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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?

#141

Post by layer8 »

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 know an online retailer who sends a newsletter every day, if not multiple newsletters per day. It’s insane. Apparently they have enough customers who don’t unsubscribe that it works for them.

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

#142

Post by antisthenes »

kbelder wrote: post #132
antisthenes wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for an ecommerce company. The unsubscribe rate doesn't really change, it's fairly constant at 0.3% of the audience every time. There are obviously diminishing returns on the revenue with frequencies. Our business is moderately seasonal, so the numbers are not that accurate on the revenue side.

I think a majority of people don't unsubscribe; they just mark your emails as spam and ignore them. That lowers your credibility with email providers, and if that happens enough, you start seeing your emails being considered as spam and you get entirely blocked off the ISP. Also, it may be a mistake to attribute all of your revenue from the email to email. By its nature, emails are going to the segment of your audien…

You're talking in general, and most of your points are correct, but they don't apply to our business fully.

For example, our newsletters are always offering a time-limited discount for the purchase. They're also not segmented out to people "most likely to purchase", because we don't have that data. It goes out to 100% of our audience every time, unless they made a very recent purchase.

If we knew who the people are that are most likely to buy, it sure as hell would make the business easier to run.

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

#143

Post by bdlowery »

MrDunham wrote: post #28
meibo wrote: post #3

Yes, they work and people do actually check their emails. Even if you have a 20-30% click rate, that's 30% of people that may read your headline, click through to your blog post, product announcement, etc. If you're smart about your strategy (don't spam, think twice about when to send a mail, lead with interesting content, visually appealing), a mailing list can be a huge asset to any business. People tend to not wan…

> People tend to not want to follow companies Also many companies got burned thinking the smorgasbord of free traffic on social platforms would never end. It turns out that when your primary business model is selling traffic (via ads), giving it away for free is antithetical to your margins. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok (sometime soon) started off giving creators (and businesses) tons of free traffic only…

Following a giant company on social media is pointless. A large majority of their posts are dumb memes, or clever ways to be funny. It’s never anything of substance.

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

#144

Post by kroltan »

livelace wrote: post #27

Email is a great thing, I use it heavily. Why newsletters doens't work for me: 1. I don't want to give my email. 2. I don't want to receive spam. 3. I don't like long letters with massive amount of different news (even in single domain). In my view newsletters/digests take more time to read and I prefer to receive small pieces of topics more often (what I'm interested in specifically, not whole the editor choice) tha…

1&2: Get yourself a domain, hand out randomhash@myself.com

Bonus points, you get independence from your email provider, so if Google or whatever decides to delete your account spuriously you don't die digitally.

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

#145

Post by [deleted] »

mbesto wrote: post #96
StevePerkins wrote: post #90

Earlier 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.

[deleted]

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

#146

Post by nicbou »

corrral wrote: post #128
nicbou wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-fri…

I have the opposite approach. My inbox is 95% signal. I run my business through email so that's important.

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

#147

Post by nicbou »

michalu wrote: post #122
pdksam wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What's wrong with MailChimp?

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

#148

Post by hedora »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #135
kbelder wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a majority of people don't unsubscribe; they just mark your emails as spam and ignore them. That lowers your credibility with email providers, and if that happens enough, you start seeing your emails being considered as spam and you get entirely blocked off the ISP. Also, it may be a mistake to attribute all of your revenue from the email to email. By its nature, emails are going to the segment of your audien…

Yep, you need to track your open rates too. If you have a 20% open rate, run a daily spam trial, and find you had a 0.3% unsub rate but your open rate is now 10%... You actually had a 50% unsub rate, your customers just aren't letting you know they've unsubscribed

Isn’t open rate obfuscated / blocked by most clients now? How do you measure it?

(I’ve been blocking them for 25+ years; might be out of touch…)

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

#149

Post by mbesto »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #115
mbesto wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

No, just no. AB testing how much you can squeeze out of the channel has a huge negative backlash. A customer driven "send these more often" or "send these less often" offer in the email will give the customer the ability to set the level of engagement that works best for them and avoid both rage quits and user hostility to being "worked." A friend of mine was hired by Peet's to try to clean up the mess they caused by…

> A friend of mine was hired by Peet's to try to clean up the mess they caused by doing this to their previously loyal fan base

Clean up what? You test it once and if it works, it works, if it doesn't you revert back. You're not going to get a huge backlash of brand loyalty for increasing a monthly newsletter to 2x/month. And if you get ANY backlash you simply revert back. Most people wouldn't even notice.

I think you're overthinking my recommendation.

> A customer driven "send these more often" or "send these less often" offer in the email will give the customer the ability to set the level of engagement that works best for them

You should have this option regardless of what techniques you use.

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

#150

Post by TurkishPoptart »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #115
mbesto wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

No, just no. AB testing how much you can squeeze out of the channel has a huge negative backlash. A customer driven "send these more often" or "send these less often" offer in the email will give the customer the ability to set the level of engagement that works best for them and avoid both rage quits and user hostility to being "worked." A friend of mine was hired by Peet's to try to clean up the mess they caused by…

This works until the people who get 3 emails a month unsubscribe. Don't break it if it works.
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