The competition for notoriety is at its highest level. From social media to television to our inboxes, we are constantly bombarded with offers to get our attention.

The days of sitting down to read the newspaper are long gone. People are now more likely to consume relevant content if it’s delivered to a place where they already spend time, like their inbox. And it shows in the marketplace: a new email newsletter seems to appear every 15 minutes, and new tools have enabled their creators to reach readers faster and more efficiently than ever.

It’s no surprise, then, that many marketers are jumping at the chance to grow their email audience, either as a core business strategy or simply to re-engage their customers.

To remind newcomers and incumbents in the newsletter space: an email newsletter strategy is a marathon, not a sprint. There’s no shortcut to going from a great idea to tens of thousands of highly engaged subscribers overnight.

That said, 1440 Media has taken a beating over the past 3 years, so read on for tips on what we would do if we started our email newsletter strategy again today.

Content is essential to your email newsletter strategy

The quality of the content is essential. Subject line tests are excellent; it can make the difference between someone opening the first email you send them or not. But the content of this email will determine whether the reader will open 2 to 200 emails.

Test your email layout, design, tone, length, linking, and personalization (among other things) before doubling down on any subscriber acquisition strategy.

Avoid clickbait-y subject lines altogether. You might see a great open rate that day, but you have to keep in mind that you are playing for the long haul. You will likely see a spike in unsubscribes and lose the trust of recipients who might otherwise become daily readers of your newsletter.

Your best bet is always to create a newsletter too good that readers can’t help but open it, regardless of the subject line.

Email open rates are a positive feedback loop

Once you feel comfortable with your newsletter content, it is important to note that open rates are a positive feedback loop, i.e. the higher your open rate is higher, the more it will increase. This is one of the most underrated facts in the messaging space.

Each inbox provider (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) assigns a “reputation” to your IP address and email. When that reputation improves, your email will land steadily in your recipients’ primary inbox. However, when your reputation deteriorates, you will find your newsletter in Spam, Junk, Promotions or [ominous voice] the blank email.

But how do you improve your reputation?

An important first step is to make sure you’re only sending to people who like your content and who regularly open or click on your email.

Take this simple example: you have a mailing list of 100 subscribers. Every time you send a campaign, 15 people open it. 45 people opened at least one email. Therefore, your daily open rate is 15%, and 55 of your subscribers have never opened an email.

Here’s a suggestion: Send your campaigns alone to your 45 “openers”! On your next send, you will increase your open rate from 15% (below average, bad reputation) to 33% (above average, good reputation) with no impact on the total number of opens; the remaining 55 weren’t opening anyway.

Over time, you’ll see your open rate climb past 33% as inbox providers trust you more and place you in the primary inbox more consistently. Your readers will also appreciate you more: Gone are the days when a non-reader would angrily mark you as spam for adding to their already full inbox.

There are also tools that can help you whitelist your IP address and email domain with the biggest inbox providers, but this is best done once you’ve grown your audience to hundreds of thousands. . Which brings us to…

Scaling your email newsletter

How do you go from 70+ friends and family to 700,000+ subscribers (like we did)?

From the start, focus on high-quality acquisition channels, channels that not only drive subscribers, but also highly engaged email opens.

One of the best ways to grow is to swap deals (or “cross-promos”) with other newsletters we’ve discovered. For example, we told our readers to check out a partner newsletter, and they, in turn, recommended 1440 Media to their subscribers.

This worked very well at first, especially when we partnered with similar sized newsletters, as people who open one email newsletter are more likely to open another newsletter.

On the other hand, we found that our organic word-of-mouth growth rate was incredibly high when we started, thanks to – you guessed it – strong, consistent content that our readers love.

Over time, we’ve learned to double down on high-quality acquisition channels. This still includes email newsletters, but we now pay directly for email placements more often than we do barter deals.

We’ve also expanded our media channels to sponsor podcasts and YouTube creators with audiences similar to ours. This includes topics such as science, professional development, and political and philosophical thought or, more generally, “how things work”.

Importantly, we’ve found that having our brand featured by a trusted news source far outperforms programmatic ads with little to no context.

For the remainder of 2021 and beyond, we will continue to target high-quality verified channels and test more aggressively where we believe we can succeed. We’re also getting more intentional with our funnels when someone first subscribes. How do you get someone to open five emails in a row? How can we encourage someone to refer a friend? Is there a time when we can “stop” someone from unopening our emails?

At our current scale, 1% improvements in these metrics can increase our daily opens by the thousands, so the impact can be huge.

* * *

To recap, our best practices for email newsletter strategy:

• Focus on quality and think long term when growing your email audience.
• Create great value—add content and avoid clickbait.
• Only send to people who actually open.
• Choose the acquisition channels wisely and do not never buy a mailing list (for legal reasons, if nothing else).

Also, listen to your readers every day and encourage comments.

More Resources on Email Newsletter Strategies

Putting the ‘letter’ back in the ‘newsletter’: Ann Handley on writing about marketing intelligence [Podcast]

Seven Ways Newsletter Marketing Still Works for Professional Service Providers

How to Create an Outstanding Newsletter, According to People Who Have Done It