What I Learned About Newsletters in 2024

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When I work with a non-profit client on a big fundraising campaign, I always advise them to put three dates on the calendar right away.

The first is the day the fundraising campaign will start.

The second is the day the fundraising campaign will end.

And the third is the day the team will get together to talk about what worked, what didn’t, and what they want to try next time.

I’ve found that many teams are super eager to move on to the next project, but in that rush, they forget to make space to reflect on what they’ve just done. Those recap meetings are often where the best ideas — the ones that can help raise even more money in the next fundraising campaign — come from.

It’s why I always urge clients to put that time on the calendar — even before the campaign has started — to review.

So, in that spirit, before we rush into 2025, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on what I learned in the past year.

One of the fun parts about my job is that it allows me to tackle new challenges and educate myself about new or evolving issues in the field. Every year, I learn more about building a great email strategy.

An even better part of my job is that I can share some of what I have learned with you.

When you send a newsletter matters less than you think

I recently worked with a client on a daily newsletter that had long been powered by an RSS feed. They were making a big switch and moving to something written and curated by someone on their team. But as part of the switch, they also moved from an early morning send (6 a.m.-ish) to the afternoon (1 p.m.).

Why? Because they tended to publish most of their stories mid-day, and sending them at 1 p.m. would mean they’d always have a newsletter full of fresh, new stories.

But there was some nervousness about the switch. Would it affect open rates at all?

So we measured it.

In the 30 days before the switch, the open rate on their newsletter was 32.1%.

In the 30 days after, the open rate was… 32.1%.

It didn’t move — not even a tenth of a percentage point. 

Your newsletter doesn’t have to go out at 6 a.m. or 10 a.m. or whatever some case study said the “best” send time is.

Find a time that works for you and your schedule, and stick with it. If the newsletter is good, readers will make time for it.

Accessibility is about more than the design of your email 

Design is usually the first thing newsletter operators think of when considering accessibility. That’s only going to become more important in 2025 — the European Accessibility Act (EAA) becomes law in June. In the same way General Data Protection Regulation made marketers think more carefully about data and privacy, the EAA will make many of us take a second look at accessibility. (I’ll write more about the EAA later this year. For now, here’s a good primer on the law.)

But accessibility isn’t just about how you lay out your emails or picking a color scheme. If you use too much jargon in your email, it might not be accessible. There’s a reason why I often write out terms like “call-to-action” instead of just assuming that readers know what a CTR is. I want Inbox Collective to be accessible to everyone, not just experienced email operators or marketers. Make sure you make the right choices regarding the words you use in your newsletter, too.

(And while we’re on the topic, if you need accessibility best practices, we’ve got suggestions here.)

Deliverability is not set-it-and-forget-it

The Gmail and Yahoo changes that rolled out last year were, I think, both a real short-term pain for newsletter operators but also a good thing in the long run for the industry. For the first time, many newsletters have followed the proper steps to authenticate their emails. More authentication means a lot more emails landing in the inbox!

But if you set things up last year, don’t just assume you’ll never have to think about authentication again. Misconfigurations happen all the time — I saw this happen a few times in 2024 with clients who made behind-the-scenes changes that accidentally affected their authentication status. Even if you were compliant with best practices a few months ago, you might not be now. Make sure you take advantage of tools to monitor your email authentication status.

Think about how to repurpose and repackage your best content

When you create content, try to think about how these pieces can work together: 

• Products and events 
• Newsletter
• Social media

Here’s what I mean: Something you make on one platform can probably feed another.

Did an idea you posted on LinkedIn get a good response? That might become the core of a future newsletter.

That newsletter that you wrote and readers loved? That might become a talk you give at a conference or a workshop you can lead.

That IRL event that inspired lots of new questions? That might become the basis for a paid course to help people go even deeper on the topic.

And what about the anecdotes you might get from readers who pay for the course? Those might become posts on social media — and the whole process starts over again.

But this isn’t just a one-way flow. There are always ways to move content from one part of the ecosystem to another. See if you can get more out of what you’ve already made.

Don’t beat yourself up about that typo or mistake

The next time you make an email mistake, just remember: everyone does it — even some of the biggest brands in the world.

But if you do make a mistake, think carefully about how to apologize or make it right for your readers.

The metrics around what “good” looks like keep shifting

If you use benchmarks from even a year or two ago, your numbers might not match the industry standards right now.

What does a good open rate look like these days? Kit says it’s about 43%. Beehiiv says it’s about 39%. I usually tell clients that if you’re below 30%, that’s a red flag — but anything between 35-55% is pretty normal these days. (Keep in mind that quite a bit of open rate inflation is happening these days — an average open rate just five years ago would’ve been somewhere between 20-30%.)

What does a good click-to-open rate (CTOR) look like these days? (That’s the percentage of people who opened a newsletter and clicked on at least one link.) Kit says the average CTOR was 9.2%, while MailerLite said their average was 8.9%. I see similar metrics for my clients.

But what does a best-in-class open rate and CTOR look like? I’ve got one Inbox Collective client who has an average open rate north of 75% and one with an average click-to-open rate north of 40%. Those are absolutely outliers — but hey, now you’ve got something to shoot for.

Don’t ignore the bot activity in your newsletter

It’s tough to tell exactly how much bot activity affects the clicks on your newsletter. Some ESPs say 60%+ of clicks are from bots, not humans; others say it’s as low as 5%. But bots are absolutely clicking on yours.

Don’t pretend like it’s not happening. If you’ve got advertisers in your newsletter, don’t BS them about your click rate. Tell them what’s going on — other newsletters aren’t being honest with them, and your transparency might land you some new business in 2025.

Keep a “stop doing” list

I gave a few clients a funny suggestion last year: I told them to sign up for newsletters from several major political campaigns here in the U.S.

And they’d ask: “Why would I do that? They’re just going to send me a dozen emails a day, every day, for months. What can I learn from that?”

My response: You’ll learn about the stuff you shouldn’t do anymore.

Political campaigns will do anything to get readers to open an email. They’ll send emails with a subject that starts with “FWD:” or “re:” to make it look like you’re getting an email from a friend. They’ll use urgent, desperate language to ask for contributions even when the situation isn’t exactly urgent or desperate. They’ll make it borderline impossible for readers to unsubscribe from the emails they don’t want.

I’ll point out these mistakes to clients and ask: “Do you use any of these tactics? Because if you are, and if you hate receiving them, you probably shouldn’t try them with your own readers.”

Hence, the “stop doing” list. That’s where you list the tactics you want to stop doing and use that to guide the changes you’ll make in the next few months.

A great example: Tangle’s Isaac Saul told me he changed some of his messaging about subscription renewal after he saw other media organizations send similar emails that he hated. The end result was an email that drove tons of engagement and renewals. 

Constraints can lead to creativity

Something that CJ Chilvers taught me that I’ve been thinking about often: When you’re stuck, add a constraint. Give yourself a word count that you can’t go over. Eliminate extra images or design elements to see if you can make a newsletter that drives the action you want with just text. Set a deadline to send even if the newsletter is not as perfect as you’d like. Sometimes, adding those constraints is what you need to cut through the fluff and get back to the core of what you do best.

Reactivation series matter more than ever

A really good reactivation series can significantly impact your deliverability on engagement, and not always in the way you’d expect.

This part seems obvious: if you remove inactive readers from your list, your open rates will increase. (More active readers = a higher open rate.)

But what most people don’t realize is that the inboxes often give your newsletter a huge boost when you regularly clean your lists. When they see higher overall engagement on your emails, they may lift your newsletter into a more prominent folder within the inbox. And better placement leads to a lot more opens/engagement.

Recently, a client of mine ran a reactivation campaign for the first time. They won back about 2.3% of subscribers who hadn’t opened a newsletter in 90+ days. (That’s a pretty good number — I usually tell clients that 2-5% is a solid winback rate.) 

After they unsubscribed their inactive readers, the number of total newsletter subscribers on their list went down 13.9%.

Over the next month, open rates went up — that wasn’t a surprise. However, we also tracked the total number of emails opened to see if there was any increase.

There was. The list shrunk by 13.9%, but the total number of emails opened went up by 12.3%. 

Follow reactivation best practices, and the inboxes might reward you for it.

You don’t have to be obsessed with growth to build a profitable newsletter

I loved what David C. Baker — who has an email list of 13,000 people and runs a two-person business that earns seven figures every year — told me about his strategy for building a strong business: “It’s all just this virtuous circle of knowing what you’re worth, having lots of opportunity, viewing each client relationship very, very carefully, and not being consumed with growing.” 

Any time I get caught up thinking that I need to grow more to build a better business, I go back to that quote to remind myself: Dan, there are other parts of the business that matter more than growth.

Give yourself space before your next launch

I developed a little trick last year to decide if I actually want to work on a project.

Let’s say I’ve got an idea and get really excited about it. I buy a website domain for the project, and start jotting down notes. I’m convinced that this is my next big idea!

The next step’s been a game changer for me: I add a note to my to-do list — one month in the future. I remind myself to revisit the idea then.

And then I do nothing — at least for 30 days.

Often, a month later, I look at the idea and go: Why was I so excited about this? That’s not a bad thing — I’ve just saved myself a lot of time and effort on an idea I wasn’t really that into.

But if I’m still excited about the idea a month later, that’s how I know it’s got legs, and that’s when I start to work on it.

Go with your gut

I loved the story that Lindsey Stanberry told us about how she named her newsletter, The Purse. She took some smart steps along the way. She came up with a big list of potential names and then polled friends and colleagues about them. She collected lots of feedback. The Purse wasn’t the one that they liked the most — but it was the one that stood out the most to her and had some sentimental meaning, too. 

At the end of the day, this is your newsletter, not someone else’s. When in doubt, trust your instincts.

Give readers something to reply to

Back in the day at BuzzFeed, there was a little trick that some of our writers used to drive lots of engagement. When putting together a big list, they’d leave an obvious item out. Imagine a list of the 25 greatest cities in Europe that excluded Paris. Readers would share the post on social media and say, “I’ve been to 10 of these places! But seriously, BuzzFeed, Paris didn’t make your list???” 

Turns out we weren’t alone in considering that tactic. This piece from Simon Linde got me thinking more about why leaving something out of your newsletter could actually be a good way to get readers to reply to you, too.

Personality matters, even in little things like an out-of-office reply

The next time you head out on vacation, write an actual note in your out-of-office, or OOO, reply.

I used to write the same OOO everyone does: “I’m out of the office this week. Please contact so-and-so if you’ve got an urgent request.”

But with Inbox Collective, I don’t have anyone I could send someone to if they had an urgent request. So instead of basically saying, ”Sorry, I’m out of the office!”, I started writing a note about where I was going.

What I found is that when you write a note like this in your OOO, three things happen:

1.) People actually write back to your OOO — Some will wish you a nice trip or mention that they plan on taking a similar trip soon. (For the one above, I even got questions about the hotel we stayed at and the quality of the child care!)

2.) The people who had something “urgent” realize that their request isn’t all that urgent — This happens often, including on that Caribbean vacation. A client had an urgent issue with their email platform that they thought only I could solve. They saw my OOO and contacted the ESP’s customer service team, who fixed the issue in a few minutes. There’s nothing better when you’re on vacation than the “Never mind, we figured it out!” email.

3.) When you’re back at the office, you’ve got an ice breaker for your next meeting — Anytime I take time off, my clients see my OOO and then ask about the trip. It’s a friendly little gesture, and those are the kind of moments that make me feel even more connected to the people I get to work with.

Don’t sweat the unsubscribes

I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately about unsubscribes. I think this is a good sign — I’m glad people look at metrics beyond list size and open rate. But I’ve noticed some panic when teams evaluate unsubscribes. “A few people unsubscribe every time we send an email,” these teams typically say. “Is that normal, or is that something that happens just to us?”

So, let me clear things up. If you send a newsletter, you will always see a few readers unsubscribe from your newsletter. (An unsubscribe rate below 0.25% is normal.)

An example: I used to write a newsletter at BuzzFeed called This Week in Cats, in which we shared the best cat stories and videos of the week. It had a 60%+ open rate — at a time in which being above 40% was rare — and yet, we saw unsubscribes every week. If that newsletter saw regular unsubscribes, then every newsletter will lose readers.

Hit reply whenever you can

Writing a newsletter can be a lonely business. If there’s a newsletter out there that you like, hit reply and tell them. That email might mean more to that writer than you realize.

Keep your north star in mind

I think this is the best newsletter advice I can give for 2025:

It’s so easy to get wrapped up in all the commotion around newsletters. It’s easy to get jealous of other people’s success or feel obligated to chase industry trends.

Focus on what you can control: creating great content for every newsletter and building strong relationships with readers. Those are the only strategies that truly matter in the long run.

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