Good guide to e-newsletters that catch the reader’s attention

This is the weekend edition of TheMarioBlog and will be updated as needed. The next blog post is Monday, May 15.

Readers of TheMarioBlog know that I am a fan of newsletters. As I have mentioned, I make briefings a very important part of my workshops, suggesting to publishers and editors that they need to present content of the day in a brief and attractive manner to readers at key times of the day—usually early morning and early evenings.

I have also emphasized that not all newsletters—or briefings—are alike. The ones that I tend to come back to, as part of a morning ritual, are more personalized, chatty in style, and offer me an overview that I consider essential before the start of my day.

I, too, get dozens of newsletters in my inbox that I simply ignore. Those are the ones that have no real person behind them, are too wordy and smell like a robot drafted them. These are the four that I consider to be essential newsletters (briefings) at the start of my day: The New York Times,CNN Reliable Sources, The Washington Post, Axios AM, CNN Five Things:

Now comes this article that outlines what works in a newsletter.

I am not surprised to see the main takeaways:

Make it personal:

Readers will open the personal newsletter because they recognize who it’s from. They trust the individual and will be compelled to read what they have to say, and often even reply and start a dialogue.

Go for the text

Personal newsletters are designed to be read, right inside the inbox. To succeed at that, the best ones heavily lean on text.

Be conversational

With digests, it’s much easier to start a conversation with your audience, which by the way makes them that much more devoted and loyal of an audience.

The Times’ Sophisticated Shopper

There is also the potential to explore revenue via newsletters, such as The New York Times’ Sophisticated Shopper, which appears occasionally, but always holds your interest with good visuals. It is regularly devoted to a single client, such as Cartier, but it does not have to be. I could imagine doing such a commercial newsletter for a shopping mall, for example, with clusters of possible advertisers.

Previously about newsletters

Those email newsletters (or briefings) gain importance

Newsletters, briefings: curating content while creating a habit

New Yorker cover we like

Visual storytelling at its best in reference to the firing of FBI Director Comey.

Suggested Weekend reading

Germany’s Die Zeit is trying to reach a younger audience while also putting up a paywall

http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/05/how-germanys-die-zeit-is-trying-to-reach-a-younger-audience-while-also-putting-up-a-paywall/

Highlight:

It (Die Zeit) is such a trusted brand and it has so many different angles to it. Die Zeit is strong in print also — in the readership of young people with Zeit Campus, the magazine. It’s strong in conferences and has a job market, which most of our competitors have lost in recent years. That has given us the angle of transforming some of these businesses — not taking that away from print, but rather turning a second leg into digital. That’s given us really an angle to develop a lot of stuff with the brand Die Zeit that is difficult for other newspapers or other media outlets that don’t have that same breadth of offering that unite.

…and now the first has opened! This, too, may help the weekly newspaper to attract a young crowd to its content.

Traditional media still has brand power in the digital world says BBC, CNN and Discovery

http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/05/08/traditional-media-still-has-brand-power-the-digital-world-says-bbc-cnn-and-discovery?utm_campaign=Newsletter_Weekly_APAC&utm_source=pardot&utm_medium=email

Highlight:

“Branded content impact is now more measurable, from things like facial recognition technology, the value of putting a video on Facebook, associating that with your reputation, putting it out to more people, looking at how it impacts brands, it’s about looking at new models and charging for services.”

Speaking Engagements Coming Up

SIPConnect 2017, to be held in Miami June 21-23, is a program of the Inter American Press Association, IAPA, or SIP (Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa). The venue will be the Hilton Miami Downtown Hotel.

Details:

Join us at the SIPConnect Hemispheric Conference 2017. Organized by the IAPA, SIPConnect is a gathering of media and digital businesses to encourage more audiences and higher revenues. It’s a laboratory for new ideas and successful experiences for the digital transformation. As in the 2016 successful meeting that was attended by media from the US, Latin America and the Caribbean, experts in digital businesses and representatives of innovative companies will participate in this event.

For more information: http://www.sipiapa.org/notas/1211078-llamado-sipconnect-2017

The Mario Blog