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Not a Newsletter

Not a Newsletter: August 2021

Welcome to the August 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: New ideas for campaigns to convert newsletter readers to paying subscribers; case studies and interviews from the creator space; data comparing the effectiveness of pop-ups vs. static sign-up boxes; 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)

An officer manager asks the office: "Has that one guy we've been sending all the spam to responded yet?"
Joe Dator / The New Yorker

This Month in Email Headlines

For Your Reading / To-Do List

  • As we move towards the end of the year, many organizations — newsrooms, non-profits, and even creators — are going to start thinking about their end-of-the-year campaigns, where, over the course of a few weeks, they’ll try to convert readers to subscribers, members, or donors. And as you think about those campaigns, I want you to consider this concept, from Jane Mahoney, who leads the reader revenue strategy at Private Media in Australia. 
    • Earlier this year, Crikey, one of Private Media’s brands, was working on a big series on corruption in Australia. Typically, a series like this would sit behind the Crikey paywall. Instead, Jane’s team tested out something new: Taking that paywalled content and breaking it into a pop-up newsletter for email subscribers who weren’t yet paying subscribers, and seeing if giving readers this great editorial content in their inbox — and then targeting them with marketing messages around the series, both through email and social media — would lead to conversion.
    • The result? Their subscriber base grew by more than 12 percent in Q1, with most of that subscriber growth directly tied to the corruption campaign.
    • Jane’s been kind enough to share examples of all of this — the emails sent, the marketing messages, plus data — with Not a Newsletter readers. I hope you’ll spend a few minutes with these slides — there’s a lot to learn from their case study!
      • (And, full transparency: I’ve worked with the Crikey team since 2020 through Inbox Collective.)
  • Let’s turn to Poland, where Gazeta Wyborcza’s seeing strong subscription growth. They shared a few lessons with WAN-IFRA’s Neha Gupta, including this fascinating nugget: When they expanded their welcome series for paying subscribers from four emails to eight, spread out over 21 days, they saw a 57% lift in engagement among these readers.
  • And in Canada, I loved this story from Indiegraf’s ​​Trevor Jang about how they worked with Canada’s Peterborough Currents to grow audience revenue by 1,745% in six months. Among the tactics here that are worth trying at your org: A multi-week email campaign around the publication’s anniversary.
  • Two links related to Apple’s upcoming privacy updates, which are expected to be released in September: 
    • Litmus put together a great guide that you can download here. From Litmus’s testing, they’re expecting the open rates for Apple users to be about 75% (not 100%, as I expected), due to some errors with images loading. They’ve also built a Google Sheets calculator to help you figure out your *actual* open rate going forward. 
    • Oracle’s Chad S. White, in a blog post for MarketingProfs, wrote about one less-discussed feature of the changes: The “Hide My Email” update that will allow anyone to enter a dummy email instead of their real email address. He explained why some B2B companies may want to prevent readers from signing up with emails like these — and instead only allow sign-ups using a work email address.
  • Facebook’s new creator-friendly platform, Bulletin, announced their latest cohort of writers: A group of local publications across the U.S.
    • I’ve been working with many of these Bulletin creators for a few months now. Earlier this year, the Facebook Journalism Project team — who I’ve worked with since 2019 on some of their newsroom accelerators — approached me about Bulletin. They asked if I could provide 1-to-1 coaching for these creators, helping them understand the content, growth, and monetization tactics to allow creators — both those with a large, existing audience, and those building one from scratch — to succeed. For most of 2019 and 2020, my work at Inbox Collective focused on newsrooms and non-profits, but this year, I’ve started to work with a few creators and have really enjoyed the work. At the heart of what I do is helping people figure out how to use email to build an audience and drive revenue, and I’m excited to continue to find new ways to support creators — both on and off Bulletin — as they grow.
  • Speaking of which: I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a big question: What does it actually mean to be a creator?
    • As I see it, a creator does two things:
      • 1.) Creators create content or tell stories to make a living.
      • 2.) Reader revenue is at the center of the creator’s strategy.
        • By that, I mean: Their audience — email subscribers, followers on social media, etc. — is paying them for work related to their core content. That might mean recurring revenue (subscription/membership/donation) or one-off revenue (tickets for events, book sales, selling merch, coaching/teaching/consulting), but these payments, from the audience to the creator, are where the creator intends to make the majority of their money.
    • Being an influencer is slightly different:
      • 1.) Influencers create content primarily to build an audience.
      • 2.) Advertising revenue is at the center of the influencer’s strategy.
    • Can a creator also be an influencer? Sure. But are all influencers automatically creators? No, I don’t think so. It comes down to why they create content (when a creator makes a new piece of content, it’s often because their audience is paying for it, or because it will directly lead to reader revenue) and where their revenue comes from.
    • My definition of this is very much still evolving, though! If you have thoughts, I’d love to hear them. Shoot me a note at dan@inboxcollective.com and let me know what you think! (I might include a few quotes or ideas on the topic in next month’s Google Doc.)
  • Li Jin, who’s a writer and investor in the creator space, wrote about her fear for creators: That all of this will turn into another version of the gig economy. She suggested a few paths forward for creators.
  • In other news from the creator world:
  • If you’re new to the reader revenue space, you might have heard terms like CLV or ARPU thrown around, and yes, it can be a little intimidating to stop and ask someone to define them. Ghost’s David Ramos has a lovely guide explaining what all these terms mean — and how to calculate them.
  • Do young people read email? The answer, again and again, is “yes.” (Do they have high expectations for what shows up in their inbox? Sure. But deliver something great, and yes, a younger audience will make space for it.)
  • There’s a growing set of newsletter creators in Central and South America, so I had a conversation recently with César López Linares of Fundación Gabo about best practices for newsletters. (This one’s in Spanish. So much of the conversation about email is in English, so I’m trying to make an effort to chat more with organizations producing email content for non-English-speaking audiences!)
  • Let’s talk about subscriber-only newsletter products for a moment. Two stories made headlines this month: In just 24 hours, both Quartz and The New York Times announced that they’re making some of their newsletters subscriber only. It’s a move that several large publishers, like The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times, have made in recent years, and I’d expect to see more publishers follow their lead. Will these products lead to significant new subscriptions? Probably not. But they may serve another valuable purpose for publishers: Helping retain existing paying subscribers.
    • One other topic that deserves more discussion: Compensation for writers who publish newsletters for these publications. (I reached out to The Times, but they declined to comment on how they’re compensating these writers for their work on newsletters.)
    • But give this some consideration: If a writer brings in significant new subscriptions — or ad revenue — for their employer, shouldn’t they be compensated for their success? To truly incentivize writers to stay with a publication (instead of going independent), newsrooms are going to need to be thoughtful about structuring contracts with incentives and bonuses, tied to newsletter growth or revenue milestones, so that writers are paid fairly for the revenue they bring back to the company. It’s not just the right thing to do from a labor perspective — it’s also the smart thing to do from a business perspective! (A great writer who converts new users or keeps existing readers from churning is a true asset.)
    • If you’ve got thoughts on this, I’d certainly love to hear from you — dan@inboxcollective.com is the place to reach me!
  • According to a new report from Pew Research Center, 93 percent of U.S. news organizations offer newsletters to their readers. (What, exactly, are the other 7 percent doing?)
  • Two stories from the world of messaging:
  • The team at Klaviyo looked at pop-ups, toasters/fly-ins, and static sign-up boxes on 80,000 eCommerce brands to see what works and what doesn’t. Aubrey Harper discussed the findings from their deep dive. (The clear winner: Pop-ups, though don’t forget to ask these questions before deploying these!)
  • I’ve been getting this recurring question lately, both in the 1-on-1s I have with readers and the conversations in my inbox: “Is my newsletter a failure if I *don’t* monetize it?” The short answer: Of course not!
    • If you’ve got a personal newsletter, try to set a few metrics today for success. Those could be around engagement (opens/clicks), habit (how often a reader reads), growth (how big your newsletter gets), or monetization (revenue). 
    • But there might also be goals you can set — but can’t track in your email service provider or Google Analytics. Think about these four categories:
      • Personal goals — Something you try just for yourself (i.e. I want to use my newsletter to build a weekly writing habit)
      • Professional goals — Something to help grow your career (i.e. I want to do more public speaking, and my newsletter can open doors for me to do that)
      • Leadership goals — Something you want to do for your industry (i.e. I want to build a space where others can learn from my experience)
      • Learning goals — Something you want to get better at through your newsletter (i.e. I want to learn the basics of HTML/CSS)
    • Set a few different goals for your newsletter. You’ll find that your newsletter — or any side project — can be hugely successful, even if it doesn’t make a single dollar.
  • SparkPost put together a really nice .pdf guide to email deliverability best practices and basics for large senders. You can download it here.
  • This was fascinating: Dan Benoni and Louis-Xavier Lavallee of Growth Design wrote about a tactic to get more Gmail users to confirm that double opt-in email: Sniper links. I haven’t seen anything like this before, but I loved the creativity here — and how user-friendly it is!
  • BIMI — the new email feature that lets you put your logo next to your brand’s name in the inbox — is starting to roll out. For Netcore, Tejas Pitkar talked to a few email experts about why BIMI is worth utilizing.

Stuff I Loved This Month

  • This fall, the team at Splice is launching School of Splice, an all-audio-based training program to help media entrepreneurs build their business. I think the concept here is absolutely genius: No Zoom calls — just pre-recorded audio lessons that you can listen to whenever and wherever. Sign up for updates about the program’s launch here.
  • For those on Substack, check out Substack Grow, a series of workshops designed to help creators on that platform build a growth strategy for their newsletter. (ESPs and other email companies, take note: More of this sort of thing, please!) You can sign up for these workshops here.
  • CUNY’s Newmark Journalism School is opening up for another cohort of their 100-day Journalism Creators Program. It’s a fully-online program (I’ve been a coach for two previous sessions, and it’s really great!), and open to journalism entrepreneurs around the world who are interested in building out a newsletter, website or podcast. Scholarships are available, too. If you’re applying, do so by August 29 at this link.
  • If you send fundraising emails, you’re going to appreciate this New Yorker Shouts & Murmurs piece, “E-Mail Escalation,” by Seth Reiss. (Though, tbh, “Hello, It’s the Guggenheim” is a pretty decent subject line.)

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 Cheetah
  • If you know anything about the cheetah already, it’s that they’re the fastest land animal in the world. In 2012, the same year that Jamaica’s Usain Bolt ran the 100-meter dash in 9.63 seconds, a cheetah at the Cincinnati Zoo named Sarah ran the distance in 5.95 seconds. (One male cheetah, per a report from National Geographic, got distracted and ran the 100 meters in “a ​​pedestrian 9.97 seconds,” which would’ve placed him sixth in that year’s men’s Olympic finals.)
  • Female cheetahs don’t ovulate on regular schedules, but a specific bark from a male cheetah is capable of triggering the female reproductive system to release eggs.
  • While cheetahs are incredibly fast, they’re also not the biggest creatures out in the wild. While some other big cats pounce on their prey, the cheetah tries to trip whatever it is they’re chasing, as seen in this BBC footage, and then goes for the throat. A cheetah sometimes needs up to 30 minutes to recover from the chase before eating.
  • I’d love to be able to tell you that the Red Hot Chili Peppers song “Slow Cheetah” is about that aforementioned distracted male cheetah at the Cincinnati Zoo, but, alas, it appears to be just another Chili Peppers song about doing drugs. (Among songs clearly about drugs on the 2006 album “Stadium Arcadium,” I far prefer “Snow (Hey Oh).”)

Anyway, the Cheetah! 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.