Weekly Summary Email: How to Send One to Your Users
What to put in a weekly summary email, how to schedule it, and the exact message to give Claude Code so every user of your SaaS gets one automatically.
Quick answer
A weekly summary email gives each user a short recap of their own account activity from the past seven days, sent automatically on a set day. Include three to five key numbers, one highlight and one link back to your product. Your project sends it on a scheduled job, skips quiet weeks and lets users switch it off.
Last checked: October 2026
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A weekly summary email gives each of your users a short recap of what happened in their account over the past seven days. Some products call it a digest email or a weekly report email. Done well, it brings people back to your SaaS and reminds them of the value they get from it.
This guide covers what to put in a weekly summary email, how scheduling works, what to tell Claude Code, and how to let users switch it off, with a sample email at the end.
What should a weekly summary email include?
A good weekly summary shows each user their own numbers for the past week, one highlight and one clear way back into your product. Aim for a one-minute read.
| Part | What it does | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Subject line | Says what's inside, with one real number | Your week: 38 new responses |
| Date range | Makes clear which week it covers | September 28 to October 4 |
| Key numbers | Three to five figures that matter to this user, compared with last week | Responses, views, completion rate |
| Highlight | One thing worth their attention | Their busiest form, or something waiting on them |
| Button | One link back into the product | See this week's responses |
| Footer | Why they got it, and how to turn it off | Turn off weekly summaries |
Three habits make the difference:
- Keep it personal. Every number should be about this user's account, not your company's news.
- Skip quiet weeks. If nothing happened, don't send. An email full of zeros teaches people to ignore the next one.
- Lead with their account. If you mention a new feature, keep it short and near the end (more on why below).
How do you schedule a weekly summary email?
Your live project sends the summary using a scheduled job: a setting on your hosting platform that runs a task at a set time, such as every Monday at 8am. Developers call this a cron job. Claude Code sets it up; you decide when it runs.
Each time the job runs, your project gathers each user's numbers for the week, skips anyone with no activity or who has turned summaries off, and sends the rest. Claude Code isn't involved; it all happens in your live project.
Where the job lives depends on your hosting. Two common options for projects built with Claude Code:
| Hosting | Scheduled jobs | Good to know |
|---|---|---|
| Vercel | Cron Jobs, on every plan | Times are always in UTC. On the free Hobby plan, a job can run at most once a day and may start any time within the hour you set. Pro runs to the minute. |
| Supabase | Supabase Cron | Can be managed from the dashboard under Integrations, then Cron. A job can call an Edge Function (a small piece of server code) that sends the emails. |
Prices and limits checked October 2026.
A few timing decisions to make before you brief Claude Code:
- Day and time. Monday morning is a common choice, so the recap arrives as the new week starts.
- Time zones. 8am UTC is midnight or 1am in Los Angeles, depending on the time of year. If your users are spread out, pick one time that suits most of them, or ask for 8am in each user's own time zone. That needs the job to run every hour, which on Vercel means the Pro plan.
- What "last week" means. Decide whether it's Monday to Sunday and in which time zone, so the numbers match what users see in your product.
For how scheduled emails fit alongside action-triggered ones, see automating emails with Claude Code and when each SaaS email should go out.
What to tell Claude Code
If SimpleSends isn't connected yet, start here. A connector is how Claude Code talks to another service while you build, using a standard called MCP.
- Sign up on the SimpleSends website and follow the steps there to set up the email address you'll send from. To send from your own domain, this includes adding a few DNS records (settings that tell the internet about your domain) where your domain is registered.
- In Claude Code, open Customize, then Connectors, choose Add, then Add custom connector. Name: SimpleSends. MCP server URL: https://mcp.simplesends.com/mcp
- When Claude prompts you to connect, log in to SimpleSends.
- Back in the Claude Code chat, tell Claude Code: "I've connected SimpleSends for all transactional email." It takes it from there, including adding what your project needs to send email.
Then brief Claude Code the way you'd brief a developer on your team:
I'd like every user to get a weekly summary email every Monday at 8am UTC. It should show their own numbers from the past seven days: new responses, form views and completion rate, each compared with the week before. Add one highlight, such as their busiest form, and a button back to their dashboard. Don't send it to anyone who had no activity that week. Show me a preview with realistic sample data before you build it.
Claude Code will find where your project keeps this data, draft the email and show you a preview. Once you approve it, Claude Code sets up the scheduled job and the sending.
Next, give users control:
Add a setting in each user's account to turn the weekly summary on or off, on by default. Put a link in the footer of every summary that turns it off in one click, without needing to log in.
Then check it before any user sees it:
Send me a test weekly summary now, using my own account's data, so I can check it in my inbox.
Test emails can be sent from the chat; the real summaries go out from your live project on schedule. After the first Monday, Claude Code can read your SimpleSends send logs and tell you whether every summary went out. For a full pre-launch routine, see how to test your emails before your users see them.
How do you let users switch it off?
Give people two ways to stop the summary: a toggle in their account settings, and a link at the bottom of every email that turns it off in one click. Both should change the same setting, and your scheduled job should check that setting before every send.
A summary someone can't stop soon becomes one they resent. There's also a legal side. In the US, the CAN-SPAM Act looks at an email's main purpose, and the FTC treats an email that leads with promotion as commercial. Commercial email must include a way to opt out and the sender's postal address. A summary that is mainly the user's own account information, with any promotion brief and at the end, sits on safer ground, and an off switch covers you either way. This is general information, not legal advice, and rules differ by country.
As your SaaS grows, you can offer daily, weekly or off. Founders often make the same move for their own alerts, from an email for every new sign-up to a daily summary.
Sample weekly summary email
Here's a sample for a fictional form-building SaaS. Share it with Claude Code as a starting point.
SubjectYour week: 38 new responses (up 12%)
Hi Sam,
Here's what happened in your account from September 28 to October 4.
New responses: 38 (up from 34) Form views: 412 (up from 377) Completion rate: 61% (down from 64%)
Your busiest form was Customer feedback, with 21 responses. 3 responses are flagged for follow-up.
You're getting this because weekly summaries are on for your account. Turn off weekly summaries, or manage your email settings.
YourCompany · hello@yourcompany.com
For the other emails most SaaS products send, see 12 transactional emails every SaaS needs.
Frequently asked questions
Who should get the summary on a team account?
It depends on what the numbers mean to each person. Many products send it to account owners and admins by default and let other team members turn it on for themselves. Ask Claude Code to show each person the numbers they can already see in your product, so nobody gets data they wouldn’t otherwise have.
Can users choose which day or time they get the summary?
Yes. Ask Claude Code to add a day and time choice next to the on/off setting. Your scheduled job then needs to run more often, usually every hour, and send to whoever’s chosen time has come. On Vercel, running more than once a day needs the Pro plan.
Should free or trial users get a weekly summary?
Usually yes, as long as they have activity worth reporting. A summary reminds trial users what they’ve already set up, which can help them decide to stay. Keep the content the same for every plan, and avoid turning the trial version into an upgrade pitch, so the email stays a summary rather than an advert.
What if the summaries don’t go out one week?
Ask Claude Code to check your SimpleSends send logs for that morning. It can tell you whether the emails were sent and, if they weren’t, help work out whether the scheduled job ran. Once the cause is fixed, it can send that week’s summaries to the users who missed them.
Can I send a daily or monthly summary instead?
Yes. The setup is the same; only the schedule and the date range change. Daily suits busy accounts where a lot happens each day. Monthly suits products people use less often. You can also let users pick between daily, weekly and monthly in their email settings.
Sources (4)
- Cron Jobs(checked October 5, 2026)
- Usage & Pricing for Cron Jobs(checked October 5, 2026)
- Cron | Supabase Docs(checked October 5, 2026)
- CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business (Federal Trade Commission)(checked October 5, 2026)
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