Why Marketers Should Take Note of Google's Newsletter Effort

Google, following in the footsteps of its platform peers Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, has finally entered the newsletter universe, and marketers have taken notice. News broke last week that engineers working at Google’s in-house incubator, Area 120, have developed a product called Museletter, which will allow users to create a public-facing Google profile that they can populate with Google Suite products, such as Docs, Sheets and Slides, all at no cost to the creator. Museletter adoptees can place their content behind a paywall and choose to publish new work to an email list or blog. The result is a tool that offers many of the features that users have come to expect from free newsletter products, with additional capabilities like enhanced analytics and potentially ads layered on top. The product will be available in the next several months, according to its website. "I'm not surprised that Google is going this route," said Kerel Cooper, the CMO of email marketing company LiveIntent. "If you look at the last year and a half, Substack, Twitter, LinkedIn and others have all offered ways for creators to connect with their audience through email newsletters. I think this is a natural fit for Google." As Newsletter Advertising Grows, Advertisers Opt for Quality Over Quantity The product is still in its infancy and a Google representative declined to share specifics on the record. However, Museletter offers a number of features that should excite newsletter-writers and marketers alike. 1. The vast Google universe Rather than introduce a new product and push its adoption, with Museletter Google has added a sought-after functionality to its already-ubiquitous Google Suite, which boasts nearly 2 billion global users. Gmail alone has around 1.5 billion active users. The number of Substack writers, for comparison, is in the thousands. Already, many newsletters begin as Google Docs and end up in Google inboxes; with Museletter, the Mountain View company can extend its dominance to the midway section of the email pipeline. The product will also be free to users, eliminating any barrier to entry posed by price. Plus, given that users will be able to paywall non-text documents, such as Sheets and Slides, Museletter offers monetization capabilities for features that are not currently offered by competing newsletter platforms. 2. Potential for ad-insertion capabilities Museletter has given no indication of whether or not it will allow advertising, but doing so would offer a clear differentiating factor from its competition, and no one does digital advertising better than Google. Google has a history of monetizing free products with ads, such as Search and Mail, and the product would be able to collect a host of valuable first-party data if it chose to, Cooper said. “Who has more data on its users than Google, especially if they’re using the Google suite?” Cooper said. “From a first-party data perspective, it seems like it could be a natural fit with AdSense.” Marketers have already expressed a willingness to pay top-dollar to reach newsletter audiences, due to their opted-in readership and intimate relationship. If Museletter built in functionality that allowed marketers to reach newsletter readers at scale, brands could gain access to a valuable audience and the financial incentives could spur more creators to join the platform. 3. Granular analytics Most newsletter platforms offer creators only limited analytics, making it challenging to meaningfully segment audiences or run marketing campaigns. Museletter, on the other hand, could make ample use of Google’s extensive analytics capabilities, giving marketers and creators alike an extra reason to adopt the product. Marketers advertising on the product would have a clear view of whom they are reaching, a far cry from many of the jerry-rigged solutions that consumer-facing newsletters currently offer. Plus, with Apple’s recent iOS updates obscuring open rates in Apple Mail, Museletter could be more attractive to creators and marketers looking to track engagement. “From an analytics perspective, with Museletter you have a suite of products that enable your writers to holistically understand the engagements within the inbox,” Cooper said.

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3 Reasons Marketers Should Take Note of Google's Newsletter Effort

Google's Museletter could shake things up

Mark Stenberg

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