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Not a Newsletter

Not a Newsletter: April 2021

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!

Inside, you’ll find resources about:

  • Why it’s so important to start a real conversation with your readers.
  • The success — and stress — of being a solo creator with a newsletter.
  • How to switch ESPs without hurting your deliverability.
  • A brand new email metric, “Risk,” to measure reader dissatisfaction.

..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 the full archive at this link.

-Dan 

(Email / Twitter / LinkedIn)

a mail carrier pushes their mailbag up a hill, like Sisyphus
Elisabeth McNair / The New Yorker

This Month in Email Headlines

For Your Reading / To-Do List

  • I hit a fun milestone this month: 1,000 welcome emails replied to.
    • In June 2019, right as I was about to take the leap with Inbox Collective, I made a small tweak to my welcome series. I knew I was going to need to learn a lot more about my readers, so I thought: Why don’t I just ask them about themselves?
    • Here’s the email I started sending:
Here's my welcome email. I ask readers to reply to start the conversation with my readers.
  • Since then, Just over 5,000 readers have received that welcome email, and 1 in 5 readers writes back to me. Sometimes they say hi; sometimes they ask a specific question; sometimes, their email kicks off a long email chain. But I make time, every single day, to reply to every one of these readers. Sure, it takes a little time — maybe 5 or 10 minutes a day — to reply to these emails. But I cannot tell how many loyal readers (and how many eventual clients!) I’ve gotten just from that simple email.
  • If you’re sending a newsletter, don’t just use it as a broadcast tool. Hit reply, and start a real conversation with your readers.
  • I absolutely loved this, from the Aztek Web blog: They invented a brand new email metric, “Risk,” that does a far better job of measuring reader dissatisfaction than unsubscribe rate. Read this one — it’s really clever, and a metric I think many readers will be able to implement right away when trying to figure out whether or not they’re emailing readers too frequently or with the wrong types of messages.
  • Useful research here from Jeff Sonderman and Gwen Vargo of the American Press Institute about subscriber retention strategies. If you’ve seen me talk in the past 18 months, you’ve heard me emphasize over and over again the importance of setting up a great onboarding series. This research is another reminder: For most publishers, there’s still room to improve the way they welcome readers.
  • There are a lot of ways to use live content — like countdown timers or live polls — to drive reader engagement. Oracle’s Nick Cantu details a few great examples of live content in this blog post.
  • Really Good Emails’s Matt Helbig interviewed Chris Vasquez, chief product officer at Aweber and the creator of the newsletter Would You Rather, about what makes for a good survey email. One takeaway: Let readers make the first choice in the survey right there in the email, so they’re invested in the survey and make it all the way to the end. 
  • I’ve gotten a few questions from readers about BIMI lately — it’s the feature that will allow anyone to place their logo next to their name in the inbox. Al Iverson of Spam Resource has a guide to which inboxes support BIMI so far. (The key detail: Gmail’s not there yet, but it’s coming.)
  • Web Smith’s 2PM newsletter just turned five. He explains here something that I’ve felt myself: The pressure that comes with creating something. As Web writes:

With every email sent comes greater responsibility and greater feedback. Negative responses, trolls, and bad actors rise with every send. As more subscribers become paid members, the more I work to assure the quality of their monthly or annual investment into 2PM.

There is an unspoken truth. The intensity of five years of treading water, taking flight, and handling setbacks takes a toll on the soul. There is a mental and emotional weathering that begins to impact the people who matter most. If I struggle, the team around me is impacted. Over time, I’ve learned how to compartmentalize for their sake. A number of tough lessons litter that path.

If I had to do it again, I would have prioritized balance and superior communication. I would have spent more energy improving as a leader and less as a creator. I would have operationalized the company much faster. I would have delegated better, freeing myself to give more to the business owners and thinkers who email in with questions or requests.

And I would have found the time to take more breaks, at the cost of disgruntled emails or the loss of the precious momentum.

  • It’s not easy building something as a solo creator. Kudos to Web for being this honest about how hard that road can be sometimes.
  • Packy McCormick of Not Boring shared a detailed look at his growth a year in. Something to note here: The most valuable growth mechanism for his newsletter? It’s his own stories. Nothing is more effective than creating great content that readers can then share with their colleagues and friends.
  • Four more creator stories to share here:

Throughout all this time, though, I’ve been working at Tangle at the same time as I did a full-time job as an editor. That means I’m up every day at 5 a.m. and usually working through dinner time. For almost two years, it has meant 12 to 14 hour days pecking away on the computer, working on Sundays, doing research, making phone calls, juggling this project alongside another job, planning a wedding, maintaining a relationship, and generally just trying like hell to have a life outside of work.

  • Isaac’s story is worth noting here, if you’re thinking about building a newsletter like this. It often takes two years, as it was with Tangle, to build an audience that can sustain a newsletter as a full-time job. (And those two years are going to be a lot of work!) Are there success stories where growth happens faster than that? Sure. But if you’re thinking about building a business around your newsletter, anticipate that you’re going to be the rule — not the exception.
  • Pat Walls of Starter Story interviewed Luciano Viterale of the Ticker Nerd newsletter and talked about how they built a subscribers-only product that helps people identify stocks to invest in. They say Ticker Nerd now drives $4,500 every month in revenue.
  • Simon Owens talked to Josh Spector, creator of the For the Interested newsletter (and also the Newsletter Creators newsletter group) about how he monetizes his 25,000 newsletter subscribers in several different ways.
  • Dan Frommer of The New Consumer explained what he learned in year two of running a subscription newsletter. I wanted to make sure I highlighted this section:

Heading into lockdown, I only offered annual memberships, which cost $200. So on March 16, as an experiment, I launched monthly memberships, which lowered the cost of entry to $20. As you might expect, monthly memberships quickly dominated my new user sign-ups. This kept member growth steady during the scariest quarantine months, but reduced cash flow….

In September, I decided to pull the plug on new monthly memberships. They were working well enough, and the vast majority of people maintained their subscriptions after each renewal. (Many are still here today, a year later!) But seeing any subscribers disappear after just a few weeks just doesn’t feel great, and didn’t feel like the right exchange of commitment. I want to build long-term relationships with people who want to be here, even if it means leaving some money on the table.

  • I really appreciate the honesty from Dan. It’s tough to turn down revenue — but I think focusing on long-term relationships is the smart move for any creator.
  • A neat detail in this case study from Phrasee about how Walgreens adjusted their email marketing efforts to get more people vaccinated: Walgreen started getting more thoughtful about how they used emojis. Walgreens’s Brian Tyrrell told Phrasee:

“In March of 2020, it was important that we change our use of emojis. We didn’t want to use the red alarm bell emoji on an email that was about a deal anymore. If we were going to use that type of urgent emoji, we wanted to make sure that it was being used in a way that matched the level of severity that was covered in the content

  • I love this — it shows that even a big company like Walgreens (with 50 million emails in their database!) can adjust how it sends email to match the current moment.
  • Litmus’s Magan Le reports on the current state of the email client marketplace. #1 and #2, by a massive margin: Apple’s iPhone, and Gmail.
  • I love this, from Elizabeth Shilpa on the WAN-IFRA blog: How Die Presse, an Austrian publisher, became a more data-driven publisher thanks to some smart investments — and a great internal newsletter.
    • This is something I’ve been working on with a number of Inbox Collective clients. If you’re a newsroom or a non-profit working on email, you should be sharing lessons, learnings, and results with your team internally. And if you’re not yet doing that, email me at dan@inboxcollective.com — I’m happy to share ideas for how to start an internal email like this!
  • A local newsletter story worth sharing: On the Local Media Association blog, Joe Lanane talks with the Raleigh Convergence newsletter about how they’ve used email to engage locals, and are building a membership strategy on top of that.
  • I love seeing stories of broadcast newsrooms that are investing in email. (TV and radio outlets have typically lagged a little behind traditional print outlets when it comes to newsletters.) But here’s an example of a broadcast outlet worth reading: KXLY, a TV station in the Pacific Northwest, that grew an audience of more than 10,000 readers with their daily newsletter.
    • One thing I especially loved: They’ve gone beyond rate in measuring success with their newsletter! Melissa Luck, their news director, mentions that they’re looking closely at Mailchimp’s engagement status numbers (which show if a reader opens your newsletters often, sometimes, or rarely).
    • Looking for other non-open rate metrics that matter? I’ve got a few suggestions here.
  • There were some two dozen hours of videos that came out of Newsletter Fest this year, and if you missed it, all the recordings are here. For folks in the news space, you might want to make time for the subscription lessons shared by the Daily Memphian or The New Paper — lots of good stuff in there!
  • Neat story from Nieman Lab’s Hanaa’ Tameez about college students in California who built a wire service using a newsletter.
  • Most newsrooms aren’t truly personalizing their newsletter strategy. One notable exception, though, are the newsrooms working with Twipe. On the Twipe blog, Matthew Lynes shared details of two recent personalization success stories.
  • Good stuff here from Designmodo’s Nataly Birch, about how to send a great cancellation email. These emails are your last chance to win back a reader who’s about to disappear forever — so make them count!
  • Thinking about switching ESPs? Alyssa Dulin and Melissa Lambert are back with season two of the “Deliverability Defined” podcast, and have a useful set of steps to follow to make sure you can switch ESPs without hurting your deliverability. 
  • Great interview by Channing Allen of The Deep Dive with Ghost’s John O’Nolan about how they’ve more than doubled their revenue this year as more creators have started using Ghost to publish and distribute content. 
    • In particular, I really appreciated this line from John: “Where we fit in is trying to be the Shopify of the space, with a long tail of thousands of publishers powered by a common set of technology. Nobody needs to know what Ghost is. I want people to know the creators that we power, instead.”
    • And if you’re curious about Ghost and want to try it for yourself, do use the Not a Newsletter affiliate link! Using those links (including the ones in the “Tools To Help You Grow Your Newsletter” section below) is one of the best ways to support this Google Doc and make sure I can keep it free for all readers, forever.
  • Something I’ve seen firsthand: Sending a terms of service or privacy policy update email can often accidentally cause huge deliverability problems for your business. Postmark’s Bettina Specht details a few simple steps to take to make sure that sending an email like that doesn’t cause long-term headaches for your email program.
  • There’s some great work being done by outlets using new messaging channels like WhatsApp. Check out this report from GIJN’s Laura Oliver about how newsrooms in Brazil, South Africa, and Zimbabwe are using that platform to get their stories to readers.
  • More international success stories: In South Africa, The Daily Vox’s Fatima Moosa and Des Brown details how they tripled their email audience thanks to a few smart strategies — including a particularly effective on-site pop-up.
  • For Means of Creation, Li Jin, Nathan Baschez, and Yash Bagal wrote about different opportunities for musicians to build an audience — including newsletters. 

Stuff I Loved This Month

  • Litmus Live will be back, in person in Boston, this September! This event — then called the Email Design Summit — was where I got my very first speaking gig in the email world, all the way back in 2013. It’s a fantastic event, and a great place to give a talk — even if you’re a first-timer! If you do have a talk you’d like to give, submit your idea here. You’ve got until May 18 to do so.
    • And if in-person events are returning, I suppose that means I might have to start looking for a good bar in the Boston area to host the next Not a Happy Hour for readers of this very Google Doc 🙂
  • More Course success stories to share this month: The OC Register launched the Garden Party newsletter, an eight-week newsletter Course designed to help people learn how to grow tomatoes. Their team tells me that they’ve already seen more than 1,000 new sign-ups and 50%+ open rates on these emails — a great start for what should be a very evergreen type of product.
  • And Courses work for both newsrooms and creators! Here’s a great example, from Adrienne Smith, a consultant who works with organizations on content strategy: It’s a week-long content strategy crash course.
  • Congrats to the team at MailNinja, which acquired the (excellent) Chimp Essentials program from Paul Jarvis. If you’re on Mailchimp and just getting started there, you should absolutely take a close look at Chimp Essentials. It’s a great way to make sure you get the most out of your Mailchimp account.
  • Taylor Swift recently sent out an email that — at least to my untrained eye — appeared to be a massive email goof! But the folks at Pedestrian explained why the entire thing is (maybe?) a series of Easter Eggs for fans.
  • This is an absolute delight of a story about how Block Club Chicago sold $100k in merchandise about a gator named… Chance the Snapper.
  • Also on the note of fundraising: Do make time for this piece by Richland Source president Jay Allred about how they figured out the value proposition for their local newsroom (and raised $250k using it). The steps Jay detailed here work for just about anything: A fundraising pitch to big corporations, email asks to newsletter subscribers, or even figuring out the marketing language you should be using to convert site readers to your newsletters!
  • Good stuff here, from a whole bunch of great independent newsletters: Sidechannel, a new Discord community.
  • Congrats to the team at Poynter, which just launched a great new newsletter, The Collective, specifically to amplify diverse voices in the journalism world. I’m hopeful that we’ll see other newsrooms use email to create impact like this. (Full disclosure: I work with the Poynter team through Inbox Collective.)
  • Here’s a story I didn’t expect to be sharing this month: How a team of volunteers in India created a print newsletter to serve farmers protesting new agricultural laws in their country.

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 Chameleon
  • This year, according to reporting from National Geographic, scientists discovered a chameleon that may be the smallest reptile on Earth. It’s about the size of a sunflower seed.
  • I’m also proud (well, I’m not sure if proud is quite the right word, but it’s too late, I’m going for it) to mention that the male version of the world’s smallest reptile, known as the Brookesia nana, is notable for having unusually large genitals — which are roughly 20 percent of their overall body length. (It especially delights me to know that this information was reported by Smithsonian Magazine. Your tax dollars at work!)
  • Chameleons are most notable for their ability to change color, which they do for three main reasons: To camouflage themselves, to heat up or cool down, or to communicate with other chameleons. If you’ve never watched a video of a chameleon changing color in real time, it’s really quite something.

Anyway, the Chameleon! 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.