YouTube video turned into a branded email newsletter

YouTube video turned into a branded email newsletter

An n8n workflow. You fill in a form with a brand's name, its website and a YouTube link. It fetches the video's
transcript and thumbnail, writes a news-style article from the transcript, dresses it in the brand's colors and logo,
and mails it from your Gmail to every reader on a Google Sheet.

What is inside

• workflow.json: the workflow as n8n exports it, 24 nodes, one of them a sticky note that holds only the workflow's
  title. It holds no credential, and it names no spreadsheet: you point it at yours.
• README.md: these notes.

What we changed from the original copy

• The two Google Sheets nodes pointed at their author's spreadsheet. They now ask for YOUR_SHEET_ID.
  Get row(s) in sheet finds its tab by the name Subscribers List, and Save Newsletter Draft in Google Sheet writes
  to the first tab, gid=0.
• The Authorization headers of the two Apify requests and the ConvertAPI request held only the word Bearer. They now read
  Bearer <YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN> and Bearer <YOUR_CONVERTAPI_TOKEN>, so you can see where each token goes.
• A test submission saved with the form, naming a real company, is gone.
• Nothing else. The one Code node and the expressions needed no backslash repair.

Before you start

• An n8n instance, on n8n Cloud or your own server.
• An OpenAI API key that can use gpt-4.1 and gpt-4.1-mini.
• An Apify account and its API token. The workflow runs two Actors from Apify's store:
  pintostudio/youtube-transcript-scraper for the transcript and codenest/youtube-thumbnail-scraper-downloader for
  the thumbnail.
• A ConvertAPI account and its API token.
• A Google account for Google Sheets and Gmail.
• A spreadsheet with two tabs (below).

Prepare the sheet

| Tab | Columns | What the workflow does with it |
|---|---|---|
| Subscribers List | Email, Name | Reads every row. Email is where the issue goes, and Name follows "Hi" in the greeting |
| The first tab | Email, Message, Email Created At, Email Send At | Adds a row for each email sent. Email holds the subject line, Message the HTML, and both dates the time of the run |

Set it up

1. In n8n, create a workflow, open its menu and choose Import from File. Pick workflow.json.
2. Make the sheet, then copy its ID: the long part of its address between /d/ and /edit.
3. Add a Google Sheets OAuth2 credential. Select it in Get row(s) in sheet and Save Newsletter Draft in Google Sheet,
   and replace YOUR_SHEET_ID in both with the ID.
4. Add an OpenAI credential and select it in OpenAI Chat Model1 and OpenAI Chat Model2.
5. Open You Tube Transcript Scraper and You Tube Transcript Scraper1. In each Authorization header, replace
   <YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN> with your Apify token, brackets included. Keep the word Bearer and the space after it.
6. Do the same in HTTP Request4 with <YOUR_CONVERTAPI_TOKEN> and your ConvertAPI token.
7. Add a Gmail OAuth2 credential and select it in Sending Emails to all the Subscribers.
8. Put two or three of your own addresses in Subscribers List and save. Send a test through the form's test address.
9. Read the emails you get. When they look right, add your readers and press Publish.

How a run goes

1. On form submission is the form, titled Newsletter, with three required fields: Brand Name, Brand Website
   and You Tube Video Link. It confirms as soon as it is sent.
2. Four branches start at once:
   - HTTP Request2 fetches the homepage, and AI Agent1 picks a primary, a secondary, an accent and a background
   color from its HTML. Structured Output Parser2 holds the reply to those four.
   - HTTP Request5 fetches the homepage again, and Information Extractor finds the logo's address in it.
   HTTP Request3 downloads the logo, and HTTP Request4 sends it to ConvertAPI's SVG to PNG converter, which answers
   with a link to the PNG.
   - You Tube Transcript Scraper runs the transcript Actor. Code in JavaScript joins the text of every piece in
   the first item's data, and AI Agent2 rewrites that transcript as a news-style article.
   - You Tube Transcript Scraper1 runs the thumbnail Actor, and Edit Fields keeps Thumbnail and the video's link.
3. Merge waits for all four, and Aggregate puts them in one list called output: the logo first, then the colors,
   the article and the thumbnail.
4. Get row(s) in sheet reads every row of Subscribers List, and Loop Over Items takes them one at a time.
5. For each reader, Convert Newsletter to HTML (AI) builds the email from the article and a fixed HTML template, with
   a subject line. Structured Output Parser1 holds the reply to subject and content.
6. Save Newsletter Draft in Google Sheet adds the row to the first tab, and Sending Emails to all the Subscribers
   mails it from Gmail. The loop then moves on to the next reader.

AI Agent1, Information Extractor and AI Agent2 all run on gpt-4.1 through OpenAI Chat Model1. The email step
runs on gpt-4.1-mini through OpenAI Chat Model2.

Change the look

• The article: the system message of AI Agent2. It asks for a journalist's voice, no emoji and nothing that is not in
  the transcript.
• Layout, greeting and footer: the HTML template inside the system message of Convert Newsletter to HTML (AI). Only the
  text colors follow the brand. The footer's two lines are written there, and the same message caps an issue at 1,000
  words.
• The logo: if your brand's logo is not an SVG, change svg in the address of HTTP Request4 to its format, or put a
  lasting PNG address straight into the img tag of the template.
• Models: gpt-4.1 in OpenAI Chat Model1 and gpt-4.1-mini in OpenAI Chat Model2.
• Order: the template reads the merged list by position, output[0] to output[3]. Keep Merge's inputs in that
  order if you rewire it.

Good to know

• Nothing waits for review. Each reader's email goes out as soon as it is written, so test with your own addresses.
• The email step runs once for every reader. A long list is a long run, and the wording can differ a little from one
  reader to the next.
• ConvertAPI's link to the PNG works for 3 hours, its getting-started page says. An email opened after that shows a
  broken logo. A logo hosted at a lasting address avoids it.
• Information Extractor reads the raw HTML. A relative logo address such as /logo.svg fails at HTTP Request3, and
  a logo that is not an SVG may fail at ConvertAPI.
• The HTML prompt was written for three topics with sources. It receives one article without links, so check any
  source link it adds.
• OpenAI's deprecations page, read on 3 November 2026, gives 14 January 2027 as the shutdown date of gpt-4.1 and
  gpt-4.1-mini, and names gpt-6-luna as the replacement. Change the model in both chat model nodes before then.
• Billing: OpenAI bills three gpt-4.1 calls a run, the homepage twice and the transcript once, plus one gpt-4.1-mini
  call for each reader. On 3 November 2026, Apify listed the transcript Actor at $0.01 a result and the thumbnail Actor
  at $0.008 a thumbnail. ConvertAPI bills each conversion.
• Gmail limits how many messages one account sends a day. For a large list, use a sender built for bulk mail.
• Gmail's node adds a line saying the email was sent with n8n. Turn off Append n8n Attribution in its options to drop it.
• The layout has no unsubscribe line. Add one to the footer where the law asks for it.
• Once the workflow is published, anyone with the form's address can start a run that spends your keys and mails your
  whole list. The form trigger can ask for a username and password.
• The Apify and ConvertAPI tokens sit in header fields, not in credentials, so they travel with any export. Take them out
  before you share the workflow.
• The homepage and the transcript go to OpenAI, and so does each reader's name. The video link goes to Apify and the
  logo to ConvertAPI.