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Ask HN: Is it just me, or is the inbox is the worst place for newsletters?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or is the inbox is the worst place for newsletters?

#11

Post by rodelrod »

andybak wrote: post #7

How do I get notified of a new newsletter? For me my Inbox is the only place I'm guaranteed to visit regularly. If a notification is on any other platform then I might not ever know about it. But then - you haven't really explained what you mean. Do you mean in terms of rendering? notifications, sharing? And it depends on your relationship to email vs other platforms. Tell us more about your reasoning.

> How do I get notified of a new newsletter?

Not OP but I use Inoreader for RSS. It has push notifications in the paid version, although I don't need them, I just open Inoreader when I'm in a newsletter-reading mood.

> Tell us more about your reasoning.

The reason email does not work for me is that my email inbox is overflowing with a variety of types of communication: business emails that require a quick reply, unsolicited sales pitches, notifications from several services, personal emails. I need to go through each email rapidly and either reply immediately, snooze it for later, create an action item in the my to-do list, give a quick read and archive or just straight out archive without reading.

There's no place in this for "take 40 minutes to leisurely read this long-form email". Also the volume of communications is way to big to go through all of them and mark them for later reading. I imagine I could create rules for all the newsletters and send them straight to some folder but then the experience is just lacking compared to a dedicated RSS reader.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or is the inbox is the worst place for newsletters?

#13

Post by adamcstephens »

TheFreim wrote: post #4

myemail+newsletter@example.com Filter it out so it doesn't get in the way, read them when you want to (still generally dislike newsletters in email, rss is nicer)

I filter mine as well, and use Fastmail’s snooze to only have them show up once a day.

I used to use rss heavily, but it has been many years since I regularly checked a client. At least with email delivery I don’t miss them.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or is the inbox is the worst place for newsletters?

#14

Post by graeme »

troydavis wrote: post #8

My RSS reader service also provides an email address for email-only subscriptions: https://feedbin.com/blog/2016/02/03/subscribe-to-email-newsl... . I read email newsletters in the same place as RSS. I'm subscribed to a few low-volume Twitter searches too ( https://feedbin.com/blog/2018/01/11/feedbin-is-the-best-way-... ).

Woah thank you. I was looking for something like this but couldn’t find the right service. This looks great.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or is the inbox is the worst place for newsletters?

#15

Post by edisonywh »

I kept missing my newsletters and that annoyed me to an extent where I decided to build my own solution: https://slickinbox.com/, Slick Inbox provides you an email that you can use to subscribe to newsletters, and the app is built for reading newsletters.

There are other services out there like Stoop Inbox, Feedly & Feedbin that also does the same thing, but point being that I think newsletters are fundamentally different from an "email" and thus deserve a special treatment (similar to how Podcasts are just RSS feed underneath, but it's fundamentally a different product)

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or is the inbox is the worst place for newsletters?

#16

Post by aethertron »

My inbox a good place for me to learn about the existence of a new issue of something, but a poor place to actually read said issues, to keep track of what I've read, and manage a 'library'. I want e-reader-like features:

    - save my place
    - highlighting
    - annotations
Should these features be added to Gmail? I trow not. Better to have these newsletter issues converted to some appropriate format and sent to my library, along with my ebooks and saved web pages.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or is the inbox is the worst place for newsletters?

#17

Post by vcavallo »

I set up a newsletters email folder with automatic filtering. When I feel like reading newsletters, I go there. Otherwise, I don’t see them. Sort of the same behavior loop of opening up my RSS feed (which, incidentally, is how I’m seeing this post).

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or is the inbox is the worst place for newsletters?

#18

Post by TheFreim »

adamcstephens wrote: post #13
TheFreim wrote: post #4

myemail+newsletter@example.com Filter it out so it doesn't get in the way, read them when you want to (still generally dislike newsletters in email, rss is nicer)

I filter mine as well, and use Fastmail’s snooze to only have them show up once a day. I used to use rss heavily, but it has been many years since I regularly checked a client. At least with email delivery I don’t miss them.

I find that with most newsletters I don't really care about what's new or has changed. It's only when I actually need to use X product or do Y thing that I like to know what's new. This makes RSS nice since I can go weeks and then when I need to work on something using a tool I can check the news for that item.

It depends, of course. Some things I appreciate having it sent daily, others I really don't. There isn't a one size fits all solution and that's not a bad thing.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or is the inbox is the worst place for newsletters?

#19

Post by [deleted] »

aethertron wrote: post #16

My inbox a good place for me to learn about the existence of a new issue of something, but a poor place to actually read said issues, to keep track of what I've read, and manage a 'library'. I want e-reader-like features: - save my place - highlighting - annotations Should these features be added to Gmail? I trow not. Better to have these newsletter issues converted to some appropriate format and sent to my library,…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or is the inbox is the worst place for newsletters?

#20

Post by andybak »

rodelrod wrote: post #11
andybak wrote: post #7

How do I get notified of a new newsletter? For me my Inbox is the only place I'm guaranteed to visit regularly. If a notification is on any other platform then I might not ever know about it. But then - you haven't really explained what you mean. Do you mean in terms of rendering? notifications, sharing? And it depends on your relationship to email vs other platforms. Tell us more about your reasoning.

> How do I get notified of a new newsletter? Not OP but I use Inoreader for RSS. It has push notifications in the paid version, although I don't need them, I just open Inoreader when I'm in a newsletter-reading mood. > Tell us more about your reasoning. The reason email does not work for me is that my email inbox is overflowing with a variety of types of communication: business emails that require a quick reply, unso…

OK. (on a side note this is "Inbox bundles" solved elegantly in Google Inbox RIP)

Anyway - I too have an overflowing inbox. I used to aim for Inbox zero but slipped and am living with it.

One discipline I do maintain though is that the Inbox should always be actionable. It's my todo list.

So - how do I handle non-actionable, non-urgent stuff?

1. If it will be urgent and actionable I snooze it. 2. If it's of interest but not urgent and has a web representation then I open a browser tab for later.

Newsletters nearly always fall into category 2. Unless I can just skim them for interesting links and archive them.

And a lot of the time I unsubscribe - as soon as I realise I don't really want to read it. I get most of my news from HN or various subreddits.

I think there's about 3 or 4 regular newsletters I tolerate. And I'm more tolerant of infrequent emails (new features for products I'm interested in etc)

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