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Not a Newsletter

Not a Newsletter: September 2021

Welcome to the September edition of Not a Newsletter, a monthly, semi-comprehensive, Google Doc-based guide to sending better emails! I’m Dan, the founder of Inbox Collective, an email consultancy, and the former Director of Newsletters at The New Yorker and BuzzFeed. Every month, I update this doc with email news, tips, and ideas. Sign up here to be notified when the next edition goes live!

This month: Yanna-Torry Aspraki is back with another Ask a Deliverability Expert, answering the question: Is open rate a good way to determine if my emails are being delivered to the inbox? Plus: Tips about setting up your first reactivation campaign, lessons from the Creator and B2B spaces about list growth, and more!

Want to read a previous edition of Not a Newsletter? Find the full archive at this link.

-Dan 

(Email / Twitter / LinkedIn)

Two parents say goodbye to their child as they enter the car to head out to college. "Don't forget to click Reply," they say.
William Haefel / The New Yorker

This Month in Email Headlines

A Very Brief Note About Apple’s iOS Update

Apple’s iOS update — which includes their Mail Privacy Protection feature — is beginning to roll out this month, which means that over the next few weeks, you’ll see a few changes to your email data. A few quick reminders:

1.) You should see a big increase in your open rates. Unfortunately, these won’t be real opens — they’ll be the result of Apple Mail “opening” your email on behalf of readers.

2.) Only readers who use Apple Mail to check email on their phone, tablet, or desktop, and who opt in to the MPP update, will be affected.

3.) The two big data points that will be affected: Open rates and location data.

In the long run, my expectation is that most ESPs will adjust to MPP and make major changes to the way they present data around reader engagement (like open rate or star rating). I expect they’ll also make it significantly easier to identify Apple Mail readers on desktop and mobile, and to find readers who open 100% of emails but never click — which should be a sign that the reader isn’t actually engaging with your content.

But in the short run, two recommendations: 1.) Don’t panic!, and 2.) If you haven’t already, make sure you identify and save the segments of your audience who frequently open or rarely open your emails. If you care about a reader’s location, you might also want to save that, too. Here’s an example of how to do all that. 

A few other links to share:

Ask a Deliverability Expert

I get a lot of questions about deliverability, and I don’t always have the right answers. But I know someone who does: Yanna-Torry Aspraki, a true deliverability expert. She’s been working in the email space since 2014 in all sorts of roles — at ESPs, with brands, and as a consultant. She really knows her stuff!

So let’s get to this month’s question:

I run an outlet that covers tech and digital privacy, so in my newsletter, I don’t collect data on readers, such as open rate and clicks. Any suggestions on how to guarantee that subscribers are receiving my messages without that kind of feedback?

💌  💌  💌

As a deliverability specialist, you can only imagine the number of times I see businesses argue about their deliverability and domain/IP reputation based on their open or click rates.

“What do you mean our emails are landing in spam or are being blocked? My open rates are XYZ%!” — Customer in denial

For instance, a good B2B sender can find itself consistently with very low open rates if their list is filled with Microsoft Office 365 subscribers. A bad sender might actually see an increase in open rates as their domain/IP reputation goes down, because spam filters are triggering the tracking pixels and looking at the links of your email.

Open and click rates are interesting numbers to look at, and you’ll want to ensure they remain consistent through time, but as more and more changes are happening in the email world — looking at you, Apple iOS update — your strategy shouldn’t rely on these two numbers alone. And if, as is the case of the outlet that asked this month’s question, you’re not collecting any open or click data, that’s still OK — you don’t need that data to understand if your readers are receiving your emails! There are so many other things that can and should be looked at to ensure you’re making the right decisions and that your emails are actually landing in your customer’s inboxes.

Read the full story here

For Your Reading / To-Do List

  • Why use email? Hubspot’s Katrina Kirsch put together a guide to key metrics about the world of email marketing.
  • Two years ago, my friend Sean Blanda took a job at a SaaS company with a tough-to-explain mission. (They’re called Crossbeam, and two years in, here’s the best I can explain it: It’s Zapier, but for companies to sync and share data.) Anyway, I’ve been fascinated to watch Sean grow their content operation (again, considering the fact that their company isn’t all that easy to explain!). In less than two years, they’ve grown their email list to more than 22,000 readers. Here’s the playbook they used to do it.
  • I love seeing stories about the way email affects other industries. For SlopeFillers, Gregg Blanchard pulled some stats on how email works for the ski industry. (One client saw a return of $587 for every $1 they spent on email marketing!)
  • I’ve been getting this question a lot from clients who are thinking about switching to a new email platform: Dan, should we use a shared IP or a dedicated IP? Luckily, Steph Knapp of Litmus has written a great guide to the pros and cons of each. (My general advice: Unless you’re sending hundreds of thousands of emails or more per day, stick with a shared IP.)
  • Here’s a neat story: The American Heart Association was able to win back half a million subscribers, and raise more than $250,000, from a reactivation campaign aimed at their inactive readers. (You can see examples of the emails here.) Reactivation is one of those things that I mention frequently here in the Doc, but haven’t gone into much depth on. So let’s take a moment here to talk about it!
    • Running regular reactivation campaigns is incredibly important for a few reasons. For one, as Yanna-Torry mentioned earlier in this Doc, keeping your list clean is a great way to maintain high deliverability. (If inboxes see that readers aren’t engaging with your emails the way they used to, you might end up in the spam folder.) But reactivation campaigns have another crucial purpose: Giving yourself the chance to win back readers who had previously opted in to your newsletter — and who, for whatever reason, have started to tune you out.
    • And yes, you can actually win back those readers! At one company I work with, we were able to win back 25% of readers who hadn’t opened an email in 90 days! That number’s unusually high — but I commonly see newsrooms who are able to get 5-10% of their inactives to start engaging again with their newsletters.
    • A few tips for reactivation:
      • Figure out what a “disengaged reader” means for you. I typically advise clients to start with a segment of readers who haven’t opened an email for 90+ days, but maybe that’s too aggressive a window for you (or not aggressive enough!). If you’re sending a daily email, maybe you want to tighten that window to 60 days. If you’re signing up lots of people via paid ads or contests, maybe you’re targeting them after just 30 days. Point is: Think carefully about what it means to be disengaged, and when you want to target these readers.
      • Don’t just suppress/delete these inactive readers! Reach out to them and see if you can win them back — many of them will come back and give you a second chance!
      • Think about sending these emails from a different email address than you usually do. Sometimes, your email might have accidentally ended up in the spam folder, so sending from a new email address might land you back in the main inbox. (If that happens, try using copy like this, from The Newslette, to explain how to get your normal newsletters back into the inbox.)
      • Try a few different tactics with these emails:
        • Offer readers the chance to opt down to a lesser cadence of emails — once a week, once a month, once a quarter. (Here’s a great example of this, from Pew.) I’d rather a reader opt down than opt out entirely!
        • Showcase some of the best stories that readers have missed recently. (Here’s an example from The New Yorker.) If they open and click, they might remember why they signed up in the first place, and then start opening emails again.
        • And if they don’t engage with emails like these, take the friendly route and tell them that you’ll remove them from the list unless they opt back in. (I’ve tried this tactic at several outlets, including BuzzFeed, and these sorts of emails work surprisingly well.)
      • Don’t try to trick people into opening your emails! Be direct with your subject lines and make sure readers know what action they’re being asked to take before they open. (For instance, for an email asking if they want to change their email preferences, you might go with a straightforward subject line like, “Do you want to change your email preferences?”) I’ve seen brands that have tried, what I’d consider at least, to be fairly shady tactics to get readers to open. (Shout out to the company that sent me an email titled, “You’ve won!”, and which went on to claim that I was a big winner… by reading their emails. I unsubscribed immediately.) Just be direct — you’ll get far better results.
      • One more thing: Apple’s MPP update means that tracking disengagement among subscribers will be a little tougher in the short run. You might want to wait a bit – at least until your ESP is better able to show you who’s truly engaged/disengaged — before you try a series like this.
  • Alright, moving on to other topics! You might have questions about best practices for email accessibility, so make time for this Q&A with Paul Airy of Beyond the Envelope™, who dives into lessons around fonts, colors, and more.
  • Loved this, from VeryGoodCopy’s Eddie Shleyner, about writing headlines that make a specific promise, and why they convert well.
  • There are a lot of guides out there to getting your first 1,000 subscribers. But I appreciated this, from the team at Revue: A roundup of all the “How to get your first 1,000 subscriber posts.
  • A few success stories from the creator space:
    • Mario Gabriele of The Generalist explained everything (and I really do mean everything) he learned from a year of running a paid newsletter product, one that’s brought in more than $300,000 in revenue.
    • Casey Newton of Platformer also shared some one-year-in learnings.
    • Of note: Both of these are true success stories in this space. But you’ll note in both pieces: Mario’s converting just 2.3% of readers from free to paid. Casey’s converting about 5%. The lesson: Just because you’ve seen a specific stat (like this one that’s been circulating in the creator world for a while: “Expect to convert 10% of readers from free to paid”) doesn’t mean it’s a guarantee that you’ll see similar performance.
  • I wanted to pass along this PSA, from Anne Libby, who tried to port over her paying subscriber list from one ESP to another, but then really struggled with some behind-the-scenes Stripe issues. You can read her story here.
  • Two big case studies I want to make sure you don’t miss this month:
    • For INN, Katie Hawkins-Gaar dove into the story of Sahan Journal, a fantastic newsroom covering immigrant stories and social justice in Minneapolis. Do spend some time with this to learn how they used matching funds to grow revenue by 50% in one year.
    • The Colorado Sun published their annual report, which details their three revenue streams, including premium newsletter offerings (for $240 a year, you can get access to several exclusive products, like their politics newsletter).

Stuff I Loved This Month

The Google Docs Anonymous Animal of the Month

One of the quirks of publishing in a Google Doc is that when readers like you visit, Google identifies you as an animal in the top right corner of the doc. So to close out this edition of Not a Newsletter, I want to spotlight one of the Google Doc animals in a feature I call… the Google Docs Anonymous Animal of the Month! This month:

the Grizzly
  • America’s third president, Thomas Jefferson, was gifted two grizzly bears in 1807. Quickly realizing that grizzly bears living on the White House lawn might be a bad idea, he re-gifted them to a museum in Philadelphia.
  • Grizzly bears are surprisingly fast, having been clocked at speeds north of 30 miles per hour. In the 1930s, naturalists at Yellowstone National Park noted that the grizzly was capable of running at speeds of 25 miles per hour over the course of nearly two miles, with “a stamina that would certainly try the best of horses.” And if you are thinking about making a trip next year to bear country, take note of this advice from Alaska’s Department of National Resources: If a bear charges at you, don’t run — and don’t attempt to climb a tree, unless you’re able to get 30+ feet up within a matter of seconds. Instead, stand your ground, wave your arms, be loud, and bang on pots and pans if necessary.
  • When the grizzly begins to prepare for winter, it enters a phase where it’s capable of eating for up to 20 hours straight, without ever getting full. In a single day, some grizzlies can eat up to 100,000 calories in a single day. (Bears: Nature’s most relatable creatures!) Just watch this BBC video of bears waiting along a river to catch salmon swimming upstream — it’s mesmerizing.
  • But grizzlies don’t just eat salmon. They’ll eat pretty much anything, from moose to berries to moths.
  • Every year, Alaska’s Katmai National Park hosts an online contest called Fat Bear Week, wherein you, the voters, are given the important chance to choose the fattest bear in the park. Fat Bear Week takes place this month — click here to crown one of these bears at the fattest of them all!

Anyway, the Grizzly! That’s your Google Docs Anonymous Animal of the Month. 

Here's a decorative image of three animals: An owl, a flamingo, and a seahorse

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By Dan Oshinsky

Dan runs Inbox Collective, a consultancy that helps news organizations, non-profits, and independent operators get the most out of email. He specializes in helping others build loyal audiences via email and then converting that audience into subscribers, members, or donors.

He previously created Not a Newsletter, a monthly briefing with news, tips, and ideas about how to send better email, and worked as the Director of Newsletters at both The New Yorker and BuzzFeed.

He’s been a featured speaker at events like Litmus Live in Boston, Email Summit DK in Odense, and the Email Marketing Summit in Brisbane. He’s also been widely quoted on email strategies, including in publications like The Washington Post, Fortune, and Digiday.