“Unsubscribe from 1 newsletter daily”. That’s the tweet! Or is it?
Regardless, there’s a real debate to this “tweet of thought” and I couldn’t help but think on how necessary it was to write an Op-ed on this, particularly judging by the responses to this tweet that totally recommend this life hack as well as subscribe to the idea of negating the effect of information overload during a time like this to avoid crowded mail boxes.
It’s interesting that many now regard newsletters an ‘information burden’; what may have been dubbed as a minority view just a few years ago, where readers looked forward to promotional offers and information about the company from brand newsletters.
For journalistic e-letters, I tend to be a little bias when I allude to them being even more exciting. In particular reference to tech newsletters by tech blogs, which turned on its head the feeling of being force-fed the editors picks, to actually having your curiosity aroused in the most ingenious ways on certain subject matter. The drive typically incorporated the need for editors to communicate regularly with subscribers while delivering with a creative flair, links to stories and opinionated commentary on happenings in the industry, in the mail boxes of this niche audience [subscribers].
With great analytics to show for this, reflected in analytics of read newsletters, newsletters were perhaps considered as a game-changing strategy at the time in content marketing!
As a rule of thumb, many companies idealized creating newsletters and jumped on the bandwagon with hopes of encouraging visitors to visit the site and in ensuring their websites or blog did not fall into oblivion.
So, what happened to newsletters?
A follow up tweet reads: “Writing a newsletter is difficult business to do – you need to keep writing. If you stop writing, your business is dead. Unless you really love writing, it’s not a good use of your time”.
In the business of newsletters, tone and style of communication are major factors for building loyalty and empathy with readers and further personalizing communication in your unique way [not forgetting the succinct brag that usually accompanied it]. Dependent on the frequency with which you shot them out, readers looked forward to relishing your content.
The story of newsletters can be likened to this food analogy by Editor at TechCity, BellaRose from a shared conversation on the possible disinterest in newsletters:
“newsletters used to be like good Shawarma. You almost had to travel a distance for it and when you got it, you relished it before another came”. Now that everyone has opened [shawarma] newsletters shop, there’s a tendency toward the increase of it littering all our streets, [sorry emails]”.
Subscribing to the times
In a concluding message from my conversation with BellaRose, it reads: “just like Shawarma, newsletters are overplayed and everyone may seem to be tired. [For them, it’s] On to the next exciting meal”.
In opinionated fashion, the real issue with newsletters began the moment people stopped perceiving their real value, with chances of editors unable to articulate any real value through email.
Factors that can generally be attributed to this include that:
- the competition for attention these days is greater than ever and;
- the less congested 2-way street of social media, allows easier consumption of information without having your mail box overwhelmingly clogged up with hundreds of articles.
So, no we’re not “cancelling” newsletters [we don’t do that here] but if there were a need to make newsletters great again to the mailboxes that matter, the real question should be [as this article suggests]: how do you stand out from a crowded inbox?
Top recommendation excerpts would include to:
- Publish as smart as you can and sparingly share newsletters to drive the need for quality over quantity.
- Keep it short and simple to ensure that people find them interesting. They should be ‘long enough to cover what’s necessary, but short enough to keep things interesting.’
Disclaimer: No Shawarma was slandered in the making of this article.
