Welcome to the April 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 a new edition goes live!
This month’s doc is presented by Revue, a newsletter tool built specifically for writers and publishers! This month, in the Revue newsletter spotlight, we’re taking a deep dive into coronavirus-related pop-up newsletters.
Also inside this edition, you’ll find case studies on how other organizations are using coronavirus coverage to drive newsletter sign-ups, tips about engaging readers and managing community during a pandemic, strategies for cleaning up lists, and more!
One of the advantages of a Google Doc is that it makes it easy to read and search through older editions of Not a Newsletter. You can find them all at this link.
-Dan
This Month in Email News
- A bright spot in a gloomy ad market: newsletter ad revenue is up (for some) (Digiday)
- Email Marketers See Increase in Engagement During Covid-19 Crisis (StreetFight)
- Why coronavirus scammers can send fake emails from real domains (Recode)
- Protecting businesses against cyber threats during COVID-19 and beyond (Google Cloud Blog)
- Marketing giant Maropost exposes 95 million email records and doesn’t seem to care about it (Cybernews)
- Reaction Commerce has been acquired by Mailchimp (Reaction Commerce blog)
- A few industry stories with small newsletter nuggets:
- Chain emails, even sent with good intentions, are still unwelcome during a pandemic (The Washington Post)
- More Than 200 GDPR Fines Issued Totaling €144 Million, New Study by Privacy Affairs Finds (MarTechSeries)
**SPONSORED** Newsletter Spotlight, presented by Revue
Across the world, many cities and countries are starting to loosen restrictions and allow citizens to move more freely. The rate of coronavirus-related infections and deaths, thankfully, seems to be slowing.
We’re moving out of this first phase of the pandemic, but we’ve got massive challenges ahead: A global depression unlike any we’ve seen in generations, food shortages for hundreds of millions of people, the potential return of this virus in cities worldwide, and a sprint to develop treatments and vaccines to keep us safe from the coronavirus.
Your readers are going to want a trusted voice to guide them through the coming months. They’re going to have lots of questions, and they’re going to need a reputable source to bring them answers.
How can you help your readers? Here’s a good place to start: Launch a coronavirus-related newsletter.
Many of the coronavirus newsletters that have popped up this spring have focused on the initial phase of the pandemic: How many people are sick, and what’s being done to keep people safe. But smart organizations will pivot quickly to offer their readers new products around these next phases of the pandemic. They’ll build coronavirus newsletters to help readers find jobs, to help them find ways to save money, or to learn DIY skills. They’ll launch newsletters to connect readers with medical experts about what’s safe in our new normal, and what’s not. They’ll launch newsletters to help keep readers entertained, or to guide readers through ways to stay physically active while quarantined. They’ll launch science-first newsletters to help readers make sense of the medical breakthroughs that are coming in the months ahead.
Looking for a few great examples of original coronavirus newsletters? Here are a few worth signing up for:
- The Telegraph’s You Are Not Alone — This newsletter, sent weekdays, does more than highlight positive stories — it’s a trusted friend during a time of crisis. For readers who are lonely or scared, You Are Not Alone offers stories of optimism, solidarity, and comfort. (Sign up for their newsletter here.)
- Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung’s Corona Update — This newsletter, built through Revue, seeks to answer key questions from readers every day, like How do I put on a mask?, or What do I need to know before I travel again? They’re also smartly using this newsletter as an introductory product that can be used to convert fly-by readers into paying subscribers. (Sign up here.)
- The Salt Lake Tribune’s Utah Eats — What restaurants are open in Utah? What should residents know before going to the grocery store? What food banks and other resources are available to locals? Food needs — and the global food crisis — is going to be one of the defining stories of 2020, and this newsletter focuses on providing readers with the information they need. (Sign up here.)
- Coda Story’s The Infodemic — Sent three times a week, The Infodemic seeks to track misinformation around the coronavirus. It’s a fascinating look at how information is spreading worldwide, a topic that’s especially important in this interconnected moment. (Sign up here.)
- PolitiFact’s & MediaWise’s Coronavirus Facts — While The Infodemic focuses on larger global storylines, Coronavirus Facts focuses specifically on debunking fake news that’s spreading online. This is designed to be a newsletter that readers can easily share with family, friends, and colleagues. (Sign up here.)
- Robin Lloyd’s “smart, useful, science stuff about COVID-19” — Lloyd, a contributing editor at Scientific American, offers a roundup of the science and public health stories worth reading that day, curated by a trusted voice. (Sign up here.)
- ZEIT Online’s “Was jetzt Hoffnung gibt” (“What Gives Hope Now”) — This German publisher launched a five-day pop-up newsletter during Easter week around the theme of hope. Every day, they sent readers a video of notable German authors reading passages from books or essays that struck a hopeful note during a time of crisis.
- Grist’s Climate in the Time of Coronavirus — How will this current pandemic affect the environment? This newsletter offers personal stories, and answers readers’s questions about climate change and COVID-19. It’s a great example of how to keep readers informed about a story that matters — but might not be making headlines at this moment. (Sign up here.)
Remember: There are a lot of stories left to cover in this crisis. Think about the pressing questions your readers have at this moment, and build newsletters to get those readers the answers they need.
This month’s Not a Newsletter is presented by Revue, an editorial newsletter tool for writers and publishers.
For Your COVID-19 Reading List
There’s a lot to share this month, so let’s do something a little different this month. First up: Stories and links related to COVID-19.
- I worked with the Newspack team, the News Revenue Hub, Jim Brady of Spirited Media, and Elizabeth Hansen of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism to put together the Coronavirus Newsletter Playbook. It’s designed for news organizations to talk you through the steps you’ll need to build an email strategy around coronavirus, and even includes templates you can use to write emails to readers asking for support.
- Ariel Zirulnick of the Membership Puzzle Project profiled 15 different organizations adapting their membership strategies for coronavirus.
- On the Deep.bi blog, Hisham Itani wrote about steps that news organizations should take to drive long-term revenue. If you’re not using this moment to drive email signups or new registrations, I’d give it some thought right now.
- David Grant of the Facebook Journalism Project documented how some organizations have been able to quickly build email lists of 100k+ subscribers for their coronavirus newsletter, including examples from The Dallas Morning News and La Presse in Canada. (Full disclosure: I’m a regular speaker at Facebook Journalism Project events, and am compensated for my work there.)
- Acoustic’s Loren McDonald wrote about email marketing strategies during this crisis for brick-and-mortar or ecommerce businesses.
- Leila d’Angelo talked through building the right tone of voice for your COVID-19 emails.
- The Coral Project wrote about managing a community during a pandemic.
- On a related note: On the Hearken blog, Morten Ro and Signe Kirstine Andersen talked about how a Danish broadcaster has been using audience engagement to serve readers.
- And one more to share: Adriene Hill, Ashley Alvarado, and Jon Cohn of KPCC and LAist talked about ways they’ve tested out reader engagement during this crisis.
- Trusting News’s Joy Mayer talked about something crucial: Establishing trust with your readers at a time like this.
- I’ll make sure to mention this here: Readers aren’t going to support your organization until they trust you first. Joy’s advice (and the Trusting News project in general) is great, and you should be thinking about how to build these concepts into every part of your email strategy, including daily emails and onboarding.
- The team at Fathm put together a playbook to managing a distributed newsroom during this crisis.
- Ryan Sager of Montague Street Media wrote about a few next steps he’s recommending to his clients (including a few around newsletter growth).
- The team at DoR in Romania wrote about why they launched a daily newsletter, called the Pandemic Journal, to support their readers.
- Over at Nieman Lab, Adriana Lacy interviewed Patrice Peck about her new newsletter, Coronavirus News For Black Folks.
- On the Newsletter Wizards blog, Caroline Porter and Emily Roseman interviewed the Montana Free Press’s John S. Adams about the growth they’ve seen from their COVID-19 email strategy.
- WIRED’s Gilad Edelman wrote about how a group at Mass General created a COVID-19 newsletter that’s for doctors, by doctors.
- Revue’s Mark Schiefelbein wrote about how to adapt Jay Rosen’s urgency index idea for newsletters.
- Claire Heginbotham at Paved looked back at the spike that many publishers saw in the early days of this crisis. Open rates in New York City, for instance, jumped 16% in the week after the stay-at home order was announced.
- It’s been great to see companies stepping up to help their clients during a time like this. A few I wanted to mention:
- Email on Acid is giving away free access to their Campaign Precheck tool to help businesses affected by COVID-19.
- Validity is offering free certification for critical or essential businesses to help them stay out of the spam folder.
- MailChimp is comping access to their Standard plans for public service organizations.
- Litmus released their annual State of Email survey, and for every survey completed, they’re donating $1 to help the amazing Women of Email org, which supports women in the email marketing industry.
- Uplers is offering free coding for new email templates or landing pages.
- iContact is offering free access to their ESP for any organizations that serve small communities.
- Substack announced a series of small grants to help writers on its platform.
- And I wrote a little about the two steps you can take to figure out a game plan for your org in the weeks ahead.
For Your Reading List (non-COVID-19 stories)
- The Daily Maverick’s Styli Charalambous is putting together a survey of news organizations to see which ESPs they’re using, and what they want from their ESP. If you have a minute, do take the survey!
- Litmus’s Whitney Rudeseal Peet wrote about five tips for winning back readers through reactivation campaigns.
- Also on the subject or reactivation: Kickbox’s Jessica Martinez talked through strategies for cleaning up your email list.
- The Wall Street Journal’s Annemarie Dooling wrote about how the WSJ views email as a platform, and why that matters.
- An interesting little nugget tucked into this story from Twipe’s Mary-Katharine Phillips: During a year of testing with The Times (of London), they ran a series of tests to find the optimal send time, but discovered that their original set time (7 a.m.) outperformed them all.
- Adobe’s Oliver Lindberg wrote about some good rules for UX writing, including writing copy related to newsletter sign-ups.
- A Media Operator’s Jacob Cohen Donnelly wrote about a promising bundling experiment with two Substack newsletters. I’m curious to see if others will follow.
- Aweber released a guide to best practices for email for small businesses. Lots of smart folks who regularly pop up here in Not a Newsletter are quoted, so do check that one out.
- Campaign Monitor updated their guide to CSS animation in email. If you’re doing any custom coding of your templates, this is worth a read.
- A neat resource here: EcommerceSenders.com, which lets you see the email strategies behind some of the top sellers on Shopify.
Stuff I Loved This Month
- It’s been fun seeing other Google Docs popping up to help folks during this crisis. Among the ones I’ve seen and enjoyed: My former BuzzFeed colleague Alanna Okun wrote a guide to knitting during a pandemic, and the team at Justworks built a list of resources to use during remote life.
- More great things: Girls’ Night In built a wonderful guide to taking care of yourself during the crisis, and Thought Starter put together a series of ways to help.
- Loved this, from the SportsStories newsletter: Without anything to cover, they decided to turn the newsletter over to their kids.
- It’s great to see all sorts of people pitching in to help during this crisis. Here’s a great example from Litmus’s Jason Rodriguez.
- This is the best tweet I’ve ever seen about email marketing.
A Slightly Different Note to Close Out This Doc (Instead of the Usual Anonymous Animal)
The first time I met Justin Bank, he sat down next to me at a conference and told me, “I just want you to know, I’m rooting for Inbox Collective. We all are.”
I’d announced only a few days earlier that I was going to be leaving The New Yorker to start my consulting business, a message that was greeted by many of my colleagues in the industry with a resounding, “Huh?”
And Justin’s first statement to me was: You got this.
So I knew right away that Justin was a little different.
Justin’s a husband, a father, a New Yorker, a D.C. sports fan, an incredibly bright digital thinker, a leader over at NPR, a true believer in the power of news, a guy who seems to know everyone in the industry — and as of a few days ago, a survivor of COVID-19.
For a few weeks now, Justin’s been hospitalized in New York due to the virus. For a stretch in April, I checked my email every few hours, hoping for an update from his family. The day they announced that he’d be moving out of the ICU was one of those rare happy days this spring.
He’s not out of the woods yet, but he’s improving, thanks to an incredible team of doctors and nurses in the city. One of these days, soon I hope, he’ll be able to get home to his family.
I just want you to know Justin: I’m rooting for you to get better soon. We all are.
That’s all for this edition! Want to be notified when next month’s edition of Not a Newsletter is live? Sign up here:
