Eight Things You Should Do Now to Set Up Your Newsletter for Success in the New Year

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I’ve made more than my fair share of newsletter mistakes. I’ve sent emails with bad typos and even worse subject lines. I’ve left broken links in my newsletter footer for weeks. I’ve screwed up newsletter launches and A/B tests.

But there’s one mistake I’ve made over and over again: Not being prepared on January 1 with a plan for the new year.

What usually happens is this: I spend the last few weeks of the year coasting to the finish line. I tell myself: “It’s been a busy year! I’ll relax now, and then I’ll make a game plan when the new year rolls around.” And then when the new year arrives, I’m too swamped with work to actually focus on those big plans. It’s April before I’ve come up with a game plan for the year, but then I talk myself out of launching something new in the summer, and then fall flies by. I look up and it’s Thanksgiving week. Oh, well: Maybe I’ll try again next year!

But this year, I’m using the last few weeks before the ball drops to get myself prepared for the new year. If you’re ready to make the most of this time, too, I’ve got a few tasks to add to your checklist. There’s still plenty of time to get stuff done and get your newsletter ready for the year ahead.

Check your automations

The best newsletters lean heavily into automations. You should definitely have a welcome series for when readers sign up for your newsletter, but you also might want automations for other key purposes, like to greet new paying supporters.

But most teams that I work with make a crucial mistake: They set up an automation and then never check on it again.

There’s often an email or two in the series that isn’t working — the opens and clicks are lower than everything else they send — but they haven’t noticed yet. Sometimes, there’s a broken link in an email. (Hope it isn’t the link to buy a subscription or make a purchase!) And just in the past few weeks, I’ve seen several cases where a team had to update a series because someone left their org, and that person had written an email in the welcome series. If you’re not regularly checking in on your automations, you might accidentally send an email from someone who doesn’t work for you anymore.

This is a great time to check in on those automations. Make sure you’re seeing readers open and engage. (These emails tend to have higher open and click rates than your normal newsletter, so anything below that baseline is a red flag.) Check that all the links still work. And see if there’s anything you want to add to the series. For instance, maybe you’ve got an Evergreen email that drives readers to your best-performing content. Is there anything new that you’ve published that you want to add to that email?

And do one more thing: Make a note on your calendar to check back on your automations at least once a quarter. It doesn’t take a ton of time — maybe an hour or two, depending on how many automations you have — but it can save you a lot of trouble in the long run.

Set up Google Postmaster

When a client sends a newsletter that underperforms — opens and clicks are way lower than usual — the first thing I do is check Google Postmaster. It’s a tool that shows you what Google’s seeing behind the scenes. Is there an issue with your domain’s reputation? A spam complaint issue? Google Postmaster can tell you what’s happening, and it’s completely free. For most of my clients, Google is the biggest inbox they send to, so if there’s a deliverability issue, Google Postmaster is the first place they turn to.

If you haven’t already, take a few minutes to set up an account. When you run into deliverability issues in the new year, you’ll be glad you already have access to all of this data.

One thing to note: If the email address you send from belongs to your email platform (i.e. yournewsletter@substack.com), you won’t be able to set up Postmaster. You’ll have to rely on the data that’s available in your platform’s dashboards instead.

Run an end-of-year survey

Your audience continues to change as you grow, so it’s important that you continue to learn about your audience every year. As Ephraim Gopin explained in his piece about end-of-year surveys:

My annual subscriber survey helps me improve what I provide and decide which new products or services I want to launch in the coming year. I can see what’s missing, what the needs are, and meet those needs.

Reach out to readers for feedback before you start planning out your big bets for the new year. I always like to ask three questions in a survey:

• Something numeric (i.e. “On a scale of 1 to 10, how useful is this newsletter to you?”)
• Something about the value of your newsletter (“Why is this newsletter valuable for you?”)
• Something open-ended (“If you could add one thing to our newsletter, what would it be?”)

And then I like to ask readers to validate or reject a few big ideas. Let’s say I want to launch a series of live events in the year ahead. In this survey, I’d ask readers what topics they’d like to learn about at these events, and maybe even if they’d be likely to attend an event in the new year. (The readers who answer “yes” would be tagged and later sent an email with an early bird ticket offer.)

I’ve got suggestions for more questions to ask in this guide.

Keep in mind: Readers are getting a lot of emails this time of year. Don’t be discouraged if the first survey email doesn’t drive a huge response. You may need to ask them a few times, and even offer an incentive to complete the survey, in order to get a statistically significant number of replies.

Update your media kit

If you’re selling ads in your newsletter, you need a media kit — something that tells a prospective sponsor more about who reads your newsletter, the ad formats you offer, and how much you charge for them. But many newsletters have out-of-date media kits. They build something at the start of the year and then forget to update it.

So take some time to review your media kit, and ask yourself three questions:

• Is all of the data in here up to date? — Make sure the basics, like list size or open rates, are still accurate. If you’ve run a big survey of your readers and know more about them — where they work, how much money they make, etc. — add that into the media kit, too.
• Do you want to update the types of ads you offer? — Maybe you’ve focused on native ads but want to explore new sponsorship formats in the next year. Or maybe you’ve expanded beyond newsletters — you’ve got a podcast or events — and need to tell sponsors about new ways they can partner with you.
• Do you want to update your ad rates? — Hopefully, your audience has grown over the past year. With larger audiences should come an increase in the price of your ads. But even if your audience hasn’t grown, you may still want to update your rates. Think about ways to show additional value for advertisers. You can update the design of the newsletter to provide more value — a longer word count, adding an image or a call-to-action button — or you could use audience research to better show the value of your existing readers. (Having a big audience is great; being able to tell the advertiser exactly who those readers are is even better.)

Get your logo in the inbox

Readers only see four things before they open a newsletter:

• The subject line
• The preheader text (sometimes known as preview text)
• The name of the person or brand who sent the email
• The logo for your newsletter or brand

Many newsletters only take advantage of the first three of those options, but you should be using all of them to make sure that your newsletter stands out in the inbox. I’ve talked with so many newsletter operators this year who’ve told me, “Getting our logo into the inbox is one of those things I’ll get around to when the time is right.”

And I’m here to say: You’ve got enough time to check this off your list before the year ahead.

There are five different ways to get your logo into the inbox, and three of them are completely free to set up. This guide can help you figure out which ones make sense for your newsletter.

Run a reactivation series

No one likes “losing” subscribers. But not every reader on your list will stay engaged forever. Some lose interest; some change jobs. If they’re not going to engage with your newsletter, you should be willing to let them go.

The biggest reason for removing these inactive readers is deliverability. Failing to keep a clean list may land you in the spam folder. It doesn’t matter how good your newsletter is if you aren’t getting into the inbox.

But there’s another reason: Cost. Many email service providers charge based on the size of your list. If you keep these inactive readers on your list, you may end up paying far more than you should to your email platform every month. For a smaller list, the total amount might be a few hundred dollars per year. For larger newsletters, the cost might be in the tens of thousands of dollars.

If you haven’t run a reactivation series recently, do it now so you can start the new year with a clean list. I have suggestions in this guide on how to run an effective reactivation series.

Put together a “stop doing” list

In 2023, I implemented a simple practice that’s made a huge difference in my business: Once a quarter, I spend some time reviewing what I worked on over the past three months, what’s working, and what isn’t. These quarterly reviews have given me the chance to take a step back from my day-to-day work and forced me to be honest about where Inbox Collective is going. Often, when I go through them, I realize that there are a few things I’ve been working on that just aren’t working at all.

I’m a one-man operation, and there isn’t enough time in the day for all the stuff I want to do. So when I notice that I’m sinking time into something that doesn’t work, I add it to my “stop doing” list.

The list is exactly what you think it is: It’s a list of stuff I need to stop putting time into, effective immediately.

The end of the year is a perfect time to review where you invested your time this past year. What did you work on that you’re proud of? What drove good results? And what wasn’t worth the time?

Identify the stuff that just isn’t working anymore and be willing to move on. You’ve got plenty of new ideas that you’ll want to work on next year, and you’re going to need to free up some time to work on them.

Figure out your big bets

As you plan your year ahead, you can think about the work in two ways. Some people like to start with the little stuff — things they know they can accomplish. That’s fine, but you may find that you’ve stacked up so many of those little tasks that there isn’t time left for bigger things. Instead, I like to start with the big stuff. You can slot the little stuff in later.

What do you want to bet big on next year? Maybe you want to launch a paid community, create a series of events, or build out new newsletters. Start planning your calendar now around these tentpoles.

Does it really matter if you’re ready to announce those big bets at the start of the year? I think so. Last year, I held a workshop in Copenhagen for 20 publishers, who came from six different countries to be part of the workshop. The workshop wasn’t held until June, but I announced it in January. It sold out in a few weeks.

And when I asked participants why they purchased their seat at the workshop so far in advance, many told me the same thing: Every January, their companies let them know how much money they have to spend on conferences or personal development. By the spring, that money is largely spent. So if there’s an interesting opportunity that’s announced at the start of the year, they’re going to jump on it while the money’s still available.

That’s one main reason why I’ll be announcing most of my big stuff in January. I think you should, too.