11 Consistently Valuable Email Newsletters for Product People
This list was originally compiled for Cremalab’s (somewhat) daily podcast, Product Management Daily on July 6. In the spirit of selling one’s byproducts, I’ve added them here with a bit of commentary, in no particular order.
Email newsletters are so…Hotmail.
No! False. Get that thought outta your head.
Listening to the cries of professionals everywhere, email sits atop the list of everything we hate. It would follow that email newsletters, being more email, are naturally awful. Right?
Maybe.* But not all of them. Starting a new role at a new company allowed me to start with a clean slate and build a highly-selective set of work-related email newsletters which are better than RSS, Twitter, & other feeds in a couple ways:
- They’re curated editorial curations. The content in these emails is often selected & delivered because it proved itself beforehand. Highly read, especially thoughtful, discussion-generating…whatever.
- The cadence is what it should be. Daily, weekly, sometimes both, sometimes it’s up to me. I’m not constantly defending my attention from individual links thrown my way. For someone who’s drawn to the algorithmic feed roulette of modern platforms, this is a helpful structure.
- Using Tesler’s Law to my advantage. Okay, so maybe I’m stretching the interpretation of that Law, but what I mean is that, where I once took it upon myself to do the work necessary to navigate a complex information exchange, I’m now entrusting portions of the work/complexity of the information transfer to the editors & creators. This is not a firehose that forces me to learn what’s meaningful because that work has already been done. As long as their definition of “meaningful” roughly corresponds to mine, we’re good.
You’ll notice that the sources come from a variety of areas. While it may add noise, it helps build perspective and reduce overlap.
Here’s a list of those that have made the cut:
Harvard Business Review
Good for several reasons:
- They put out a LOT of content, much of it is really good. The key is that they provide granular options for Strategy, Innovation, & other topics so you don’t get overwhelmed (as easily).
- Daily & weekly editions.
- We work with orgs from two-person startups to mid-size regional companies to corporate incubators; this is where I read what they’re reading. HBR helps provide a bigger picture, high-level view of what’s happening in several worlds outside my immediate world.
- Bonus: the HBR Ideacast is consistently good, too.
I’m not a manager, but their “Management Tip” email is often helpful in considering how I work with other humans.
I also really like the Weekly Hotlist of popular links across topics.
Weekly Product Reads by Product Manager HQ
If you’re in the PM world, you probably already know about this site, but make sure to check out their weekly newsletter as well. It’s well-formatted with a single link +summary for each of several wide-but-relevant topics; I always read it & almost always click a link or two.
Product Habits
Hiten Shah’s weekly newsletter has some good commentary in addition to a “Hiten’s Pick” and categorized link+summary bits for SaaS-minded folks.
Strategyzer
From the mind & team of strategy-savvy Alex Osterwalder, comes a Thursdays-weekly list of items from their own blog as well as a few of their favorite links from the week. Alex’s Twitter feed is full of gems, but the newsletter is a good way to get the signals delivered. Look at the especially thoughtful formatting, too: Title, source, XX min read, what it is, & why it’s good. 👏 👍
The Download
From MIT’s outstanding Technology Review blog, this is another newsletter that’s helpful for seeing outside my product/design world. I’m not really a tech guy, but I find this helpful for seeing the business & philosophy behind the technology that gets into the headlines (and sometimes before that).
Each topic is broken up & provides a nice bit of context, always finishing with “Why it matters.”
Then there’s the Ten Fascinating Things section that I make a point to at least skim, but usually click through a couple.
Leading Change by NOBL
NOBL is an agency that helps organizations navigate change, and one of my favorite resources around. They have a handful of excellent resources to help product people do this and the email is a consistent tool to remind me that I’m not just making things, I’m helping people make things for people. Each piece fluidly goes from strategic to tactical, making sure to communicate the why behind the what.
At the bottom is a set that I always spend a bit of time with, their Hot Links:
O’Reilly
Like HBR, prolific publisher O’Reilly allows meaningful granularity of content delivery. Unlike HBR, each email is dedicated to a topic like Design. The best part about this one is the variety of content provided: excerpts from their books & videos, links from other blogs, quotations, tweets, etc. Sure, much of this content is designed to suck you into the expansive O’Reilly universe, but…it’s a good place to be if you’re not already there.
Brain Food by Farnam Street
Shane Parrish puts out another one of my favorite sources, the Farnam Street blog. He provides great perspective on the startup & product world; his weekly newsletter provides just enough editorial to understand a topic and decide whether I’ve had enough or I should dig in some more.
ProductCraft by Pendo
You’re probably aware of product intelligence tool, Pendo, so make sure you’re aware of their newsletter, too. It’s consistently brief (a few links), high-quality, and they’ve got an interesting little poll in there.
InVision
If you’ve ever used InVision, chances are good that you’ve already received an email from Clark at InVision. So, this isn’t a mention for awareness, but to encourage you to pay attention (or resubscribe). In addition to design & UX, they’re increasingly writing broadly worthwhile articles for developers, product people, & managers.
Andrew Chen
I’ll admit that I was late to the Andrew Chen show. Catching up on his many, many posts has been an outstanding way to spend a bucket of time, though. He’s written on almost everything SaaS-related — not just growth!— and he does so in a clear, reasonable fashion. In addition to his worthy-every-time long reads, he’ll occasionally share a “best of” like the one below, gathering many posts into one topical delivery.
BLOG BONUSES
These weren’t on the podcast, but should’ve been; I had already read & archived them when I was going through my inbox. 🤦♂
Weekly Highlights from Creative Mornings
We’re regulars & supporters at CMKansas City, and their newsletter is consistently encouraging, thought-provoking, and valuable even beyond the work life.
While the content tends towards creative & design (duh), it’s also very human. Since product people deal with humans quite a bit, it’s a helpful perspective.
Prioritised by Mind the Product
Another one that was overlooked is that of PM classic, Mind the Product. This is a great mix of links & summaries from around the product world, covering a variety of skills & topics in a way that matters to product people.
What did we miss?
There are gobs on tons of good email newsletters for product people. What should we be paying attention to? What are your favorites and why? Let us know in the comments!
PS: Additions from the Twitters:
- Kelly: “A bit surprised by InVision making that list. I’d throw sidebar into the shortlist though, I feel like I find something good 60% of the time & its *so* easily consumable.” Sidebar is here.
- Scott: “Nice. Would add @stratechery & @CBinsights.” Stratechery & CBI
- Courtney: “Signing up for these while I wait for @DanielleMorrill’s new newsletter to appear in my inbox.”
* I know not everyone has this luxury, but newsletters are 80–90% of the email I consume (overall, it’s about 10% client/sales/correspondence, 30% notification/update redundancy, and 60% newsletters). We use Slack for the majority of our communication at Crema, so I’m able to pretty effectively curate and stay on top of my inbox.
- *BIG thanks to Courtney von Nieda for super helpful critique to make this better.
