It is one of the top five items in my overall presentations to newsrooms around the globe: market your content, do it early in the morning, hook the user into coming to your stories.
Indeed, the morning email newsletter is key and I confess that I take a look daily to about four newsletters that I know offer me a good overview of what I should know before I even jump out of bed. Most of us start our day reading emails and text messages, so why not get information from our news brands about what’s important that day.
An E&P article points out the importance of email newsletters and quotes the late David Carr from The New York Times and what he wrote about newsletters in 2014:
“With an email, there is a presumption of connection, of something personal, that makes it a good platform for publishers. Publishers seeking to stick out of the clutter have found both traction and a kind of intimacy in consumers’ inboxes.”
The Times knows how to do newsletters perfectly well. I subscribe to several, including one about Running and another about Theater, two interests of mine.
It recently added a weekly roundup by editor Tim Herrera featuring advice on how to live a better life. I find myself not only reading this newsletter, but sharing interesting items such as this on social media:
The Times’ morning brief goes beyond news to include lifestyle items of interest and even recipes that cater to the day’s weather, for example.
And, let’s not forget that newsletters can carry advertising and have sponsors.
One highlight of the E&P article that merits consideration:
As more and more newspapers move behind some form of digital paywall, convincing more readers to become engaged with newsroom content is no small consideration. The Washington Post calls this strategy the “customer-engagement funnel,” where they use newsletter to convert non-regular readers into devoted followers to read more regular and eventual decide to subscribe to a digital bundle.
I predict that we will see more email newsletters launched in 2018, as it should be.
Mario’s Speaking Engagements
April 18-19, 2018-–Newscamp ,Augsburg, Germany.
May 26, 2018 —Associacion Riograndense de Imprensa, Univesidad de Santa Cruz (Unisc), Brazil
June 3-6, 2018—The Seminar, San Antonio, Texas.
Our digital transformation workshops
If you would like to find out more about our workshops for digital transformation, email me: mario@garciamedia.com
I will be happy to answer your questions and provide more information. Our workshops are offered in both English and Spanish.
TheMarioBlog post #2739