Obvious Best Practices Too Many Newsletters Still Don’t Do

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A few weeks ago, Kenda Macdonald, an expert in the behavioral marketing space, posted some stats about conversion rates on e-commerce websites. Her company, Made With Intent, found that, unsurprisingly, consumers who showed prior intent to make a purchase were far more likely to buy than those who had shown low intent.

“Does data ever make you go ’well duh’?” she wrote.

These results weren’t surprising, she said, but Kenda noted that even knowing this data, many e-commerce businesses still treated all their email subscribers the same way. Readers who had shown significant intent to buy something got the same emails as readers who were only somewhat interested in a product, even though adjusting tactics based on those user segments would almost certainly lead to more sales.

I’d bet that if you sat down with an e-commerce company and pointed out this obvious opportunity to them, they’d say, “We know we should do that, but…”

I know there are always excuses for not going after low-hanging fruit. Maybe your boss wants you to prioritize other tasks. Maybe you deal with a lack of staffing or budget. Maybe you just don’t have the time.

But there are so many “well duh” best practices that are easy to implement and that will make a big difference in your strategy. They’ll help you grow your list, get more engagement, and make more money.

So let’s put excuses away. These are the obvious newsletter best practices that you need to take care of — as soon as possible.

You need to set up a welcome series

A welcome series is one of the easiest things for a newsletter to set up. By introducing yourself, these emails drive readers to take a next step: to read something, share something, or purchase something. A welcome series can help improve deliverability and keep your newsletter out of the spam folder. And once you’ve set yours up, it’ll work in the background to make sure every new reader gets properly onboarded.

A caveat: some email platforms, like Substack, only allow you to send a single email upon sign-up. If that’s the case, I have suggestions for what to put in that one welcome email. 

If you’re looking to set up a welcome series, I recommend sending up to six types of emails:

• A Hallmark email, to set expectations for your newsletter.
• A Talking Head email, to introduce yourself.
• A +1 email, to drive readers to take a next step.
• An Evergreen email, to highlight top-performing stories from your newsletter or website.
• A Hard Sell email, to encourage readers to buy something from you.
• A Survey email, to learn more about your readers.

I’ve detailed all six types of emails, with examples and ideas for you, right here.

The Six Types of Welcome Emails

You need to clearly define your audience

Too many newsletters are written for “everyone.” Even a newsletter with big ambitions needs to start with some sort of focus.

TheSkimm didn’t start as a newsletter for anyone who wanted to catch up on the news quickly — it started as a daily newsletter for millennial women.

Morning Brew didn’t start as a product for anyone in business — it started as a newsletter for young people in finance who wanted to stay up-to-date on the latest business stories.

Even my newsletter wasn’t aimed at the wider email community. I launched my first one with the hopes of serving a few dozen people who, like me, had email jobs at legacy media operations. It just happened to expand beyond that over time.

So, work hard to define your audience. Make sure you know:

• What your readers care about
• What they’re motivated by
• What they’re interested in

And any other specific details that might help you tailor the content or voice of the newsletter for them. I’ve got ideas here to help you define your audience.

Two Things To Know Before Launching Your Newsletter

You need to own your domain

If you’re on a platform like Beehiiv or Substack, you can launch a newsletter using one of their domains. (“Dan’s Awesome Newsletter” might be hosted at dansawesomenewsletter.beehiiv.com, for instance.) But I think just about every newsletter operator owns their own domain, too. Here are a few reasons why:

1. It’s a more professional-looking option.
2. If you don’t buy it now and your newsletter becomes a success, someone else may buy the domain — and it’ll cost a lot more to buy it from whoever is squatting on the URL.
3. If you switch to a different email platform later, Google and other search engines will still rank the old URL highly in search results for your newsletter.

So go buy the URL attached to your newsletter (Hover is a great option for buying domains) and set up your newsletter on that domain. While you’re at it, set up a custom email address on your domain (i.e. dan@inboxcollective.com — I recommend Google Workspace for that) and go through the authentication process, too. It won’t take long — even for a non-techie person, this is the kind of thing you should be able to handle in an hour or two — and it’ll benefit your newsletter in the long run.

You need to build out a content calendar

A little planning goes a long way when you write a newsletter. If you publish daily, as Tangle’s Isaac Saul does, your process will look a lot different than if you write something once a week or once a month. But you should still have a place where you document the ideas you have on tap for your newsletter.

I’d start by thinking through potential formats for your newsletter. You could try:

• Advice columns — Readers ask questions, and you answer them in a post.
• Essays — Share thoughts or analysis on a specific topic.
• Event calendars — Share a list of upcoming events in your community.
• Q&As — Have a conversation with an expert or influential member of your community, and then share the highlights of the interview with readers.
• Lists — Put together a list based on a theme, like the best books to read this month.

Then use those to map out the next few newsletter editions. You don’t need fancy software to do this sort of thing. I use Trello to keep track of what’s on deck for Inbox Collective, but when I first started my newsletter, I used a yellow legal pad to map out my calendar. Was it particularly sophisticated? No. But it was enough to keep me on track.

You need to experiment with your ESP’s features

Your email service provider, or ESP, has a lot of features you can test out. Take a platform like GetResponse. (Yes, they’re this quarter’s sponsor — a big thank you to them for making all the stories on Inbox Collective free for all readers!) They’ve got a series of AI-powered tools to help you write subject lines or build an on-demand course that you can sell to readers. They offer a tool that makes it easy to run paid ads on platforms like Facebook to grow your list. They’ve even got tools to help you set up webinars for readers or reach readers via web push notifications.

Will you end up using all of your ESP’s features in the long run? Probably not. But they’re handing you a box full of tools. You won’t know which ones might help you build a better newsletter until you try them out. 

You need to clean your email list regularly

One of the biggest deliverability red flags is when newsletters don’t remove their inactive readers. As I’ve written previously:

As your list grows, the percentage of readers who aren’t engaged will grow with it. That can become a problem: Inboxes make decisions about where to place your newsletter — in the inbox or in the spam folder — based on a variety of factors. One key factor is how other readers engage with your newsletter. A rapid increase in growth coupled with a decrease in engagement will put your newsletter on the fast track to the spam folder.

There’s a reason that many ESPs refer to these inactive readers as “zombies” or “ghosts.” They’re readers who are gone and not coming back — and yet, many newsletters keep them on their lists and continue sending to them.

If you want to stay out of the spam folder, you have to clean your lists. But try to win them back before you clean the list — I’ve found that many newsletters can win back 5-10% of inactive readers with just a bit of effort. I’ve got some suggestions here for who to target and what to send to readers as part of a winback series.

How to Set Up a Reactivation Campaign to Win Back Inactive Email Subscribers

You need to segment your audience

Segmentation allows you to take your full email list — whether that’s 100 people or 100,000 — and target specific readers likely to be interested in what you have to say. I mentioned Kenda’s example at the top of this story — targeting subscribers who are highly likely to make a purchase with the right offer is a great example of using segments. Here are a few other examples of a good segment:

• Identifying readers in a particular city to inform them about an in-person event you’re running near them.
• Targeting free subscribers — or better yet, free subscribers who frequently engage with your newsletter — with a special offer to purchase a subscription, members, or product.

Excluding certain types of readers, like recent donors or readers who signed up for your newsletter in the past 30 days, from your non-profit’s end-of-year fundraising campaign.

Not every reader needs every single email you send. If you can be a bit more targeted with certain messages — particularly those asking readers to buy something or do something — then take advantage of those segments.

You need to use dynamic content

Many ESPs give you the ability to show or hide certain content within a newsletter based on something you know about a reader. So, instead of sending an email to a specific segment, you can send it to everyone but choose to show certain pieces of the email to specific readers. At many local newsrooms, for instance, readers often get frustrated when they see an offer to subscribe after they’ve already purchased a subscription. “Why are you still targeting me with these ads?” they’ll ask. Dynamic content would solve that — those newsrooms could instruct their ESP to hide the ad from anyone who’s already paid.

Here’s a great example of this from Jay Clouse, who runs the newsletter Creator Science. He’s been selling a product to his audience — a pre-built Notion template to help creators stay organized — and uses dynamic content to show or hide ads for the product within his newsletter based on whether a reader has already made a purchase. It’s a small thing, but targeting the right readers with the right ad will likely lead to more sales in the long run.

You may also need to learn a bit more about your readers before you set up dynamic content. I’ve got some ideas here for how to collect that information.

You need to design your newsletter with accessibility in mind

It doesn’t matter how good your newsletter is — if all readers can’t easily read your email, you’ve got a problem.

There are lots of accessibility best practices, but here are three priorities:

• Use real text, not just images — Many email marketers will send all-image emails, and if a reader is using a screen reader or has images turned off, those emails just don’t work. And don’t throw all the text into an image and then embed that — it’ll be incredibly hard to read, particularly on a phone.
• Be mindful of color contrast — Readers with vision issues will struggle if you put the wrong colors together. Green text on a red background, for instance, is a no-no — for some readers, those colors will blend together. Free tools, like this, can double-check whether your color choices are compliant with accessibility best practices.
• Add alt text to all images — Alt text, or alternative text, is the description you add to an image. If a subscriber uses a screen reader, that device will read the alt text aloud to explain the image to that subscriber. My secret to writing alt text: Imagine that you’re explaining the image to a child.

I’ve got more accessibility best practices here for you to follow.

Creating Accessible Emails: A Guide For Marketers and Journalists

You need to test different ways to grow

You never know which tactics will work for you. Maybe your newsletter’s one that would benefit from paid growth, like advertising in other newsletters. Maybe you should think about converting readers from social media or search to your newsletter. Maybe you should consider partnerships for growth. Or maybe you should focus on converting readers from your site. 

Whatever works for you right now, consider testing a few ideas — I’ve got a bunch here — to help take your newsletter to the next level.

The Four Newsletter Growth Quadrants

You need a consistent sending schedule

Habit is one of the most powerful drivers of newsletter success. If a reader knows when to expect your newsletter, they can look forward to checking their inbox on a certain day or at a certain time. Back in 2020, when Casey Newton was still reporting on tech and Silicon Valley for The Verge, he told me that he picked a specific send time for his newsletter for a very particular reason:

They send it every day at 5 p.m. Pacific time — timed so it’s the last thing San Francisco-based tech employees see before they head home for the day. That timing also helps build habit — readers know when to look for it each evening. (One of Newton’s sources confessed that at their tech company, the first person to get the newsletter will shout out across the row of desks, “It’s out!” to announce when The Interface is in their inboxes.)

It’s OK to A/B test different send times, but once you pick one that works, try to stick with it.

You need to take occasional breaks to reset

Everyone needs to take a break from their newsletter — writing something every day or every week can be exhausting. It’s OK to tell your audience that you’re hitting pause for a moment, as these newsletter operators explained. And if you’re truly worried about taking a break, you can always pre-schedule a few editions of your newsletter in advance — and then take a break without readers knowing that you were away.

But be willing to take a little time off. Everyone needs a moment or two to step back, reset, and prepare for the newsletter work ahead.

You need to survey your audience

Surveys are one of the most powerful tools at a newsletter operator’s disposal. As I always tell clients, if you don’t make time to ask questions and truly listen to what readers have to say, how will you build a strategy around their needs? 

So make sure you regularly ask readers questions, even if it’s just one big survey a year. Ask them what they like about your newsletter. Ask them what you could do better. Ask them for testimonials. Ask them about themselves.

And if you’re looking for more questions to ask, I’ve got a few suggestions here.

Three Questions Everyone Should Ask in a Survey

You need to pick multiple metrics for success and set clear goals

If you’re not sure what metrics to utilize, how will you know if your newsletter is successful?

So pick more than one metric for success, including:

• Engagement metrics, like open or click rate.
• Growth metrics, like the number of new subscribers or the cost of acquiring a new newsletter subscriber.
• Monetization metrics, like annual recurring revenue from subscriptions.
• Feedback metrics, like Net Promoter Score question (“On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our newsletter to a friend or colleague?”).

Plus, set some big goals for your newsletter. Do you want to launch something new this year, like a paid community or an ebook? Do you want to learn something new that’ll help you with your newsletter? Do you have any goals for your newsletter’s impact?

Pick those metrics and set those goals — that way, you can track whether you’re meeting expectations and building something that aligns with your long-term goals.

You need to ask readers to reply

When a reader takes the time to reply to you, write back to them. It doesn’t matter if you send a long email or just a few words. Each reply gives you a chance to build a stronger relationship with your audience — and importantly, replies are one of the best ways to improve your deliverability.

In the five years I’ve been writing my newsletter, I’ve written back to every reader who responds to my welcome email, and I’ve replied to nearly 3,000 readers over that stretch. It takes work to reply to all those emails, but I’ve learned so much about my readers through those replies. It’s absolutely been worth it.

If you need to generate more replies, here’s an idea for how to get more readers to respond to your newsletter.

You need to connect with other newsletter operators

I know that writing a newsletter can often be a lonely process. That’s why it’s so important to find ways to connect with other people in your field. It’s also the reason I’ve been part of creating spaces, like the Dine & Deliver email series, to do my part to connect newsletter operators.

But there are lots of ways to connect with other colleagues. You can attend an in-person event with other newsletter folks — there are ones happening all over the globe, from Denmark (Email Summit) to Idaho (Craft & Commerce) to New York (The Newsletter Conference) to Thailand (Splice Beta). You could join an online community where other newsletter operators meet — some, like Email Geeks, are free, while others, like Growth In Reverse Pro or Newsletter Operator’s All Access community.

Or you could do this the old-fashioned way: Hit reply to a newsletter you love, say hi, and ask if they’d be open to hopping on a call to catch up and share ideas. Feel free to be direct and ask for advice: “I’m struggling with this one part of my newsletter. What would you do to improve it?”

You need to make time to review what’s working and what’s not

Where do you want to make future investments? What do you want to stop doing? It’s easy to put these types of questions on the back burner when you write a newsletter — you’ve got a lot of other stuff to worry about that might seem more important. But I urge you to put time on your calendar, on a regular basis, to go over your strategy.

I like to do a self-review once a quarter. I’ve set up a recurring event on my calendar to remind myself to sit down and do the review. I have a Google Doc where I jot down a few thoughts on the quarter’s work. Next quarter, I will go back to that same Google Doc to add more.

The more of these I write, the more I can track my progress over time. I’ve got spreadsheets to show me the hard numbers, but the quarterly review is how I track how I feel about my newsletter and where I’m making progress. It’s also a way to hold myself accountable. I don’t like looking back at a previous quarter’s review and realizing I didn’t follow through on the work I promised I would do.

I’ll give you one thing right now to add to your quarterly review: Set a reminder to come back to this article and see how many of these best practices you’ve implemented and how many you still have left to do. You might not be able to do them all at once — but make it your goal to tackle a few every month, and within a few months, you’ll have quickly gotten through the entire list. Your goal is to turn “I know I should do that, but…” into “Yeah, I’ve done that!” Your newsletter will be better for it.

Thanks to our sponsor
The stories you’re reading on inboxcollective.com are made possible thanks to the generous support of our summer sponsor, GetResponse. They’re an email marketing and automation platform with comprehensive, affordable, and easy-to-use tools to grow, engage, and convert your audience. If you’re looking for a platform with powerful automation and monetization tools, give GetResponse a try.