The Case for Daily E-newsletters

My baptism with e-mail newsletters came in 1995 for Windows NT Magazine, a monthly print publication for IT administrators. Mark Smith, the publisher at the time, came into my office and said, "In my magazine column, I told everyone that we'll have an e-mail newsletter launched next month. Hope that's OK." As only Mark could do, he just laughed nervously a little bit and then walked back out. It turns out he really did write that in his column and, while I thought he was a bit nuts, I also took it as a vote of confidence in our ability to make it happen. One of the first issues we tackled was how often to send out the newsletter. The magazine was monthly, and we wanted to be in touch more frequently than that. Should it be every other week, weekly or maybe even daily? Eventually, weekly won out as we felt daily would be too intrusive, and every other week wouldn't be enough. We decided on Wednesdays to avoid most holidays, the workload at the beginning of the week, and the end-of-week blahs. Every issue started with an entire article right at the top with no need to link to our website. The rest of the content for that week's issue was presented in a more digest-style format below the primary article. You had to click through to the website to read those articles. None of this was scientifically tested, backed by any industry data (none existed) or backed by any feedback from readers. (We didn't have the time to ask for feedback.) We simply asked ourselves what we would want if we were the recipient. In a very short time, we were closing in on nearly 200,000 subscribers—entirely opt-in, with open rates averaging in the mid-30s and very strong click rates for our advertisers. Windows NT Magazine was acquired in 2000 by Penton Media, and I was asked to help Penton's other magazines build their e-media businesses, including e-newsletters. Again, weekly seemed to be the perfect frequency for b-to-b e-newsletters, so we replicated the Windows NT Magazine model. I was quite adamant that anything more frequent would burn out the list and be suicidal for a newsletter. But I was wrong. The Day the Daily Won Me Over In 2007, Penton was sold, and I went to work for Interweave Press, a consumer enthusiast media company. One of our first initiatives was to launch online communities and e-newsletters around our core markets, such as knitting, quilting and beading. Leaning on past experience, I felt that our newsletters should be weekly. But a member of our board of directors, Don Nicholas, also had past success with daily e-newsletters and felt we should go that route. Don presented compelling arguments that ultimately won me over. Our first launch was KnittingDaily.com. There is more to the strategy than I can cover here, but the core concept was to incentivize people to register on the site, then publish content to the site daily, and push that content out via e-mail instead of relying on people to remember to come to the site. Of course, each e-mail also pushed various information products (books, DVDs, magazine subscriptions, etc.) that we had for sale. KnittingDaily very quickly grew to hundreds of thousands of double-opt-in e-mail subscribers, all receiving daily e-mail updates from us. But the real eye-opener is that our open rates averaged well over 50 percent, with an opt-out rate that was less than any weekly e-newsletter on which I had ever worked. I had seen the light. After leaving Interweave, I had the chance to apply the daily approach to another b-to-b company for which I was consulting. The company had been doing the typical weekly, digest-style e-newsletter. As with most weeklies, the bounce and opt-out rates were pretty low, but circulation slowly and continually declined as new opt-ins didn't make up for the e-mail subscribers lost. I convinced the company to switch to a daily frequency. The goal was to make its newsletter the de facto daily read for its industry—a niche nobody else had yet claimed. The e-newsletter still went out as a digest, but with fewer articles every day, instead of a huge list of articles once per week. I prepared the company of the likelihood it would lose 20 percent of its circulation and perhaps a few points on its average open rate, but it would still be worth it, as the total e-mails opened per week would significantly increase. To my (and the company's) delight, several things happened: No mass opt-out occurred. In fact, opt-out rates stayed pretty consistent and low. Average open rate didn't decline and was actually going up. Circulation stopped falling. As the e-newsletter became the de-facto industry read, more people signed up. Best of all, the company increased by five times its total e-mails being distributed and opened. The company's brand has rapidly become the de-facto market resource, and it's getting more clicks to its website, it's delivering more value for advertisers, and all of this translates into more revenue potential for the publisher. If done properly, a daily e-newsletter can be very good business for any media brand. It doesn't matter if it's b-to-b or consumer, or whether supported by advertising or selling paid content. And it can be done so that readers are delighted as well. PE Eric Shanfelt specializes in practical revenue-generating strategies for publishers. Read his blog at eMediaStrategist.com where he often responds to comments via his BlackBerry or iPod.

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The Case for Daily E-newsletters

Eric Shanfelt

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Eric Shanfelt