[mvellandi]

Newsletters are the easiest way to retain readers since it just pops in their inbox -- if the writing is good and/or specialized. Good design also really helps. When I managed the newsletters for a New York urban planning nonprofit, we averaged 23% open rates. Another good hook is when issues don't have a public web archive, or it's paywalled.

I saw the bundling mentioned in the Digiday article with the "Everything" brand, and I unsubscribed since I just wanted the business analysis and not other topics (like productivity advice) mixed in. Maybe bundling is okay for other readers.

I have to check out what Substack offers in terms of analytics and email design templates. Personally, I'm interested in series-based newsletters for storytelling that's pubdate agnostic (everyone gets the same first issue). I'm going to look closer at ConvertKit and BareMetrics.

[criddell]

Newsletter fatigue is definitely setting in with me. I was pretty excited about them through 2019 and subscribed to a bunch. They are filtered to a folder in my mail and these days I rarely open any of them. My mail client also blocks remote content (no images) so even if I do read one, I probably will not register on their analytics.

I'm actually using an RSS newsreader more (NetNewsWire on my iPad). For me, it's a much better experience.

[strogonoff]

I'm curious, how do you measure open rates for a newsletter? Many email clients prevent external content from loading as a security measure, thus precluding any tracking. Do you adjust the final figure to account for resulting underreporting? Or do you reckon more clients load external content than I think?

[mvellandi]

Open rates were measured (probably) from either track-pixels as well as any normal images hosted by the email provider. When an email is variably considered 'trusted'/not-spam by the client, it'll show images. But even if no images are shown, a link clickthrough in the email (to the email host and redirected to source) would then also be added to the open rate.