A restrained quarterly update for limited partners or clients — a data table, a chart rendered as an image, and copy that reads as institutional rather than promotional.
Investor & Board
The highest-stakes email in this set. Read by people who will judge the firm on its presentation, and forwarded to people who weren't on the list.
Built around one constraint most templates ignore: charts cannot be HTML in email. This one handles that properly rather than producing something that collapses in Outlook.
Notes
Do not put recipient-specific figures in this template. Gatsby merge tags cover names and org details, not per-LP performance. Personalised numbers need a separate process, and getting one wrong here is a serious error.
The disclosures placeholder is deliberate — most firms have required language, and it should be pasted in rather than generated.
The prompt
Create a quarterly update email for [YOUR FIRM], sent to [limited partners / clients / investors], covering [QUARTER AND YEAR].
Structure:
1. A restrained header: firm name and "Quarterly Update — [Q# YYYY]". Text only.
2. A letter opening addressed to "Dear {firstName}," followed by three or four sentences from [NAME, TITLE]. Measured and specific. No superlatives.
3. A performance summary table: four to six rows, label and value, with a subtle border and comfortable cell padding. Right-align numeric values.
4. A chart section — an <img> placeholder with a caption, PLUS a two-sentence text summary of what the chart shows. See the note below on why.
5. Two or three short narrative sections with clear subheads.
6. An optional single line about an upcoming event, linking to a plain URL I will paste in. Do not use an event merge tag here — this goes out as a newsletter, which has no event attached, so an event tag would render as an empty string.
7. A footer: firm name and a disclosures placeholder. Do NOT add an unsubscribe link or a mailing address; Gatsby appends a locked footer carrying both.
IMPORTANT on the chart: do not attempt to build a chart in HTML or CSS. Email clients will not render it reliably and Outlook will destroy it. Insert an <img> placeholder sized 560px wide with descriptive alt text, and write the two-sentence text summary directly beneath it so the section still communicates when images are blocked. Tell me what to export from my own reporting tool to drop in.
Design direction: institutional and quiet. Serif for headings if it suits the brand, sans-serif for body. Near-black text on white. One accent colour, [#HEX], used only for links and the table header row. No gradients, no rounded corners, no icons.
The visual restraint IS the credibility signal. Anything decorative undermines it.
Use realistic placeholder figures and copy for [YOUR STRATEGY OR SECTOR]. Don't use lorem ipsum.
Technical requirements — these are not stylistic preferences, they are what makes the email render correctly in Outlook, Gmail, and Apple Mail:
- Output ONE self-contained .html file. No external stylesheets, no external fonts, no JavaScript, no web fonts via @font-face.
- Use table-based layout only. No flexbox, no CSS grid, no position: absolute. Outlook's rendering engine ignores all three.
- Put all CSS inline as style attributes on elements. A <style> block in <head> may be stripped; anything you rely on must be inline.
- Maximum content width 600px, centred, inside a full-width wrapper table with an explicit background colour.
- Use only web-safe font stacks — Helvetica, Arial, Georgia, or system-ui — each with fallbacks. Never load a font.
- Set an explicit background-color AND color on every table cell containing text. Dark-mode clients invert unstyled backgrounds and will destroy your contrast.
- Every image needs a descriptive alt attribute and an absolute https:// URL. Many clients block images by default, so the email must still make sense with every image missing. Do not embed images as data: URIs — Gatsby strips them.
- Buttons are a table cell with a background colour and padding wrapping an <a>, never a styled <button> element.
- Minimum 14px body text and 44px tall tap targets. Most of these are read on a phone.
- Gatsby removes anything outside its allowlist before sending: no <script>, <iframe>, <form>, <object> or <embed>, no on* handlers, and no id attributes. Links must be http, https or mailto. Stick to tables, text, images and inline styles and none of this will bite.
Gatsby-specific — this is a NEWSLETTER, sent to subscribers on a schedule. There is no event attached to it.
- Personalisation tokens use SINGLE curly braces. These are the ONLY tokens that exist here. Do not invent others:
{firstName} {lastName} {nickname} {email}
{newsletterName} {companyLegalName}
Custom fields are also available as {field_YourFieldName} — letters, digits and underscores only. Only use one where every subscriber has a value.
- Any other brace token is replaced with an EMPTY STRING when the email sends. That includes anything event-related — there is no RSVP link, no event date, no venue, because a newsletter is not attached to an event. If the content calls for a link to an event, use a plain https:// URL and tell me to paste the real one in.
- Three ways to break a token that all fail quietly:
- {{firstName}} — doubled braces are an escape. The recipient sees the literal text {firstName}.
- { firstName } — padding stops the lookup. The recipient sees the braces.
- A misspelled name renders as nothing at all.
Gatsby's composer does warn about all three before you send, with line numbers — but the warnings are advisory and will not stop a send.
- DO NOT add an unsubscribe link or a physical mailing address, and note there is no token for either. Gatsby appends a locked footer carrying both to every newsletter automatically, so a copy in the body is duplicate legal text. If the structure above asks for a footer, give it the organisation name only.
- Do not add your own tracking pixels, open-tracking images, or link-wrapping. Gatsby handles tracking.
