you spend 1 minute sending a Telegram keyword, wait while it gathers and cleans sources, then review the emailed draft for about 20 minutes. That’s roughly an hour back per newsletter, so about 3 hours back each week.
Before You Start
- n8n instance (try n8n Cloud free)
- Self-hosting option if you prefer (Hostinger works well)
- Telegram to send the keyword trigger message.
- Gmail to deliver the newsletter draft to your inbox.
- Dumpling AI API key (get it from your Dumpling AI dashboard).
- OpenAI API key (get it from the OpenAI API settings page).
Skill level: Beginner. You’ll connect accounts, paste API keys, and adjust one or two text fields to match your newsletter style.
Want someone to build this for you? Talk to an automation expert (free 15-minute consultation).
Step by Step
A Telegram keyword kicks it off. You send a single topic (like “retail AI” or “local SEO updates”) to your Telegram bot or chat, and the workflow starts immediately.
The keyword gets expanded into better search angles. Dumpling AI Autocomplete suggests related and trending queries, which helps the workflow avoid the “one phrase, zero results” problem.
News gets gathered, split, and cleaned. Dumpling AI Google News returns recent articles, n8n splits them into items, then a scraping step pulls clean text from each page. There’s also a wait/pause in the loop so you don’t hammer a source and get empty responses.
OpenAI composes the newsletter and Gmail delivers it. All cleaned content is merged into one bundle, OpenAI writes the HTML newsletter plus a subject line, and Gmail emails it to the inbox you specify.
You can easily modify the newsletter tone and section layout to match your brand voice based on your needs. See the full implementation guide below for customization options.
Step-by-Step Implementation Guide
Step 1: Configure the Telegram Trigger
Set up the Telegram entry point that captures a keyword and starts the news discovery flow.
- Add the Telegram Keyword Trigger node as your trigger.
- Open Telegram Keyword Trigger and keep Updates set to
message. - Credential Required: Connect your telegramApi credentials.
- (Optional) Keep Flowpast Branding as a visual note; it does not affect execution.
Step 2: Connect Dumpling AI HTTP Services
These nodes retrieve autocomplete suggestions, search Google News, and clean article content.
- Configure Autocomplete Fetcher with URL
https://app.dumplingai.com/api/v1/get-autocompleteand MethodPOST. - Set the JSON Body in Autocomplete Fetcher to
{ "query": "{{ $fromAI('keyword', 'Keyword to get autocomplete suggestions', 'string') }}" }. - Configure News Lookup Tool with URL
https://app.dumplingai.com/api/v1/search-newsand MethodPOST. - Set the JSON Body in News Lookup Tool to
{ "query": "{{ $fromAI('suggestion', 'Autocomplete suggestion to search in Google News', 'string') }}" }. - Configure Article Scrape Cleaner with URL
https://app.dumplingai.com/api/v1/scrape, MethodPOST, and JSON Body{ "url": "{{ $json.url }}", "cleaned": true }. - Credential Required: Connect your httpHeaderAuth credentials for Autocomplete Fetcher, News Lookup Tool, and Article Scrape Cleaner. These tools are connected to AI Coordinator for News, so ensure their credentials are available to the parent node.
Step 3: Set Up AI Coordinator for News
This agent expands the keyword, calls tools, and formats article JSON for downstream processing.
- Open AI Coordinator for News and set Text to
=Keyword: {{ $json.message.text }}. - Keep Prompt Type set to define and enable Has Output Parser.
- Attach Chat Model Engine as the language model for AI Coordinator for News; it uses model
gpt-4o-mini. - Credential Required: Connect your openAiApi credentials in Chat Model Engine.
- Ensure Session Memory Cache is connected as memory with Session Key
={{ $json.message.from.id }}to maintain per-user context. - Connect News JSON Formatter as the output parser, using the provided JSON schema.
⚠️ Common Pitfall: If the agent output is not valid JSON, verify that News JSON Formatter is attached to AI Coordinator for News and that the system prompt returns structured JSON only.
Step 4: Configure Article Processing, Looping, and Aggregation
Split article items, iterate through them, scrape full content, and merge the cleaned text for newsletter drafting.
- In Separate Article Items, set Field to Split Out to
output.articles. - Use Iterate Article Batch to process articles in batches; keep default settings unless you need custom batch sizes.
- Connect Iterate Article Batch to Pause Delay on its second output to create the processing loop, then connect Pause Delay to Article Scrape Cleaner.
- Configure Merge Article Content with Aggregate set to
aggregateAllItemData, Fields to Include set tocontent, and Destination Field Name set tocontent.
Step 5: Configure Output Email Delivery
Draft the newsletter with AI and send it via Gmail.
- In Compose Newsletter Draft, keep JSON Output enabled and use the provided system and user messages to generate HTML + subject.
- Confirm the user message in Compose Newsletter Draft passes content with
=INPUT_CONTENT: "{{ JSON.stringify($json.content) }}". - Credential Required: Connect your openAiApi credentials in Compose Newsletter Draft.
- Configure Email Newsletter Dispatch with Message set to
={{ $json.message.content.newsletter }}and Subject set to={{ $json.message.content.subject }}. - Set Send To to your recipient email address (currently
=is a placeholder). - Credential Required: Connect your gmailOAuth2 credentials in Email Newsletter Dispatch.
⚠️ Common Pitfall: If emails send with empty content, ensure Compose Newsletter Draft returns valid JSON and the Gmail node expressions match $json.message.content.
Final Step: Test and Activate Your Workflow
Run a full test to confirm Telegram input leads to an emailed newsletter.
- Click Execute Workflow and send a Telegram message with a keyword to the bot linked to Telegram Keyword Trigger.
- Verify that AI Coordinator for News outputs a structured
articlesarray and that Separate Article Items splits it into items. - Confirm Article Scrape Cleaner returns cleaned content and Merge Article Content aggregates it into
content. - Check Compose Newsletter Draft for valid JSON containing
newsletterandsubject, then confirm Email Newsletter Dispatch sends the email. - When satisfied, toggle the workflow to Active to enable production use.
Troubleshooting Tips
- Dumpling AI credentials can expire or lack access to specific endpoints. If results come back empty, check your Dumpling AI dashboard and confirm your API key is active and funded.
- If you’re using Wait nodes or external scraping, processing times vary. Bump up the wait duration if downstream nodes fail on empty responses.
- Default prompts in AI nodes are generic. Add your brand voice early or you’ll be editing outputs forever.
Quick Answers
About 30 minutes if your API keys and Gmail are ready.
No. You’ll mostly connect accounts and paste API keys. The “work” is choosing your prompt and newsletter structure.
Yes. n8n has a free self-hosted option and a free trial on n8n Cloud. Cloud plans start at $20/month for higher volume. You’ll also need to factor in OpenAI API costs (often a few cents per draft) and Dumpling AI usage for news and scraping.
Two options: n8n Cloud (managed, easiest setup) or self-hosting on a VPS. For self-hosting, Hostinger VPS is affordable and handles n8n well. Self-hosting gives you unlimited executions but requires basic server management.
Yes, and you should. Most people tweak the OpenAI “Compose Newsletter Draft” step to match brand voice, add fixed sections (like “Tip of the week”), or change the number of articles included. You can also adjust the Dumpling AI news lookup to focus on specific regions or sources, then edit the Gmail step to send to a shared editorial inbox instead of your personal email.
Usually the bot token is wrong or the bot isn’t added to the chat you’re testing. Double-check the Telegram credentials in n8n, then confirm the trigger is listening to the correct chat type (private vs group). Also make sure you’re messaging the bot itself, not a different thread.
Practically, it’s limited by your scraping/news API usage and how quickly you want emails sent, not by the idea of the workflow. On n8n Cloud Starter you can run plenty of drafts for a small team, and higher plans handle heavier throughput. If you self-host, there’s no execution cap, but you may need to slow the loop (the Wait step) if you’re scraping lots of articles back-to-back to avoid empty responses.
Often, yes. This workflow isn’t just “send data from A to B”; it loops through articles, waits when needed, scrapes content, merges it, and then generates a formatted HTML email. That kind of multi-step logic is where n8n tends to feel simpler and more affordable, especially if you self-host. Zapier and Make can still work if you reduce scope (fewer sources, no scraping, simpler formatting), but you’ll usually hit limits sooner. Talk to an automation expert if you want help choosing the right platform.
Once this is running, your “newsletter routine” becomes a single Telegram message and a quick review in Gmail. Set it up once, then spend your time on ideas and distribution instead of chasing links and fighting formatting.
Need Help Setting This Up?
Our automation experts can build and customize this workflow for your specific needs. Free 15-minute consultation—no commitment required.
