Photo credit: Mathyas Kurmann

Why are newsletters seeing a boom while web traffic falls?

And some of our other questions.

In lieu of our recent Q&As with newsletter-makers, we are taking a beat to review how newsletter needs and habits are changing and to consider potential next steps out loud. Below, check out our three-step in this spring’s major trends in news needs and consumption habits:

1. In March, we saw that coronavirus news dominated readers’ attention. Around this time, we started to notice COVID-19 pop-up newsletters emerging from publishers to curate virus-related news and information.
2. Then, in April, Nieman reported that the coronavirus traffic bump to news sites is “pretty much over,” and Pew reported that about seven-in-ten U.S. adults need to take breaks from COVID-19 news. Safe to say, at least for a time, the virus changed the way we internet.
3. Yet despite the traffic bumps returning to “normal,” we read last week that publishers are seeing a mini-boom in coronavirus newsletter signups. We see a newsletter-boom in major newsrooms like the ones mentioned in the aforementioned Digiday piece, and in smaller, startup newsrooms like The 19th. We’ve also noticed in our Q&As with newsletter-makers evidence of higher newsletter open-rates.

This takes us to the inevitable question: How has the pandemic changed the way people need and want to consume news and information? Despite our suspicion that many, many people have checked out from newsletters all together, we keep reading and hearing about higher open rates for newsletters. So, what is happening?! Are you all taking this opportunity to clean your lists, or is this indicative of a larger newsletter trend?

We boil down this broad umbrella question into newsletter-specific puzzles:

1. What exactly are the “new normal” routines and needs we now have? What variables have changed, and which ones have stayed the same?
2. How are these new routines impacting why we read newsletters?
3. How are publishers adapting newsletters to these evolving needs? How could they be adapting?

To answer these questions, one place we know to start is with reader habits and routines. We decided to take to Twitter to ask: “Recently, have you been reading your newsletters earlier in the day, later in the day or the same time of day versus in pre-COVID times?” Thank you to the 33 people who responded to our poll.

Here’s what we found, and how our thinking developed as a result:

The majority of respondents (rounded up to 58%) reported reading their newsletters about the same time of day now versus in beforetimes, which was a higher percentage of folks than we expected sticking to their newsletter-reading routines.

Yet, with almost a third of respondents saying they read newsletters later in the day now, these rather unscientific results might point to the need for newsletter-makers to test a later send time, a point that Sarah Ebner at The Telegraph also flagged (and read more on her pandemic newsletter adaptations here).

In response to our poll, Ariel Zirulnick made a great point (and identified a flaw in our multiple-choice format) by saying, “Can I suggest an option for ‘I stopped reading them’? Because that’s me.” Yeah, we get it. We’re finding new appeal in more feature-esque newsletters (e.g. Delia Cai’s Deez Links), cooking-related ones (e.g. Abigail Koffler’s This Needs Hot Sauce), and personal-essay letters (e.g. Katie Hawkins-Gaar’s My Sweet Dumb Brain).

Josh Rosenblat, Philadelphia Inquirer’s Senior Newsletter Editor, makes a similar point here:

This makes us think back to something newsletter-maker Delia Cai said in our recent Q&A with her. She said: “…Once the pandemic hit, I know I consciously started writing things in a waaaay more personal tone, like it wasn’t just ‘This link is cool because XYZ,’ but ‘I think this is super interesting because XYZ,’ and adding like a little more earnestness and personal stuff.’”

For our next round of Q&As with newsletter-makers, we plan to address these newsletter puzzles in finer detail. If you have any insight into any of these questions or questions of your own, please shoot us a message at newsletterwizards@gmail.com. We’d love to talk shop!