Welcome to the November 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: How to build a great fundraising campaign; a newsletter success story from Chile; Black Friday deals on great email tools; case studies about building a sustainable indie newsletter; the future of programmatic advertising; and more!
Want to read a previous edition of Not a Newsletter? Find the full archive at this link.
-Dan
This Month in Email Headlines
- Google built a spam backdoor for Republicans — and they aren’t using it (The Verge)
- Inside the political fundraising machine that is flooding your inbox (Grid)
- Revue, Twitter’s newsletter platform, is scheduled to be shut down by the end of the year (Platformer)
- Puck, Channeling the Charm of Magazines Past, Nears 200,000 Subscribers (AdWeek)
- FTX had plans for a Substack competitor (Semafor)
- Mailchimp And Yelp Team Up To Allow Users To Use Reviews In Emails (MediaPost)
- Klaviyo Acquires Napkin.io, Code Development Firm (MediaPost)
- Long-Awaited Climate Newsletter Launches With Chevron Sponsorship (Gizmodo)
New on inboxcollective.com
How to Build a Great Fundraising Campaign
It’s November, which means it’s officially end-of-the-year fundraising season. Over the years, I’ve developed strategies that dozens of non-profits have used to build out successful fundraising campaigns. And I’ve documented all the steps here for you.
If you’re launching your very first campaign this month, or if you’ve done this too many times to count, I promise: There are a few ideas here you can borrow to make sure you don’t leave a single dollar on the table this year. Here’s how to build a great campaign.
A Success Story from Santiago: A Q&A with El Semanal’s Iván Weissman
Iván Weissman is a Chilean-American journalist, economist, and political scientist who is based in Argentina. Two years ago, he launched “El Semanal” (The Weekly), out of his urge to find a platform to participate in the political and economic debate that exploded in Chile following the social outbreak of October 2019. The newsletter now has 20,000 subscribers and quickly became a profitable new source of income for El Mostrador, the country’s leading digital media group, under which El Semanal was launched.
Weissman talked to Inbox Collective’s Alex Hazlett about launching his newsletter under a parent company, his connections to Chile, and his expansion plans for El Semanal. Read the Q&A here.
Iniciar una conversación no es fácil, pero ser parte de ella puede ser aún más difícil. Iván Weissman de El Semanal logró ambas cosas. Lea el artículo aquí.
Ask a Deliverability Expert: What Does My Email List Say About Me?
A poorly-maintained list can be a dead giveaway that you’re not following best practices. Here are a few things to do to stay out of spam.
You can now sign up for an email alert when we publish something on a topic you care about. We’ll only email you when we publish in a topic area of your choosing (at most, once per week). Just make sure you sign up with the same email address you already use for Not a Newsletter, and I’ll handle the rest!
For Your Reading / To-Do List
- In February 2021, I wrote here in this Google Doc that it was only a matter of time before email was declared dead. The headlines started rolling in earlier this summer. “The newsletter boom is over,” declared Vox. “Newsletter boom fades,” said Insider. And then this month, The New York Times announced: “The humble email newsletter, which became a star in its own right, appears headed back to earth.”
- I’ll say what I said in August: It never made much sense for email to be the “hot new thing.” Email is useful, effective, and boring — and that’s OK by me!
- Ambreen Ali and Krystal Knapp wrote a lovely series of case studies on the indie newsletter and podcast space. There’s lots of good stuff in here about tips for growth, as well as advice around collaboration and work-life balance. Make time for these.
- I linked above to my story about fundraising campaigns, and if you’re interested in that, you should also make time for this piece, by Katie Hawkins-Gaar for News Revenue Hub, about how non-profit newsroom CT Mirror raised $36,000 in 36 hours during their flash campaign tied to the end of the state’s legislative session. (The campaign has a great name, too: “The Gavel Give.” Love that!)
- Digiday’s Kayleigh Barber wrote about ways to convert readers to newsletter subscribers, including using registration walls and alerts (like a breaking news email).
- I’m quoted in this Adweek story about programmatic advertising, but I’ll be honest: I disagree with the premise of this one. Here’s how I see it:
- Newsletter operators are much smarter now about monetization than they were even 5 years ago. In both the indie newsletter space and the publisher space, I’m seeing operators get much more sophisticated about how they monetize their newsletters. Best-in-class newsletters are monetizing in multiple ways, like advertising, affiliate, reader revenue (subscription, membership, or donation), and direct sales (events, courses, or workshops). And these newsletters have realized: If we’re running ads in our newsletter that offend or turn off readers, we’re going to lose that audience — and the ability to monetize them — quickly.
- Those chumbox-style programmatic ads have no place in newsletters anymore. If you’re running them in your newsletter, please: Stop.
- But there’s a difference between those bottom-of-the-barrel programmatic ads… and programmatic ad tools. Those tools are getting more sophisticated every year. LiveIntent and Passendo, for instance, have both rolled out the ability to sell and display native-style ads from their systems. And those tools have some interesting advantages:
- They make it easier to display multiple ads within a single ad slot of a single newsletter.
- They make it easier to personalize ads for specific readers.
- They make it easier to monetize certain types of newsletters (like alerts) that are fully automated.
- They make it easier to produce the ad within the newsletter — the process can be controlled by a sales team without requiring editorial involvement.
- They make it easier to track and share performance data with an advertiser.
- So here’s a prediction: Over the next few years, we’ll see newsletter operators continue to sell their own ads — but they’ll start to use programmatic tools to deploy those ads within newsletters.
- Right now, many large newsletters (500k+ daily readers) sell a native sponsorship (perhaps a logo at the top of the email + a native ad slot further down the email) at what sales teams call 100% share-of-voice (or SOV). 100% SOV means that the advertiser is the only featured advertiser in the newsletter. But I think we’ll start to see many large newsletters sell 50% SOV or even 25% SOV going forward. (This will be especially important if the newsletter ad market shrinks in the next year or two — buying a fraction of an audience may be more budget-friendly for an advertiser.)
- There may be revenue upside, too: Just because you’re selling half or a quarter of the audience doesn’t mean you’re also selling those ads at half or a quarter of the price. Some newsletters will find that they’re actually able to drive more revenue by selling to 2-4 advertisers for slightly more than the price of a single advertiser.
- (If you’re sending to a smaller audience or sending weekly emails, I doubt that you’ll switch to programmatic tools — they’re best for large newsletters with dedicated sales operations.)
- One more link on the note of advertising: I’ve talked with some non-profit newsrooms who struggle to sell advertising in their newsletters. If you’re in this camp, you may want to look to The Texas Tribune, whose daily newsletter (66k subscribers, 39% open rate), brought in $560,000 in sponsorship revenue.
- The team at Splice just held their annual conference, Splice Beta. (One day, I’m gonna make it out to Chiang Mai for this! I’ve heard great things about it.) Alan and Rishad from Splice have kindly released all the slides and resources from the event, and there’s a lot to dig through. One I particularly loved: Carl Javier, of the Philippines-based Puma Podcast, talked about how they used focus groups to launch new events and fine-tune their voice. (And I loved this line: “Assumptions need recalibrations.” That’s a great way to explain the value of audience surveys/research!)
- Jacob Granger of Journalism.co.uk interviewed Joshi Hermann, who launched the Manchester Mill (a local newsletter in the U.K.) two years ago. They talked about The Mill’s two-year path to breaking even — and why they’ve launched additional publications in Sheffield and Liverpool.
- From Buenos Aires, Rocío Gálvez of Latinoamérica Piensa wrote about the process of launching a new newsletter aimed at younger audiences.
- What a headline here from Nieman Lab: “Defector’s most successful promo email was too ‘creepy’ to repeat.”
- A few stories from the indie newsletter space:
- Jonathan Stark, a consultant who’s been writing a daily newsletter for a few years now, put together a 10-part podcast called Doing Daily. It’s his pitch for why people should write and send newsletters far more often. If you’ve ever had writer’s block or wondered how others find ways to write (and write a lot), make time for this podcast.
- Is your personal newsletter working? Josh Spector suggested five questions to ask that might help answer that.
- What’s it like to be a full-time creator? ConvertKit’s Steph Knapp looked at nine creator newsletters and the strategies they deploy.
- If you’re a longtime reader, you’ve heard me talk over and over again about the importance of a welcome series. (They matter! You need to have a strategy here! Please, don’t make me beg!) I’ll add this to the mix: The Fix’s David Tvrdon wrote about designing a 10-part welcome series for his newsroom.
- I was delighted to see a few writers use last month’s story about the Financial Times and their survey strategy as a jumping-off point to share their own thoughts about surveys. Two to share:
- Simon Owens wrote about how he uses polls to collect feedback from his readers. Agreed: Polls can be great for learning little things about your audience (i.e. Did you find this newsletter useful? What topics do you want me to write about next?).
- And I loved this from Adrienne Smith, who wrote: “A strategy isn’t a strategy if it doesn’t reflect what your audience needs.” That’s 100% spot on! Make sure surveys are a bigger part of your strategy in 2023.
- With all the talk about Twitter’s verification changes, you may not have seen this: Yahoo Mail’s apps will now show a verified checkmark next to any brand that’s authenticated through BIMI.
- Speaking of which: Which inboxes support BIMI? Here’s a quick refresher from Kickbox’s Jennifer Nespola Lantz.
- How do push alerts fit in with your messaging strategy? The PressGazette’s Aisha Majid talked with the BBC, Reach, and The Guardian to learn more about their strategy for push.
- Loved this story, from Hanaa’ Tameez of Nieman Lab, about how Germany’s Der Tagesspiegel built an in-person game (about local politics) as a companion to their daily newsletter.
- Will there ever be a middle class for the creator space? Here’s an interesting breakdown from Hugo Amsellem (an advisor at Jellysmack, a company that works with large creators like The Try Guys). His take: “We are more likely in a barbell situation, with many small creators making $1-2k per month and a few big creators making millions.”
- The newsletter In Old News interviewed The Open Notebook’s Siri Carpenter about the success they’ve had building out Courses for science journalists. (Full disclosure: I’ve worked with Siri on these through Inbox Collective.)
- Matt McGarry did a webinar with Sparkloop about tactics for getting more out of paid ads on Facebook or TikTok. If you’re spending money there, you might want to make time for this.
- And finally: Everyone makes mistakes in the email space — including me. Here’s the story of how I accidentally screwed up a behind-the-scenes authentication update and ended up in the spam folder for 24 hours.
Stuff I Loved This Month
- Over the past few years, I’ve been lucky to have the chance to work with some amazing people over at Facebook. That’s not a sentence I would’ve expected to write five years ago — heck, a big part of the reason I got into newsletters was because I didn’t trust social media giants like Facebook! But what their news team has done over the past few years — particularly with their newsroom accelerator programs — is truly remarkable. They’ve helped hundreds of newsrooms make huge strides, and their willingness to write checks has given orgs around the world the chance to invest in local journalism. Over the past decade, the money they’ve invested and programs they’ve helped build have been a massive force for good in the journalism world. (And they certainly opened up doors for me, too — I’ve spoken at several Accelerator sessions, and many Accelerator teams have become Inbox Collective clients over the years.) As Sarah Scire wrote for Nieman Lab, and LMA’s Nancy Lane wrote on LinkedIn, we were lucky to have their support over the past few years. If this is truly the end of their support of local newsrooms, they’ll be missed.
- Congrats to the team at ConvertKit, which hit a fun milestone: $10 million made by writers/creators through their Commerce tool. I’ll keep saying this: Competition among all of these ESPs means the big winner is you, the writer trying to use newsletters for your work or your business. A tool like Commerce didn’t exist two years ago — now it’s generated millions for writers, and it’s a result of competition in the ESP that’s forced every email tool to step up its game. Kudos to ConvertKit for building out a great feature for their users.
- If you’ve ever accidentally included the wrong link in a newsletter and wished you could fix it, check this out: Ghost has added the ability to fix a link even after an email’s gone out. This used to be a pretty popular email feature, and for reasons I can’t quite explain, it’s gone away in the past few years. Cool to see Ghost bring it back.
- What would happen if a journalist said yes to every PR pitch in their inbox? Slate’s Dan Kois found out.
This Month in… Mel Brooks Quotes That Are Also Good Rules to Follow for Email Marketing
Mel Brooks is a comic genius, and also a surprisingly good source of inspiration for those of us in the email space. So in 2022, I’m closing the Google Doc with a brand new feature: Mel Brooks Quotes That Are Also Good Rules to Follow for Email Marketing! This month, let’s turn to the wisdom of “The Producers”:
When Mel Brooks first came up with the concept for “The Producers,” the actual producers of the film asked Brooks who he wanted to direct. And Brooks had a simple reply:
“When Joe Levine said we needed a director, I said I can be the director,” added Brooks. “I’m the writer, I see it, I see every scene, I see a half-moon coming out of the office window, I see little old ladies and what they look like on the couch being thrilled, being loved by Bialystock. I see ‘Springtime for Hitler,’ I see the burlesque show, the beer, and the pretzels. You can’t go wrong with me.”
That film — and the Broadway musical that followed decades later — wouldn’t have been the same if it hadn’t been directed by someone with such a specific vision. It needed Brooks’s vision, and then an amazing team of actors around him to bring it all to life. And most of all, it needed Brooks’s ability to understand the role he had to play in order to make this all possible.
I’ve said this often about email: It’s a team sport. To do this well, you need to put together a great team around you. But first, you need to do what Brooks did, and figure out what you do best. Identify that — then hire great people around you to execute on the rest of your vision.
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