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Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?

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Re: Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?

#81

Post by whakim »

PaulHoule wrote: post #33
mooreds wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, you might get kicked off a newsletter provider platform. It's a risk. But you have far far more options to take your subscriber list and go to a different provider (substack, tinyletter) or even build your own solution using something like mailgun or AWS SES. (Yes, that latter option would be quite a bit of work, but if you had, say, 20k email subscribers, it might be worth it.) If you get kicked off twitter or…

It took me about four hours to build an SES based mailing system. With dynamodb, lambda and the API gateway it is almost trivial. Put docker in the mix and it’s more like going to the moon.

I don't think SES is particularly hard to use. That being said, there are a huge number of caveats:

* Email HTML is gnarly. Hope you like tables. The vast majority of web developers aren't equipped to write email HTML for something as simple as a button and have it render correctly in all email clients.

* Things get much more complicated when you need to email a large number of people (say 10s of thousands - very real for a lot of newsletters) and want to both personalize your content (e.g. add unsubscribe links) and not take 30 minutes to email all your subscribers.

* The metrics you get with SES are extremely barebones. Makes Sendgrid look incredible, and that's saying something. Deliverability and inboxing will be even more of a black box than usual.

Re: Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?

#82

Post by lancesells »

michalu wrote: post #80

My company sends a newsletter once a month. We're selling roasted coffee. This single day account for 20-30% of our monthly revenue. In fact email is our single best performing channel. Hope this info helps. EDIT: I should also add that we're combining every newsletter with some "offer" e.g. we make a new blend or roast couple of bags of some coffee we don't typically stock. We're also keeping it very personal - it's…

Sounds like you should switch to sending two a month.

Re: Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?

#83

Post by [deleted] »

mjoneill wrote: post #75

> Do newsletters work? Marketer here. Yes, they work very well...unless you're pumping out a crappy newsletter that nobody wants, doesn't provide value, etc. Not all products are the same, and not all sales funnels are identical... but generally you want lower commitment asks that can help you build your audience of potential customers far out in advance of them being in a position to buy. In a B2B world, investing i…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?

#84

Post by altdataseller »

Yes, they absolutely do work. I regularly get 40-60% open rate on my newsletters. As long as you're not spamming them daily with useless messages. Email is the most engaged medium. With Twitter, FB or Instagram, you're lucky if even 1% of your followers read your message.

Re: Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?

#85

Post by suprfsat »

altdataseller wrote: post #84

Yes, they absolutely do work. I regularly get 40-60% open rate on my newsletters. As long as you're not spamming them daily with useless messages. Email is the most engaged medium. With Twitter, FB or Instagram, you're lucky if even 1% of your followers read your message.

Fun fact, Apple Mail "opens" the email asynchronously, for privacy reasons.

Re: Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?

#86

Post by yoyohello13 »

lancesells wrote: post #82
michalu wrote: post #80

My company sends a newsletter once a month. We're selling roasted coffee. This single day account for 20-30% of our monthly revenue. In fact email is our single best performing channel. Hope this info helps. EDIT: I should also add that we're combining every newsletter with some "offer" e.g. we make a new blend or roast couple of bags of some coffee we don't typically stock. We're also keeping it very personal - it's…

Sounds like you should switch to sending two a month.

This is how it starts. Before you know it, they are spamming their mailing list every day.

Re: Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?

#87

Post by weird-eye-issue »

suprfsat wrote: post #85
altdataseller wrote: post #84

Yes, they absolutely do work. I regularly get 40-60% open rate on my newsletters. As long as you're not spamming them daily with useless messages. Email is the most engaged medium. With Twitter, FB or Instagram, you're lucky if even 1% of your followers read your message.

Fun fact, Apple Mail "opens" the email asynchronously, for privacy reasons.

I built email tracking once and sometimes, very randomly, Gmail would fetch images in emails before they were ever actually opened by a human. This was a couple years ago

Re: Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?

#88

Post by ajsnigrutin »

GnarfGnarf wrote: post #53

One of the difficulties encountered with newsletters and email promotion, is that your email sending service (MailChimp, Keap/Infusionsoft, SendGrid, etc.) rates you on your customers' Spam Complaint Rate. If you exceed 0.1% complaints, you can lose your account. Recipients at some of the more naïve addresses (Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, MSN) have a habit of clicking on the prominent "Spam" button (instead of the "Unsubscri…

On the other hand, spammers... I mean advertisers use many many dark practices to get users to subscribe to their spam.. i mean, ad e-mails. Some even subrscribe you by default. Some give you 30+ different checkmarks to untick to get rid of the spam. So yeah... clicking "spam", makes it easier for the rest of the people who got scammed the same way.

Re: Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?

#89

Post by michalu »

lancesells wrote: post #82
michalu wrote: post #80

My company sends a newsletter once a month. We're selling roasted coffee. This single day account for 20-30% of our monthly revenue. In fact email is our single best performing channel. Hope this info helps. EDIT: I should also add that we're combining every newsletter with some "offer" e.g. we make a new blend or roast couple of bags of some coffee we don't typically stock. We're also keeping it very personal - it's…

Sounds like you should switch to sending two a month.

So far we found once a month to be our sweet spot. Majority of customers buy their monthly supply in one shopping session and this is a way to prompt some of them + reactivate old customers / staled customers and convert blog subscribers.

I think the next step is to segment our customer/subscriber base and send at various frequency. But it's also a "side-hustle" so it takes effort :)

Re: Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?

#90

Post by StevePerkins »

lancesells wrote: post #82
michalu wrote: post #80

My company sends a newsletter once a month. We're selling roasted coffee. This single day account for 20-30% of our monthly revenue. In fact email is our single best performing channel. Hope this info helps. EDIT: I should also add that we're combining every newsletter with some "offer" e.g. we make a new blend or roast couple of bags of some coffee we don't typically stock. We're also keeping it very personal - it's…

Sounds like you should switch to sending two a month.

I assume that returns are diminishing, and turn negative past a certain point.

If a company that I'm interested in sends me an email once per month, then I generally don't mind it. I might even appreciate it.

Send it every two weeks, and you're training me to tune out and usually click the "Delete" button without looking at the content.

Send it weekly, and you've irritated me enough to have the motivation to unsubscribe. Maybe just flag you as spam if the "Unsubscribe" link isn't immediately easy to find. Certainly tarnished my view of your brand.

I don't know where the "sweet spot" is, but monthly sounds about right.

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