With apologies to John Lennon, that headline came to me the other day as I was going through that morning’s various newsletters in my inbox, and, like many of you, I had quite a few. Of course, we all subscribe to a bunch — for today’s multifaceted, ultra-targeted information needs, the newsletter is pretty much the perfect delivery tool.
Need a snapshot of the day before brought directly to you in a 5-to-10-minute scan? Done. Want more information on a topic? Click on through. Less detail on another topic? Well, you can’t unsee it, but you can certainly quickly scroll past. And why settle for a section of a newspaper when you get an entire newsletter devoted to a single topic!
I confess to being torn between my summary newsletters that link out to multiple longer stories and the Substack-style ones that give me a single, full article right there in the email. Both have their benefits, depending less on them and more on how much time I have in a day.
More Ramblings From the Editor: This One’s for the Readers
The reason for bastardizing a Beatles song lyric and pondering my newsletter consumption is because, in addition to being a reader, I, again, like many of you, am a newsletter creator. So, in addition to my personal preferences, I need to consider the audience to make sure I’m providing a useful tool and stay out of the spam folder.
There was a time when I didn’t think much about the format of the content — the mission was to put out the news and exclusive articles every day. Then, in 2019, the B2B division of Future, where Resi lives, acquired SmartBrief, which is a company that made its living solely from newsletters. Not only did they have a proprietary backend system that we would shortly be moving to, but they also had a lot of research into best practices that informed the best way to serve their markets — and what features to add to their ecosystem.
It was eye-opening to go from thinking about just what people would receive to how they would experience it. It was also the opening of a rabbit hole I have yet to reach the end of.
The Resi SmartBrief, our 3x weekly newsletter, just got a bit of a facelift, which I am sure you noticed (you do subscribe to it, right?). That was a cosmetic change, but some different story structures will be added soon. I have also learned I can embed full videos in it, as well as ask trivia questions, so look for more of those kinds of things soon. Because, why not?
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Of course, having relevant and possibly enjoyable content inside the newsletter doesn’t help those who receive the newsletter but don’t open it, which is possibly my biggest conundrum on the topic. It’s got to be about the subject line, right? I’ve tried direct, I’ve tried cutesy, I’ve even tried NY Post-style puns, but the open rate doesn’t differ much from day to day.
I would love to hear from you about how you create impactful newsletters and what your biggest open-rate success has been. Oh, and if you’d care to tell me what you’d like to see in future Resi newsletters, I’m all ears.
[Ed. Note: I know I typically like to come full circle in these conclusions, so I should re-reference “A Day in the Life” again, maybe using the last line of the song, “I’d love to turn you on” instead of the all-ears thing, but that seems creepy. Can we all just imagine we hear a single chord played out until it naturally ends after what seems way too long a time?]
