AI Newsletter

Per-recipient and per-segment AI personalization for self-hosted WordPress newsletter plugins.

WordPress slug: superdav-ai-newsletter Display name: AI Newsletter Requires: WordPress 7.0+, PHP 8.2+ Status: v0.2 — Newsletter (Stefano Lissa), FluentCRM, and Groundhogg adapters all shipped. Per-recipient, per-segment, and hybrid modes all functional.

What it does

AI Newsletter is a thin layer on top of self-hosted WordPress newsletter plugins. It hooks into the per-recipient send loop and uses the WordPress 7.0 AI Client (and any configured connector — OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, local Ollama, etc.) to rewrite each email's body and/or subject to speak directly to the specific subscriber.

It is not a newsletter plugin. It runs alongside one. v0.1 ships with full support for the Newsletter plugin by Stefano Lissa — chosen because it exposes clean per-recipient filters in its send loop. Adapters for FluentCRM and Groundhogg are on the roadmap.

Why

As of May 2026, no WordPress newsletter plugin ships per-recipient AI personalization. The plugins that advertise "AI" all do composer-side AI: one prompt → one body → blast to N subscribers verbatim. That is the same as ChatGPT-then-paste.

True AI personalization happens at send time, with the recipient's data in scope. This plugin makes that possible for any self-hosted WordPress site, with any AI provider, paired with any SMTP service (Amazon SES, SendGrid, Mailgun, Postmark, Brevo, Gmail, Outlook, …).

How it works

For each recipient, just before the email is handed to wp_mail():

1. The configured newsletter adapter pulls subscriber data into a placeholder map ({{first_name}}, {{country}}, {{days_since_signup}}, …).
2. The personalization prompt template is rendered with those placeholders.
3. The rendered prompt is sent to the WordPress AI Client (wp_ai_client_prompt()).
4. The result is cached (subscriber × campaign × prompt-hash) so resends do not re-bill.
5. On any AI failure, the original (un-personalized) body is sent — fail-safe by default.

Personalization modes

Installation (development, this Bedrock site)

This plugin is git-cloned into site/web/app/plugins/superdav-ai-newsletter/ for local development. To install Composer dev dependencies (PHPCS, etc.):

cd site/web/app/plugins/superdav-ai-newsletter
composer install

Settings

Settings → AI Newsletter (per-site, never network-admin):

• Enable AI personalization — master on/off.
• Personalization mode — Off / Per-recipient / Per-segment / Hybrid.
• Model — the model ID to send to the AI Client (leave empty for the connector's default).
• What to personalize — subject line, body, or both.
• System prompt — guardrails for the model (preserve links, length, etc.).
• Personalization prompt — the per-recipient template with {{placeholder}} syntax.
• Cache personalized bodies — reuse on resends.
• Fall back on error — send the original body if the AI call fails (recommended on).

Architecture

includes/
├── Core/
│   ├── Plugin.php              # Bootstrap
│   ├── Settings.php            # Per-site option repository
│   └── AiClient.php            # Wrapper around wp_ai_client_prompt()
├── Contracts/
│   └── PersonalizationProviderInterface.php  # Adapter contract
├── Personalization/
│   ├── Personalizer.php        # Mode-branching orchestrator
│   ├── SegmentPlanner.php      # Per-segment + hybrid decisions
│   └── PromptRenderer.php      # {{placeholder}} substitution
├── Cache/
│   └── PersonalizationCache.php # subscriber × campaign × prompt-hash
├── Adapters/
│   ├── Newsletter/
│   │   └── NewsletterAdapter.php  # Stefano Lissa Newsletter adapter
│   ├── FluentCRM/
│   │   └── FluentCrmAdapter.php   # FluentCRM adapter
│   └── Groundhogg/
│       └── GroundhoggAdapter.php  # Groundhogg adapter
└── Admin/
    └── SettingsPage.php        # Settings → AI Newsletter

Adding a new newsletter-plugin adapter is a 200-line drop-in: implement PersonalizationProviderInterface, call Personalizer::personalize() from the plugin's per-recipient hooks.

Filters

The plugin exposes these filters for theme / mu-plugin customization:

• sd_ai_newsletter_default_model — override the global default model ID.
• sd_ai_newsletter_prompt_args — modify the args passed to wp_ai_client_prompt().
• sd_ai_newsletter_should_personalize — opt out for a specific Newsletter campaign.
• sd_ai_newsletter_fluentcrm_should_personalize — opt out for a specific FluentCRM campaign.
• sd_ai_newsletter_groundhogg_should_personalize — opt out for a specific Groundhogg email.
• sd_ai_newsletter_newsletter_placeholders — modify the placeholder map for a Newsletter recipient.
• sd_ai_newsletter_fluentcrm_placeholders — modify the placeholder map for a FluentCRM recipient.
• sd_ai_newsletter_groundhogg_placeholders — modify the placeholder map for a Groundhogg recipient.
• sd_ai_newsletter_personalized_body — modify the per-recipient AI-generated body before it is sent.
• sd_ai_newsletter_segment_personalized_body — modify the per-segment AI-generated body before it is sent.
• sd_ai_newsletter_segment_keys — modify the placeholder keys used to derive segment IDs.
• sd_ai_newsletter_hybrid_should_segment — override the AI's hybrid-mode decision.

And these actions:

• sd_ai_newsletter_personalization_failed — fires when AI per-recipient personalization falls back to the original body.
• sd_ai_newsletter_segment_personalization_failed — fires when AI per-segment personalization falls back.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later. See LICENSE.

Author

Built by superdav42. Part of the Ultimate Multisite plugin family.