Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 174 posts

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

#31

Post by meetingthrower »

mooreds wrote: post #29
meetingthrower wrote: post #12

Same question? Anybody know advertising RPM that newsletters could generate?

Depends on the audience size and makeup. I've seen tweets like this: https://twitter.com/petecodes/status/1548983470805876737 which talk about $400/month for a newsletter ad. Cooperpress has a lot of dev subscribers and I believe charges thousands of dollars for an add: https://cooperpress.com/advertise/ (run by https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=petercooper ).

Thanks. Are there good equivalent ad networks like AdSense for newsletters (so you don't have to establish a sales department?)

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

#32

Post by PaulHoule »

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…

Most businesses I’ve bought things from online (notably not Amazon) want to send me at least one email a day and it is more than I can keep up with.

In the beginning for instance I would get emails from Best Buy that often had good offers, but at some point it got like ArsTechnica’s dealmaster and the offers became insipid. Even if the offers were compelling I couldn’t buy something every day.

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

#33

Post by PaulHoule »

mooreds wrote: post #20
tomp wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean “you own your newsletter”? Your newsletter is owned by a massive corporate platform such as Mailchipm, which will ban you for wrongthink/wrongspeak just like other massive corporate platforms like Facebook. Just the first news story I found: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1017221 - keep in mind that “antivaxxer” doesn’t mean what it used to mean but could simply mean you’re pointing out that va…

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.

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

#34

Post by blowski »

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…

Normally, click rates are more like 0.1%.

But it's also about brand recall. Having someone's email address lets you put an ad (subject line) in front of them for almost free, as often as you want, without having to go through the algorithms of the social networks.

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

#35

Post by klelatti »

tomp wrote: post #21
thematrixturtle wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating the medium (newsletter) with its distribution mechanism (mass mailing). If you have the content and the destination addresses, it's trivial to switch to another provider.

Other providers can still ban you. Switching providers sometimes requires all existing subscribers to “opt in” again. Regardless you’re still owned by a platform. Gmail ain’t gonna let you deliver 1000s of emails yourself.

> You're still owned by a platform.

There is a clear difference between lock in to a single provider and their commercial interests and strategy and the possibility that your content might fall foul of a number of providers.

For many email is a much less risky option than alternatives. Do you have a better option?

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

#36

Post by mooreds »

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.

That's great first hand experience, thanks for sharing. Personally I'd probably look at an open source package, but my biggest worries about building my own emailer would be:

* making sure I followed the best practices (DMARC, DKIM, etc).

* building IP reputation. Not sure how SES does with deliverability, but I know that can be an issue.

* email clients rendering of my newsletter. This could by using text only, I suppose. That might work depending on your audience.

Again, though, at least you have the option of building your own solution when you have a newsletter.

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

#37

Post by mooreds »

franze wrote: post #30

Channel Hedging If you depend on SEO, SEA, Adsense you depend on Google. If you depend on Facebook, Insta, you depend on Meta. If you depend on Linkedin, you depend on Linkedin. If you depend on Newsletters, you depend on Spamfilters. Every channel has its risk. So hedging your traffic channels is the best thing you can do. And Newsletter is the least annoying one, as Google and Facebook maximize for ad-spendings. Sp…

> Channel Hedging

Love that concept. Really sums up the value in newsletters as an alternative means of capturing attention.

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

#38

Post by tiberriver256 »

dr_kiszonka wrote: post #24

Tangent: do web push notifications work? A lot of websites ask if I want to be notified via a web push, which I personally find very annoying and have never tried it. But perhaps people (consumers/users and sellers/creators) find them useful? Bonus question: are you subscribed to any web push notifications? Which ones and why do you like web push vs. a newsletter or RSS?

I have never allowed any notifications.

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

#39

Post by [deleted] »

tomp wrote: post #17
mooreds wrote: post #10

A number of reasons: * Because other platforms own you, but you own your newsletter. * Not everyone opens a newsletter, but everyone checks their email. So if they don't open the newsletter, at least they see something from you. * It's near zero cost. I don't like it when sites push their newsletter constantly, but I do like educational content pushed to where I often am (my inbox).

What do you mean “you own your newsletter”? Your newsletter is owned by a massive corporate platform such as Mailchipm, which will ban you for wrongthink/wrongspeak just like other massive corporate platforms like Facebook. Just the first news story I found: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1017221 - keep in mind that “antivaxxer” doesn’t mean what it used to mean but could simply mean you’re pointing out that va…

[deleted]

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

#40

Post by svnpenn »

franze wrote: post #30

Channel Hedging If you depend on SEO, SEA, Adsense you depend on Google. If you depend on Facebook, Insta, you depend on Meta. If you depend on Linkedin, you depend on Linkedin. If you depend on Newsletters, you depend on Spamfilters. Every channel has its risk. So hedging your traffic channels is the best thing you can do. And Newsletter is the least annoying one, as Google and Facebook maximize for ad-spendings. Sp…

> Newsletter is the least annoying one

That's not saying much. Those are still highly annoying, to the point where I will often permanently cancel service with companies that do it.

Don't email me ads for shit, unless I told you to do that.

Post reply on HN