Why are email newsletters so popular?
By: Mike Raab
Tags: Technology, Writing, Newsletter, Business, Media

Passive distribution, useful information, and a little bit of personality

Photo by Mathyas Kurmann on Unsplash

Chances are that you’re subscribed to more email newsletters today than you were five years ago. Newsletters aren’t “new” technology, and they are in fact utilizing a relatively old internet distribution channel in your email inbox. Despite this, newsletters are more popular than ever before, and are being utilized by long-standing publications and individual writers, some of whom are able to make a very comfortable living with their newsletters at a time when journalists are being laid-off on a daily basis.

What’s behind the rise in volume and popularity of newsletters, and why is using your email inbox for distribution an advantage?

I can only speak from my experience, both as a consumer subscribed to a handful of newsletters like Term Sheet (from Fortune), Byers Market (from NBC News), and Stratechery (from Ben Thompson), and as the creator and author of The Garage San Francisco’s newsletter, a hyper-focused weekly newsletter for Northwestern University alums in the Bay Area who work in tech. I think I’ve gleaned enough from sitting on both sides of the newsletter to appreciate what makes them special.

A return to passive distribution

Before the internet, a physical newspaper would show up at your front door every morning. You didn’t have to choose (on a daily basis) which newspaper you were going to read that morning, and even if you had forgotten that you were going to read the newspaper, it physically arrived, perhaps reminding you to take a look. Newspapers were delivered frictionless, and at the same time of day, every day, whether you wanted to read them that particular day or not.

On the other hand, when publications first launched on the consumer internet, this passive distribution was lost. If you wanted to view a particular news or magazine publication, you had to remember to actively choose visit their website, perhaps by creating a bookmark and checking it on a regular basis. It was possible and likely that over time, you stopped visiting some of these sites, either because you forgot or didn’t find the content compelling enough to actively visit every day. Of course eventually social media platforms would surface articles and content in your feeds, but it wasn’t consistently surfacing the same publication at the same time each day — just individual articles that the people you follow shared that you may or may not be interested in.

More recently, email newsletters have resurrected the passive distribution of written content by arriving in your email inbox on a regular cadence. Many longstanding publications have started up newsletters as a way to build audiences that perhaps otherwise wouldn’t visit their sites. Personally, I read newsletters from from individuals and publications that I otherwise don’t visit or seek out on a regular basis. But these newsletters show up in my inbox every morning, and I generally find the content interesting enough to stay subscribed. As funny as it is to say, I probably wouldn’t read these even if they were free daily columns available on their respective websites — the friction of remembering and actively visiting is too high. As anyone who has worked on conversion optimization knows, the smallest amount of friction can lead to huge drop-offs in engagement.

One of the most important characteristics of newsletters, as Kendall Baker, who has written over 1,000 newsletter issues for The Hustle, Sports Internet, and Axios Sports, recently tweeted about, is consistency and cadence. Newsletters with a reliable cadence train readers when to expect their content (again, passively arriving in their inbox), and create a daily habit, or “appointment reading.” I send every TGSF newsletter on Tuesdays between 12–12:30pm PT, knowing that 1) it is likely a lower priority than the multiple newsletters that my audience receives first thing in the morning; and 2) hoping that they find a break in the work day around lunchtime to read through. With this cadence and consistency, open-rates have never fallen below 50%, even growing from 0 readers in October to 750+ in February. I have no doubt that the consistency of delivery time has at least some part to play in high engagement rates.

The context of our relationship with email is also important to the success of newsletters. Email is essential to our daily lives, and winning space in someone’s inbox is a high hurdle to clear, especially in a culture that prioritizes “inbox zero.” There is also no single corporate “owner” of email, so receiving an email or inbox notification is somehow less bothersome than getting a notification from another app. The context difference between open and free messaging channels and apps owned by companies incentivized to get your attention is an important one when it comes to notifications and communication with customers.

Some publications have realized the value in email distribution outside of newsletters. For instance, The Information sends emails multiple times per day, either with high-profile new stories or round-ups of recent articles. As a subscriber to The Information (~$400 / year), I rarely actively visit the website. Instead, I rely on checking the headlines that land in my inbox, clicking through on the stories that catch my interest.

Source: my inbox

Informative and entertaining content

To attract and retain readers, a newsletter must provide some valuable information or entertaining content. In my experience, there are three prominent and successful newsletter genres, each that have different use cases and characteristics that contribute to their success:

Newsletter genres:

News aggregator Deep dives / analysis & insight Community specific

News aggregation newsletters are usually sent on a daily or weekly cadence, have a specific sector or topic focus (tech, finance, media, etc.), and contain links to recent, relevant news stories for their audience. These newsletters are strongest when they link to a variety of sources, aggregating “the best of the best” stories, and are not beholden to one publication. For instance, even though Byers Market is written by NBC News reporters Dylan Byers and Ahiza Garcia-Hodges, the daily media industry-focused newsletter links to stories from a litany of reputable publications. I appreciate this as a reader, because it signals that they are linking the most interesting and in-depth stories regardless of source, not just schilling for NBC News.

Source: Byers Market Newsletter

News aggregation newsletters are most interesting when the author provides their own commentary or opinion on the stories that they link, like Benedict Evans does for the ~140,000 tech-interested subscribers to his newsletter. Author commentary provides a perspective on a news story, which is complimentary to the linked article, often written with the journalistic standards of avoiding bias or opinion. I appreciate this commentary because it often provides a well though-out opinion on recent news, and regardless of whether I agree with it or not, it gives me something to think about to develop my own opinions on the matter.

The second genre of popular newsletters is that of the deep-dive or topic / story analysis, such as Stratechery by Ben Thompson. In this genre, the author often tackles one new topic with each issue, diving into the weeds about the implications of a recent event or development. Authors of deep-dive newsletters most likely have expertise and relevant experience in the topics that they cover, and are able to provide a trusted perspective that is layers deeper and more nuanced than a basic news article covering the same event. These newsletters are more easily monetizable than news aggregators, because their content is entirely proprietary and, if they’re any good, their analysis is thought-provoking and original, enticing readers to pay for access. Anyone can copy or aggregate “news” stories, but fewer can write interesting, original in-depth analysis about the lesser-discussed implications of such stories, which makes this writing and analysis a valued skill.

Finally, community specific newsletters offer community managers a way to increase the interactions and engagement of their members. Often the intent of community specific newsletters (such as the one I write) is to distribute relevant information, and more importantly, increase opportunities for members to interact with each other, which strengthens the community.

These newsletters differ from news aggregator and deep dive newsletters in a couple of ways. First, their cadence is usually less often — more likely weekly or monthly; and second, they often depend on input, interaction, and content from their readers. For example, each week I feature an interview with one interesting member of our community, and include a handful of open job opportunities and requests from other members, who are able to utilize the weekly communication as a broadcasting channel for relevant content to the broader community. Get Real by Nikhil Krishnan and the “Give / Ask / News” newsletter by Mike MacCombie at ff.VC are two examples of community specific newsletters that are effective at enticing their readers to contribute their input and interact with one another.

A distinct (and often biased) voice

Besides distribution, the real strength of successful newsletters is that they have their own voice or personality. This is partially enabled once again by the context of email — which is usually written in a more personable and informal tone than an article in a publication. Having an email relationship, or being invited to someone’s inbox on a regular basis, affords a more casual and personality-driven tone than an article in a publication. For every newsletter that I subscribe to as a reader, I’m familiar with the author and their likely opinions and perspectives on a given topic, which I appreciate.

Even newsletters written by multiple writers such as The Hustle, Morning Brew, or theSkimm have a distinct voice or personality that is congenial to their audience. Humor, sarcasm, and inside-jokes or references are also common in newsletters, whose audiences understand the context, since they are regular readers. This makes consumption of otherwise “serious” content more enjoyable and engaging.

The nature of using email for distribution also allows readers to respond to the author of a newsletter. While most publications allow comments, it is both higher-friction and less personable than responding to an email newsletter. I’ve built TGSF newsletter to rely on feedback, input, and content from our readers, and I receive replies each week commenting on content from that week’s edition. As a writer, this engagement is pure encouragement.

Easy monetization

The real reason that we’ve seen an explosion in email newsletters over the past few years has been that they’ve become easily monetizable, even for individual authors. Tools like Substack have made it easy for anyone to spin-up a newsletter, either free or subscription based, and has empowered journalists to earn a living working for themselves even as publications slash jobs at record rates. If these same writers instead started their own blogs or websites and tried to drive regular traffic, they would see a fraction of the audience and monetization. But using the passive distribution channel of an email inbox, and by asking their audience to pay directly for their content, authors are able to engage and retain a sustainably large and monetizable audience! Many of the most popular paid newsletters on Substack are of the deep-dive variety, because these analyses are proprietary and therefore can’t be found anywhere else, unlike general “news” stories.

Another approach to newsletter monetization that pre-dates Substack is ad-supported or sponsor driven. In this model, authors write free newsletters and grow their audience to hundreds of thousands of readers before approaching brands and products to advertise in or “sponsor” their newsletter. Since newsletters often have a particular market focus, their audience demographic generally skews heavily, which is attractive to brands and products focused on that demographic. For readers, scrolling past the occasional ad is worth receiving the newsletter content for free, and they may just be interested in the product being advertised. Some newsletters also sell merchandise and use affiliate links to products for revenue.

Source: Morning Brew newsletter

At the end of the day, the real secret behind successful newsletters is no secret at all — the content has to be good. Although it takes less effort for a reader to find your content since it ends up in their inbox regularly, this quickly becomes an annoyance rather than a convenience if you’ve fallen out of favor with your readers. Consistently writing high-quality content — especially of the deep-dive / analysis genre — is a task that takes enormous effort.

Since the internet has brought down the barriers to content distribution, we’ve all benefitted from unique voices having the ability to share their thoughts publicly. Newsletters have a freedom that most publications do not — in that they can have an opinion and personality, and this is often what their audience values. Utilizing email as a passive distribution channel keeps an audience engaged, and maintaining a consistent cadence trains that audience to carve out time to consume the content. In a world competing for your attention, this is a high-hurdle, and those that are able to clear it are able to monetize this ability through brand sponsorships and paid subscriptions easier than ever before. It’s no wonder that newsletters are more popular than ever before.