I believe it offers a way for companies to hook a customer in once, then get their attention for free for months (via weekly/monthly emails).
Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?
121–130 of 174 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?
#122My 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…
What service do you use for templatizing amd sending the emails? Are they personalized?
We simply send emails using gmail API. They are personalized a bit, I run everything from jupyter notebook. Not a big fan of services like mailchimp. We keep personal approach so I prefer to land in primary inbox vs "promotions" as most customers are businesses and we've had exchanges over the email. We're just under 2k which is the daily limit for gmail, will start using SMTP with it since that gets you 10k emails a day.
Re: Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?
#123I think it's trivial to see it "works" in the sense that it costs nothing and generates at least some positive revenue. The expected value of doing it from the producer end is greater than zero. Does that mean you should do it? That's the more interesting question. Panhandling works. Spamming works. Direct mail campaigns, sending out mass texts to lists you buy from states that sell voter records all work. Standing o…
> I think it's trivial to see it "works" in the sense that it costs nothing and generates at least some positive revenue.
How does it cost nothing??
Re: Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?
#124Reading down the answers, lots of people are confusing two things: marketing emails (mostly from e-commerce sites) versus content-driven newsletters.
Open rate and CTR on marketing emails is very low and their production quality (cost) needs to be high to make a dent.
Newsletters are a different beast. If you have some product-market fit for the content, your open rate and CTR can be very high. Scaling them can be tricky, because if your content is niche you hit a ceiling, and if it’s not you hit the general problem of acquiring customers lots of other people are after.
…but, after you solve that, you have a scaled up newsletter that you can both sell ads against and use to activate your own monetization flows. Does it work? Yeah, it does. Very, very well, in my experience.
Re: Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
> everyone checks their email Citation needed. Absolutely not the case in my experience. And while I check my email, I delete 80% of it unread, based on the subject line/sender only.
"In 2020, the number of global e-mail users amounted to four billion and is set to grow to 4.6 billion users in 2025." You got me! :) I guess just 1 out of every 2 human beings checks email. The denominator includes folks without computers or phones too. https://www.statista.com/statistics/255080/number-of-e-mail-...
Having an inbox does not mean using it or checking it regularly. Think of all the old people with tablets who don't even know what their email address is. Or folks like me who have several. What I'm saying is that "an email address exists, somebody must be checking it" is a flawed argument.
In fact, this article: https://phrasee.co/blog/a-brief-history-of-email/
says the following:
With over 2.6 billion active users and over 4.6 billion email accounts in operation, email is the most important and widely used communications medium on the internet.
Re: Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 unsubscr…
> I assume that returns are diminishing, and turn negative past a certain point. Which is why you should test it. Jan '22 -> once a month Feb '22 -> twice a month Mar '22 -> thrice a month Jan '23 -> once a month Feb '23 -> twice a month Mar '23 -> thrice a month Compare and contrast for both unsubscribe rate and conversion.
Fries a month seems like the sweet spot. Especially with a drink. And a burger. Where do I subscribe?!
Re: Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?
#127Yes. Email is a primary way I gather news. I get a bunch of daily emails from various news sources. Some are news organizations, while others are from government agencies or officials. I also get emails from vendors. I filter these into a "shopping" folder so that if I'm looking for a deal I can rummage through there. I get a few random things that just make me happy, like a daily email from a guy who travels the wor…
I'd be interested to know which news sites and government agencies send you this by email.
I’m in Maryland USA. There are two non-profits that cover Maryland news and send daily newsletters. The county executive (chief executive person for the county) sends a weekly email with various county service news, and the county council sends regular emails. Of course this stuff is self-promoting but it does let me know what is happening as press coverage at this level is minimal at best. The parks send a weekly mail with events, as do other local agencies. Most government agencies around here do this and they usually have sign up links at the bottom of every webpage, in the pile with all the other links that don’t get noticed much.
Unfortunately it seems to me the big newspapers like NY Times are intent on sending mails with daily commentary and “analysis” rather than just high-level digests. I do get digest emails for my work - Washington legislative stuff that doesn’t get a lot of public attention - and those are much more useful than the “analysis” NY Times likes to send; I really wish they would do more of a straight daily news summary.
C-span also has a great daily email with video clips from the day - just politicians in their own words, rather than “analysis” which always just means commentary and opinion. The Economist does some commentary in its daily emails but it’s brief and has a good survey of world news and it’s always worth reading.
Re: Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
> everyone checks their email Citation needed. Absolutely not the case in my experience. And while I check my email, I delete 80% of it unread, based on the subject line/sender only.
You should start unsubscribing and setting some filters, for your own good.
I gave up on this years ago when I realized the only valuable things coming to my email were transactional emails, anyway. The rest is... newsletters and shit.
If you're only checking your email to use the "search" function for something very specific, or to find an expected transactional email sent within the last minute, there's not much reason to bother setting up filters.
Text is probably the best way for non-friends to get through to me, because I mostly ignore email and calls since they're overrun with crap, though the current campaign season is really trying to make text useless, too. So many damn fundraising texts, usually from candidates in other states entirely.
Re: Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 unsubscr…
Agreed, but depends on the content. For things like this, I'm assuming they can tell what people who do buy actually buy, and we might assume it's enough coffee for a few weeks or so. I do get some newsletters weekly and do not mind at all, because the info is new/fresh/useful. For 'buy some stuff', unless I'm buying every week (which I don't beyond food) likely less is more.
Really, it just depends on a the value you provide in your emails. If Apple sent me 40% discount promo codes, I'd LOVE weekly emails. Ha!
Re: Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?
#130My 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.
Are you my VP of marketing?