How to Schedule Email Delivery of Reports in Looker Studio

Key Points

  • Google Looker Studio’s baked-in email delivery tool is a great way to share your data and keep stakeholders up to date.
  • You can share reports in an unobtrusive way so recipients are less likely to ignore them.
  • You’re in control of the report frequency, just set and forget the time and Looker Studio will do the rest.
  • It’s so easy to set up it won’t even take 10 minutes
Schedule emails in data studio

There is nothing worse than spending the time to craft a beautiful dashboard only to have a coworker, manager, or stakeholder look at it once and forget about it. Doesn’t that defeat the whole point? The beauty of Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) is, that the metrics within the charts and tables update in real-time as the data changes and comes into the platform. Whenever someone looks at your dashboard again, be it a week, month, or quarter later, there will be new data to observe. 

Google may have expected this problem when they added the email delivery tool (perhaps a Data Studio project manager at Google got tired of his supervisor neglecting his dashboards). In this quick guide, we’ll cover each step to scheduling an email delivery of your Data Studio report.

But first, here are three reasons you should schedule Data Studio Email deliveries. 

  1. It’s non-obtrusive. People will remember your data without feeling like you’re nagging. 
  2. It’s in your control. You set the schedule and dictate the frequency for your report. 
  3. It saves you time. Not only do others forget to look at reports, but so do those who create them. This way, you don’t have to think about checking your report or sending it to the right stakeholders. 

Step by Step Guide

Time needed: 10 minutes.

How to set up and schedule automated emails for Google Data Studio

  1. Click the Arrow Next to “Share” and click “Schedule email delivery”

    On the top menu bar in your Data Studio report, click the little arrow next to the share button. Make sure you have edit access to the report. If you don’t, you won’t be able to schedule an email delivery. 

  2. Add Recipients

    Your name is already on the recipient list. You can leave it there so that you have confirmation of a successful delivery each send date, or if you choose, you can remove yourself. Add up to 50 names on the “to” line. They don’t need a Google account to be added to the list. 

  3. Customize Your Message

    Click the box below the recipient list to customize your message. Google lets you change the subject line (it’s the report title by default) and add a message. You don’t need to include any links or attachments in the message. Google will take care of that for you. Just keep this short and simple, reminding people why they are receiving it or the action items they need to take as a result. 

  4. Specify Pages

    Most likely, you want to include every page of your report, but if not, make the change below the message. Here’s a good place to note that Google will send a PDF handout (with the specified pages) an embedded preview of the dashboard, and a link to the live URL. Everyone prefers digesting their reports a different way, and Google automatically gives them every option. 

  5. Schedule Recurrences

    Based on whichever date you include as the first delivery, Google will suggest a weekly or monthly send on that same day of the week going forward. You can also send the report daily, every weekday, or choose a custom number of days to leave between each send. 

    If you need to edit the message, schedule, or eventually delete the email delivery, you can do so by repeating Step 1 and opening the email delivery options again. 

How the report appears in your email

Finally, here’s how the report looks in your inbox:

And once you’ve opened the report:

The PDF is attached to the email. 

Last Thoughts

If you know you’ll be sending recurring email deliveries, you can do some playful things on your dashboard to acknowledge the frequency. For example, this template, available in our store, lists the date and a little note at the top of each report. 

Table of Contents

    Subscribe to our newsletter for 10% off your first purchase