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Not a Newsletter

Not a Newsletter: May 2020

Welcome to the May 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 Media Mobilize, an ad network that drives revenue through native ads in newsletters and podcasts. This month in the Media Mobilize newsletter spotlight, I talked with 6AM City, one of the fastest-growing newsletter-first publishers, to learn how their partnership with Media Mobilize has helped generate record revenue — even during this crisis.

Also inside this edition, you’ll find tips on writing great copy to convert readers to paying supporters, behind-the-scenes looks at email redesigns, 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 

(Email / Twitter / LinkedIn)

Emily Flake

This Month in Email News

**SPONSORED** Newsletter Spotlight, presented by Media Mobilize 

Here’s something I didn’t expect to hear when I got on the phone a few weeks ago with Ryan Heafy, co-founder and COO of 6AM City, publisher of seven newsletters across the southeastern United States: “April was our highest grossing revenue month ever.”

April? In the middle of this pandemic?

So let’s talk about how 6AM reached this milestone.

Their story starts more than a decade ago, during the Great Recession. Ryan Johnston, 6AM’s co-founder and CEO, was then working for Community Journals, a publisher in South Carolina. With the recession hitting local businesses hard, Community Journals launched the Upstate Business Journal, and tapped Johnston to lead the initiative.

The Journal was a brand new product, so Johnston’s team thought carefully about what readers and advertisers both needed from a new publication. “We built the product and brand to service those needs,” he said.

But Johnston saw the geographic limitations of a local publisher, and wanted to build something that could scale. He saw an opportunity in taking what he’d learned from the Journal and applying those lessons to newsletters. So in July 2016, he launched GVLtoday, a morning digest for Greenville, South Carolina — think TheSkimm, but hyperlocal. COLAtoday, in Columbia, South Carolina, launched the following spring, and by summer 2017, things really started to grow. Now the company’s in seven markets across the Southeast, raising their first equity round, and planning on expanding to five additional markets by the end of the year.

Open any 6AM newsletter and you’ll find the latest local news, events, and notes, with native advertising built in. The content varies by city, but each newsletter measures success the same way: By focusing on engagement. That means closely tracking active users, and working to win back readers who’ve gone a month without opening. If a reader doesn’t open for 90 days, they’re removed from the list.

6AM boasts 230,000 active daily subscribers across its network, and 80 percent of their total list was active in the previous month. “There’s no actual value in inflating a list,” Heafy told me. His team values engagement metrics — opens, clicks, comments, and shares — because they best correlate with what his advertisers care about: Brand loyalty. As 6AM drives engagement with readers, loyalty — and revenue — follows.

“So many people buy print because that’s what they know,” Heafy said. “We’re seeing a bigger pivot now to people buying in newsletter products because the conversion is just so much better — especially when there’s strong brand loyalty.”

Here's an example of the AVLToday newsletter, including a sponsored ad unit

Heafy walked me through 6AM’s most recent launch, in Raleigh, North Carolina, in November of last year. 60 days before newsletter launch, they started rolling out stories and guides to help readers in that market, and through organic leads and paid acquisition, built a list of 10,000 subscribers by launch day. Many of their local partners weren’t ready to jump onboard until the RALtoday list reached a certain level of scale, so 6AM worked with Media Mobilize, a native ad network that works with more than 300 publishers. Those Media Mobilize ads are sold on a cost per open basis, which means they’re all about performance. The more readers engage, the better the ads do — and those ads drive far higher CPMs than programmatic units.

Before working with Media Mobilize, Heafy said, it might take weeks or months to start driving significant revenue from a new launch. Now they can monetize a newsletter from Day 1.

“Working with Media Mobilize allows us to drive revenue faster in any market and achieve profitability quicker,” he said, “and then take that money and reposition it back into advertising our own brand to build our audience.”

I’ve seen many publishers shy away from native advertising, fearing that native ads are tough to implement and offer ads that aren’t relevant to their local audiences. But Media Mobilize brought two advantages to the table: Their native ads were easy to place (Heafy said it took just a few minutes to add them to their templates), and they worked directly with the 6AM team to customize the types of native ad units and the types of sponsors that would work best for their readers. That customization allowed 6AM to maximize the revenue from their partnership with Media Mobilize.

And the biggest benefit for 6AM? The stronger their early revenue growth, the more they were able to reinvest the profits into strategies to grow their list. Once RALtoday hit 20,000 active users, they saw local advertisers start to sponsor newsletters.

The types of ads you see in 6AM aren’t like those you’d spot on local TV or radio — you won’t spot car dealerships or law firms in their newsletters. “We want our advertising content to actually add value for the readers,” Heafy said. “We’re looking for advertisers that have content that will resonate with our readership.” 

One success story: In Greenville, the GVLtoday newsletter worked with a plumbing company to drive new leads for that business. After a series of A/B tests, they were able to figure out how to best convert their readers into new customers for the plumber. Then 6AM built a case study around the partnership and brought it to plumbers in the rest of their markets, and new business quickly followed.

That test-and-learn approach also allows 6AM to roll out different types of ad partnerships at varying price points, and has led to some new offerings, including deal of the day ads and social media contests. They even tested out direct reader contributions in April, which generated more than $40,000 in donations from more than 1,600 readers. It’s this combination of revenue streams — ads sold locally by the 6AM team, ads sold nationally by Media Mobilize, and direct reader revenue — that led to record numbers for 6AM in April, Heafy said.

As they continue to grow, they’re also finding that Media Mobilize is opening new doors at the regional and national level. Many of the Media Mobilize ad partners are national brands, like Warby Parker and Winc, the online wine club, and as 6AM grows, other brands that operate regionally or nationally are noticing those big-name sponsors and are starting to sign long-term deals directly with 6AM.

The company seems positioned to grow in the months ahead, with an equity round in the works, and plans to launch in several new cities later this year. They’re seeing open rates continue to rise during this crisis, and recognize that now is a great moment to figure out how to continue to build their business.

“We’re using now as a time to innovate the business, to try stuff at low cost while reader engagement is at an all-time high,” Heafy said.

Four Tips for Driving Revenue During This Crisis

1.) Identify the essential businesses — Local service providers are likely to be resilient during this crisis. While readers might cut back spending on luxury goods or trips, they’re still going to need plumbers in the months ahead. For local newsletters, think about partnering with advertisers like contractors, grocers, and medical businesses.

2.) Content comes first — Make sure new advertisers understand the value of newsletters. Partnering with a local newsletter isn’t like advertising in traditional channels — it’s a new way for a brand to tell their story to a new audience. As Johnston told me: “Look for brands that see the value in content, and provide the opportunity to act as a distribution partner, bringing a greater ROI to the content that they already are creating.”

3.) Harness the power of local + the value of a larger network — Working with a mix of local and national partners offers some safety for your brand. As Heafy told me: Media Mobilize drives sustainable, steady income across their seven newsletters, and then they combine that with long-term sponsorships sold by their local teams. Make sure you have multiple income streams you can count on.

4.) Test and learn, even with your ad partners — Most brands think about A/B testing with their editorial content, but it’s rare to hear of an organization that does the same with advertisers. Be willing to test out what works, and then scale up once you’ve got a proven offering.

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

This month’s Not a Newsletter is presented by Media Mobilize, an ad network that drives revenue through native ads in newsletters and podcasts. They work with brands like 6AM City to take the work out of selling and placing sponsored units. Their units drive higher CPMs than programmatic placements, so you can drive more revenue from your newsletters. They make it easy to place and track advertising, so you can focus on content and growth while letting Media Mobilize deliver results. One more thing I like about them: They only work with high-quality advertisers, like Warby Parker and Winc, so you can feel confident that you’re working with brands your readers will love. Interested in talking with Media Mobilize about how they can help your business? Set up a meeting with their team here.

For Your Reading List

  • Let’s start with the news I linked at the top of this issue, a story that (IMO) didn’t get nearly enough coverage: News that several major companies, from Quibi to JetBlue to The Washington Post, accidentally leaked email addresses to third parties. Zach Edwards broke this story on Medium, and went into pretty remarkable detail about what happened here.
    • The short version: A handful of organizations were including email addresses in the URL query string after a reader clicked on an email. So instead of something like this at the end of a link:
      • ?utm_source=newsletter
    • You might see something like this:
      • ?utm_email=dan@inboxcollective.com&utm_source=newsletter
    • And once that appeared on the web, any third-party tools that track data on those websites could capture the email address without a user’s permission. Which is… not great!
    • Now, the Post, along with a few other organizations listed in the report, have fixed the issue, and they deserve credit for doing so quickly. (The Post, it should also be noted, does not appear to have previously leaked any data to third parties, unlike some of the other organizations spotlighted in Edwards’s report.)
    • As for most readers of this Doc: I’ve yet to see an ESP that does this sort of thing automatically. Most of the companies who inadvertently leaked their data did so when building custom solutions for email. If you’re using a common ESP, you’re probably fine. I’m highlighting the story here to remind you to be vigilant about the way you handle your data, and to continue to review the way you keep that data secure.
  • Some good news to share: I’m seeing lots of publishers who are continuing to deliver amazing reporting to their readers during this crisis — and who are also finding ways to drive newsletter subscriptions and revenue, too. Some examples:
  • SendGrid released their annual Email Deliverability Guide. There’s a ton of good stuff in there, in from best practices around email authentication to thoughts on AMP. I’d bookmark this one and give it a read — there’s a lot to learn.
  • The New York Times announced that David Leonhardt is the new “host” of their Morning Briefing, now just called “The Morning.” At Nieman Lab, Joshua Benton wrote about a few takeaways from the announcement.
    • The newsletter got a brand-new design, too, and The Times’ Adam Pasick, Barbara deWilde, and Frannie Hannan explained how teams from editorial and product worked together to build it.
    • In particular, one nugget in here got a lot of attention: The fact that the NYT has 17 million subscribers on their daily newsletter. That’s a massive number — I don’t believe there’s another news organization anywhere that has more than 10 million names on their list. (If I’m wrong, email me at dan@inboxcollective.com — I’d love to be proven wrong.) 
    • That being said, something I want to stress: List size is just one measure of success, and I’d encourage you to ask deeper questions to understand what makes your own newsletters successful. For instance, as you think about your lists, you might want to ask:
      • How many readers open this newsletter every day?
      • How many readers open this newsletter at least once a month?
      • What percentage of paying subscribers/supporters/members receive this newsletter?
      • Is a supporter more likely to continue to support you in the future if they receive this newsletter?
        • In case of The Morning, the Times keeps messaging about purchasing a new subscription to a minimum, which means it’s a product primarily designed to retain an existing audience.
      • How much traffic does this newsletter drive per month?
      • How successful is this newsletter at driving readers to subscribe or download other products (newsletters, podcasts, apps)?
        • When you’re thinking about your newsletter, make sure you’re thinking about questions like these, and understanding the metrics you need to monitor to answer them. It’s never just about one metric: List size, open rates, clicks, etc. The best organizations think about multiple metrics to measure the health of their business. To quote my old boss, Dao Nguyen, the publisher at BuzzFeed: “Anyone who just optimizes to one metric is going to eventually have a problem.”
    • Cory Brown at Impact TK dug into that 17 million figure and found that the Times auto-enrolls new subscribers in The Morning. I’ll tell you here what I told Cory over email a few days ago: At publishers I’ve worked with and talked with around the globe, this is a common tactic. 
      • Here’s why these publishers are doing this: In the start of the relationship with a paying supporter, the most important thing is habit. The more a reader reads your stories and spends time with your brand, the more likely they are to stay a reader for the long haul. And one of the best ways to build that habit early on? You guessed it: Via a daily newsletter.
        • Now, if your organization is auto-enrolling readers in this sort of newsletter, I’d recommend that you give them a clear opt-out on the subscription page, and a clear opt-out on all welcome emails and all regular newsletters.
        • It’s also worth noting: The rules governing user data in New York are different than in other parts of the world. Make sure you understand your local/regional rules before you make a decision about opt-in vs. opt-out.
  • 6AM City’s already gotten quite a bit of attention in this issue, but I’ll share one more thing from them: 6AM’s Sarah Mallare explained the different types of engagement modules they build into their newsletters. Lots of good ideas here.
  • Morning Brew’s Tyler Denk walked through all of the different tech that powers that organization’s newsletters. It’s a great example of why email needs buy-in from across your organization. Morning Brew’s succeeding because they’re not just investing in the editorial side of things — they’re also investing in product resources that are allowing them to grow.
    • While I’m talking about the Brew: Their co-founder, Austin Rief, explained in a Twitter thread why paid newsletters aren’t for everyone. I couldn’t agree more. Not a Newsletter’s actually a perfect example of this. It’s free and open to all, but that’s because it helps me in so many other ways: It brings me new clients for Inbox Collective, it drives advertising revenue (thanks again to Media Mobilize for this month’s sponsorship!), and it opens doors for paid talks and workshops. Could I make this doc a subscriber-only product? Sure — but I think it would hurt my business in the long run. Plus: I want this doc to be open so I can help as many of you as I can! Putting this behind a wall goes against my mission to, first and foremost, be a helping hand.
  • For The Interested’s Josh Spector wrote about how the best way to drive newsletter growth is by publishing great content. (I know that sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many publishers don’t follow Josh’s advice.)
  • A lot of folks think that being in Gmail’s Promotions tab is hurting their open rates and engagement. Chad S. White of Oracle and George Schlossnagle of Only Influencers explained why that’s not the case.
  • SendGrid’s Jesse Sumrak wrote about tips for optimizing your emails for dark mode, and why doing so can help your deliverability.
  • Some ideas to steal from this month:
    • Digiday’s Tim Peterson notes that many publishers are cutting their ad inventory instead of taking discounted rates for ads. What that means: Suddenly, publishers have quite a bit of extra ad inventory to work with. So what should go there? I’d consider inserting house ads for your own products: Subscriptions, podcasts, and, yes, newsletters. I’ll note: At BuzzFeed, using remnant ad inventory was one of the most valuable tools we had. Once, we grew a newsletter to more than 100k readers in just a few weeks almost exclusively using house ads. 
      • And if you do this right, you can use this time to run a test: How much revenue can you drive from readers who subscribe to a newsletter through one of those house ads? Track them to see the return you get in terms of subscriptions, donations, memberships, etc. You might find that running house ads isn’t just something you should do during a crisis — it’s something you should be doing permanently.
    • On the Trusting News blog, The Fort Collins Coloradoan’s Jennifer Hefty shared some fantastic examples of how to modify your subscription messaging for each type of story on your site. There are some fantastic examples in here, and I’m actually borrowing an idea or two from this post for a client I’m working with right now!
    • On a similar note, at The Byline, Cory Brown shared six good examples of membership and donations appeals that work during this crisis.
    • There are some excellent ideas here from Harry Dry on Marketing Examples about how to write better marketing copy.
    • The Data & Marketing Association’s Email in Practice Hub put together a nice guide to opportunities for using real-time content, like countdown clocks, in email. If you’re doing a lot of events these days, you might want to think about how to use those types of features in your newsletters.
    • Montague Street Media’s Ryan Sager wrote about ways to grow your lists, including a nice tip about allowing users to text to join your newsletter.
    • The Atlantic’s Ian Bogost and Alexis C. Madrigal wrote about how the Trump campaign uses Facebook to test different marketing campaigns. But it missed out on one key thing, later noted by Nick Corasaniti and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times, who quoted Ken Goldstein, a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco:

“All of those ads that they put out — one on China, one on verbal missteps and the state of Biden — what they’re doing is testing those to see which resonate best with different sorts of people,” Mr. Goldstein said. “And then whichever ones that work best on Facebook, then, first, you’ll see more of them on Facebook. Then they’ll fire for effect onto television.”

  • That last sentence is crucial. They’re using Facebook to cheaply test different marketing strategies. The ones that perform best they then use to dictate what messages to deploy on more expensive (and more visible) advertising.
  • I’ve been encouraging my clients to use Facebook in a similar way. (The marketing tactic, I mean — I’m not encouraging my clients to attack Joe Biden!) Right now, while Facebook advertising is relatively cheap, run campaigns testing out different messaging strategies for newsletters. See which CTAs and which images work. And once you know that, use the winning combinations to drive conversions through pop-ups and other modules on your site. Basically: Use Facebook as an A/B testing tool — you’ll be able to test things out quickly in front of the audience you want, and see how your messaging performs.
  • On the Membership Puzzle Project, Federica Cherubini wrote about tracking the right data in tandem with a membership program, with suggestions on which questions to ask and how to track readers through your newsletters.
  • Caroline Porter and Emily Roseman of Newsletter Wizards interviewed The Telegraph’s Sarah Ebner about their coronavirus pop-up newsletter, You Are Not Alone.
  • Lots of good tips here from Yasmine Nahdi of Chamaileon about rules for building accessible emails. If you’re not thinking about accessibility — using ALT text, picking the right color schemes, and even writing good copy — I’d give this guide a closer look.
  • Don’t send image-only emails, as the team at Emma explains. They’re far more likely to be mistakenly labeled as spam.
  • Alexa Korach of Marketing Profs wrote a detailed guide to understanding if you’ve got spam bots on your list.
  • A recent edition of Eric Peckham’s Monetizing Media newsletter looked at what musicians are doing with their newsletters during this crisis. The results are fascinating: Musicians, it turns out, basically only send emails advertising tickets or merch sales. (But kudos to George Ezra and Nick Cave for being the only two to send personal, non-sales notes to their fans!)
  • Nathan Baschez, who took place in a super interesting Substack bundle experiment, explained the math behind bundling. It’s really interesting, and my expectation is that we’re going to see more folks test out the concept in the coming months.
  • At Email Audience, Kristian Robinson walked through how the U.K.’s Channel Four built out a new master template for their newsletters.
  • Does “COVID-19” or “coronavirus” perform better in subject lines? At least among the marketing messages looked at by Only Influencers’s Dela Quist, coronavirus tended to perform better. (That being said, this was a study of messages sent by businesses, not news organizations or non-profits, so the findings may not apply to you.)

Stuff I Loved This Month

  • I keep thinking about this line in “The pandemic is a portal,” an essay by Indian novelist Arundhati Roy in the Financial Times, who argued: “Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.” Now I can’t stop thinking about what our world might look like on the other side of this crisis. We won’t go back to the way things were before. What will our world look like next? What choices will we make? Give Roy’s essay a read and consider it for yourself.
  • The Politico-for-kids newsletter is absolutely amazing. Kudos to Alexa Velickovich and Aloise Phelps for building such a cool, useful product!
  • This is a fun email success story: A dairy farm in British Columbia, Canada, started using email to build their audience and sell virtual cheesemaking classes. (One other amazing detail: Their email is called … The Moo’s-Letter 😂.)
  • Substack’s offering free 1-on-1 coaching calls for their users. It’s great to see communities like this stepping up to help during this crisis.
  • For the first time, ONA’s going to hand out an award for Excellence in Newsletters. Their team tells me that anyone who submits should submit just a single newsletter, with up to five issues of that newsletter included in the submission. Entries are due by June 4, 2020. Good luck!
  • Some digital trainings to know about: 
    • Second Street is hosting the Summit Series in June, with experts talking about newsletters, revenue, and more. It’s all digital, and it’s free to everyone. (I’ll also be giving a keynote on June 9.) Register here to attend.
    •  Litmus has taken their annual conference and turned it into a series of live events and workshops, called Litmus Live Everywhere. Sign up here — there’s going to be a lot to learn all year long.
  • The Wall Street Journal’s Cory Schouten wrote about their recent experiment with calendars, and how they integrate with newsletters. I’m very intrigued by the concept — I think there’s a lot of room for experimentation here.

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 anonymous wolf

Wolves are pretty closely related to domestic dogs — they’re all part of the Canis genus. In fact, in Latin, the name for the wolf is Canis lupus, which means “wolf dog.” But something that fascinates me about wolves: They’re far better teammates than dogs. One study gave wolves and dogs the chance to solve a challenge, in which two wolves or two dogs would have to pull on the same rope at the same time in order to receive a treat. Wolves correctly solved the challenge 25 percent of the time. Dogs only solved it once every 250 tries.

A few other wolf facts:

Anyway, the wolf! 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.