What I learned by sending out my first newsletter
This post addresses the three main questions I had when publishing the first newsletter for Curious Robot: How to stand out? When do I send it? And how important is mobile?
Curious Robot finally exists. It’s a weekly newsletter that covers the impact of technology on us as people and on our society. You can subscribe here, but if you first want to see previous newsletters, go here.
I chose to build a newsletter because it offers a close connection with an audience and helps to get to know them better. It is great for building an audience, getting feedback and experimenting.
The next couple of weeks I’ll be experimenting with the structure, shape and length of the newsletter to find a style that best suits Curious Robot’s audience.
When is the best time to send a newsletter?
According to several email marketing studies (collected here), Tuesday is the best day of the week to send an email. The weekends are proven to be tough, if you’re not providing content that is specifically tied to the weekend habits of your users, like hobbies or shopping.
MailChimp data from 2014 showed that any weekday scores quite high with small peaks for Tuesday and Thursday. If you want to send a second email during the week, Thursday is your friend. Although Wednesday didn’t show up as the best day, it came in second of most optimal day in several of them, so Wednesday is not to be ignored.
If you want to send a newsletter, send it between 8am and 2pm. Earlier is terrible, later is still fine. Try to send the newsletter at these times in the time zone of the reader. People check their email more often in the morning. This is mostly part of their habit to start the day productively and get up to speed on everything they need to know to start the day. If you’re not connected to either of those motivations, you better wait until later during the day to avoid being trashed or archived. In the afternoon people are also more likely to be checking out of work mode and will be looking for distractions.
According to Getresponse, the best chance of being opened is within the hour after the newsletter hit the inboxes of your readers. The open rate drops by half within the second hour. It means that the best time to send your newsletter has to be as close as possible to the moment your readers are able to read it.
Mobile optimization? Yes, please!
If there is one rule that has become so dominant everywhere, it is this one: Think mobile first! 55% of emails are read on a mobile device (source: Campaign Monitor) and the number is growing.
A report from 2015 showed that three fourths of Gmail’s 900 million users access their accounts via mobile devices. Although many people check their mailboxes on their desktop while working, if the newsletter is not a part of their work routine, they probably won’t be looking at it. So, it is definitely something to keep in mind.
When building the first newsletter, I did not expect it to be so easy to make a long one. I also did not expect it to be so hard to make a good short one. It was long and text-heavy, which is not a good user experience on mobile. The first edition looked more like a blogpost and (not on purpose) was built that way. So, it looks great on a Medium post (see here), but it looks horrible in a mailbox. So, it needs less text or more pictures to keep it digestible.
If you are building content for mobile, you have to let go of the horizontal orientation (like Snapchat did for video) and think vertical all the way. That became painfully clear, when the graph I added to the newsletter was squeezed together to fit the width of my smartphone screen, making it less readable.
Make it truly scannable for the reader. Use headers to make the different parts stand out. List the different parts at the top of the newsletter. It makes it easier for readers to scan the newsletter and get to the part they’re interested in. Make links also stand out more and guide the reader with language like ‘click here’ or ‘read more here’.
Interesting side effect of mobile reading: 23% of readers who have opened a newsletter on mobile will open it again later.
Stand out (above the crowd)
269 billion emails are sent each day. So standing out is crucial. I have been asking other newsletter writers for advice to make my newsletter more noticeable in the flow of emails. Here’s a list of some of the things they said:
- Look different: Opt for a customised design. Create a newsletter that looks good, modern and well-designed.
- Be personal: An email is a direct connection with people, so being more personal helps. Allow readers to reach out to you and create a community.
- Be original: Have a unique voice and perspective. One person said ‘There’s only one you and you’re different from everyone else. So be you.’
- Be consistent: once a good formula and structure is created for the newsletter, stick to it. Smaller adjustments can be made that lead to more engagement.
- Become a habit: keep the schedule you have promised to your readers. It is best to publish at least four newsletters per month. Once you publish less than weekly it becomes harder to have your audience recognize you the next time a newsletter hits their mailbox and it becomes more challenging to become part of their routine.
