Email newsletters

Here are 10 ideas to steal and adapt: From audience-focused initiatives to changing internal systems, these original case studies are the most-viewed in 2022 on BetterNews.org.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Simplify your newsletter format and workflow so that one person can realistically own the products and experiment.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: If you want to build trust with your readers, you need to let them see you as more than a two-dimensional byline. The Des Moines Register created an entertainment/lifestyle newsletter – authored by a rotation of staffers, filled with personality and authenticity and focused on the things that bring joy – to help bridge the divide between newsroom and reader.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Don’t just settle for being a publication that covers the African American community. Transform your newsroom into one that tells stories for and with Black residents. Grow relationships and trust, increase the number of African American voices on your platforms and continuously work to reflect the community demographics in your workforce.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Deepen your relationship with readers and expand your news coverage of communities with a team of freelancers, creating digital hubs and newsletters to organize and promote coverage.

Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: When planning arts coverage, ignore the calendar and ditch stories pegged to upcoming performances, art openings, festivals and events. Instead, focus on news, people and what the arts say about your city.

This study by the Medill Center at Northwestern University re-centers the importance of local content in encouraging daily news consumption, which the massive data project shows is the most likely predictor of subscription and retention. As simple as it seems, this change represents a dramatic reorientation of the KPI’s for news organizations pivoting from ad-based to reader-supported models.

It might be easier to get the attention of lapsed newsletter subscribers who haven’t opened your newsletter in months, as opposed to newer subscribers.

Email is key to reaching individual readers and measuring the success of subscription marketing. This primer from API’s Reader Revenue Toolkit covers technical and programmatic approaches to email capture.

The Wall Street Journal’s new newsletter team tried something different to solve a quandry: How do you let people know something new has been published without annoying them?

The New York Times newsletter team shares their “secret sauce” for popular newsletters.

In a look at LA Times veteran Jacqueline Boltik’s new tool for newsletters, she offers a few tips on how to look at production time and key metrics.

Email can be a very effective tool when targeting specific audiences and building sub-brands.

Specific traits that make up great email newsletters

Before launching the BuzzFeed News newsletter, its team beta tested the newsletter in public. Here, BuzzFeed News explains what it learned from that process.

Ideas to help you make people open, read and engage with your newsletters.

A guide to help your readers take action.

This piece outlines how to turn email subscribers into rabid followers of your work.

Emailing users when they pull a “trigger” on your website is the most effective way to contact them.

Ideas to help you encourage people to sign up for your email newsletters.

Don’t send an email newsletter without these details.

A tactical guide to picking subject lines tied to content.

A step-by-step guide to writing effective subject lines and testing them to perfection.

How you can personalize your newsletter to make readers engage with it more.

Several ways to begin making money from email.

This article offers a simple approach to gathering data and using it to improve decision-making.

A to-the-point list of questions that will help you choose your email provider.

A complete guide to every imaginable way to split up your email audience.

A guide to email surveys that answers specific questions about how to acquire data about your audience.