Want to read up on how news organizations are using newsletters and what nonprofits can learn? Check out: Why news organizations love newsletters (and what nonprofits can learn from it).
If you’re even a little serious about better newsletters we should talk but first here are some of the best articles, guides, resources and case studies about newsletters I bookmarked in the past year.
Getting started
What I wish I’d known before launching my newsletter [Dan Oshinksy / Inbox Collective] Dan Oshinsky is one of the most strategic newsletter thinkers around. Here Dan shares hard-earned lessons from over 20 newsletter operators – independents, news orgs, nonprofits, publishers, writers, artists and more. Some of my favorites:
- I wish I’d built audience research into our strategy sooner.
- Keep things simple rather than trying to do everything.
- The value prop of what a newsletter adds to someone’s day really matters.
- What gets missed — and what I wish I would’ve known — is that newsletters can be a tool to build a community around.
- Big hits only contribute so much in terms of the growth of your list compared to a steady, consistent pattern of output.
- Make sure you give people a reason to open your newsletter other than what you’re selling.
- Experimentation can’t stop.
Get inspired: Newsletter Signup Page Round-up (March 2023) From the 99 Newsletter Project, a great compiler of newsletter examples, insights and tips.
How to grow your email list on LinkedIn – a conversation with Jess Campbell [Campfire Circle podcast]
How Kareem Abdul-Jabbar uses hyperbole to write the best newsletter in the world. Kareem talks about the process, consistency and creativity that’s helped his newsletter earn (at the time I’m writing this) over 109,000 subscribers.
Audiences, retention and revenue
This is a favorite because the biggest hurdle in digital fundraising and revenue isn’t getting people to subscribe, it’s getting them to stick around and do something. In Unlocking Customer Lifetime Value: The power of personalized subscriber onboarding at The Washington Post, Anjali Iyer, who runs lifecycle marketing at WaPo, talks about how optimizing for early engagement benefits long-term retention and how WaPo uses triggers, driving people to apps, and personalization to help new subscribers build retention habits. [The Audiencers]
Subscriber engagement is the key to retention, but how to make the case for investment? Use data and test hypotheses to make a case that putting time and money into engagement produces programmatic results (revenue, actions, etc.). [Pugpig]
Here’s what happened when the Texas Tribune sharpened its newsletter strategy. A thorough assessment of newsletter performance coupled with a clearer vision of newsletter goals and workflows produces more sign-ups, conversions, audience growth and more. [Katie Hawkins-Gaar / News Revenue Hub]
Even from the beginning, the Tribune understood philosophically that newsletters are an absolutely crucial component of their product strategy, their reader engagement strategy and their reader revenue strategy, because all those things are intertwined,” Mackinder said. “It’s the uniqueness and strength of newsletters that helps newsrooms to pull in more and more membership dollars at the end of the day.
– Evan Mackinder, News Revenue Hub
Find your niches is part 3 of a mini-series on how to succeed in the next era of content discovery. The folks at Attention Matters talk about the big power of small audiences and how those small audiences can teach you to grow.
Comments, raffles & hiking: how Blick.ch has acquired over 600k registered users. This isn’t specifically about newsletters but still shows us how innovative approaches can find and engage new audiences. [Madeleine White / The Audiencers]
Newsletter strategies to build retention, trust and revenue. Notes and video from a webinar run by American Press Institute that covers how to gauge audience interest in newsletters, testing and feedback, and revenue. When and why do you paywall a newsletter? How do you turn newsletter readers into paid subscribers and members?
Let’s deep dive into The GIST, a newsletter with over 650,000 subscribers. An extensive case study about how a sports media brand built its flagship newsletter. Yet another useful piece from The Audiencers. Some takeaways:
- Memorable and cohesive branding.
- The whole site drives you to the newsletter. Email sign-up is the goal.
- A sign up flow that leverages audience data.
- Building revenue streams from content readers value (e.g. a jobs board).
- Personalization through surveys.
Why newsletters?
Why the future of digital-only local news may be small, focused and based on email. Editors of digital-only publications discuss the value of email newsletters, how useless pageviews can be and why quality beats quantity when it comes to audiences. [Jim Edwards / Press Gazette]
What’s it take to make a great daily newsletter? Axios’ Kendall Baker is planning to bring one to Yahoo Sports. A conversation with Kendall Baker who ran the Axios Sports newsletter, Sports Internet and a daily newsletter at tech site The Hustle. Interesting to hear Baker talk about newsletters as editorial products not just tools to drive clicks to a website and drive pageviews.
In other words, the newsletter is what people want. The action happens at the newsletter, not on some later hoped-for page three clicks down the line. If you can get and keep attention in a newsletter you can show ads, pitch membership/fundraising or other products right in the newsletter. [Joshua Benton / NiemanLab]
For a lot of publishers, the thing they’re valuing, their KPI, is how many people can we get to click out of this email and onto our site or our app or whatever. So I think some publishers still view newsletters in the same bucket as, like, email marketing. It’s about driving traffic back to the site, versus creating the best editorial experience you can in the email. So they end up creating a newsletter that’s not really a newsletter — it’s a funnel. It’s not meant to be a great editorial product that stands on its own.
– Kendall Baker
Alternative newsletters
Reclaim your brain. A free 5-email serial newsletter that can engage users, reach new people and provide value. All without huge investment and overhead. A user can sign up anytime and automation takes care of the rest. There are countless ways news and community orgs can run similarly tangible on-brand short-course newsletter products. [The Guardian]
Sahan Journal is using voice-note newsletters to reach Somalis in Minnesota. Not every audiences needs, wants or can deal with written email. Sahan Journal, serving a largely Somali immigrant audience in Minneapolis, created a weekly audio newsletter delivered by text as an audio file. [Hanaa’ Tameez / Nieman Lab]