![]() “The audience is impatient,” Meyerson said. ![]() ![]() As of November, his Chicago Public Square had a subscriber base of about 1,650, with a 43 percent open rate and a 15 percent click-through rate, compared to Mailchimp’s 2018 media and publishing industry averages: 21.9 percent for opens, 4.6 percent for click-throughs. Meyerson, vice president of editorial and development at Chicago startup Rivet and a consultant in audience engagement, was a newsletter pioneer at the Chicago Tribune, launching and writing the paper’s daily Daywatch news roundup and managing its other email news services in 1999-2009. “A little personality goes a long way,” he said. “Or people will really hit a serious subject with an inappropriate pun.” Photo by Colin Boyle Charlie Meyerson is publisher of Chicago Public Square and was previously a newsletter pioneer with the Chicago Tribune's Daywatch.Ĭharlie Meyerson’s Chicago Public Square newsletter aims to be a quick read that steers readers to stories through links, and he doesn’t want to get in the way. “Sometimes we see the intro paragraph of a newsletter that’s about something relatively serious will be, like, stuffed with six different witticisms,” Roy said. “What we’ve seen in the industry with growth products like TheSkimm and The Lily and The Hustle that newsletters that have personality and voice and are designed to be consumed in the in-box are more successful than others.”īut Roy said some newsletters go overboard. Ranjan Roy, Founder, The Edge Group newsletter consultancyĬhristine Taylor, the Chicago Tribune’s Managing Editor for Audience, said it’s important to differentiate between newsletters that are designed to drive readers toward websites and those that are one-stop destinations. Sometimes we see the intro paragraph of a newsletter that’s about something relatively serious will be stuffed with six different witticisms. Or people will really hit a serious subject with an inappropriate pun. So to see some kind of life injected into that was almost a milestone.” TheSkimm, he said “showed pretty early on that they could toe that line between seriousness but also fun.” He called CB Insights a witty newsletter that’s “even more relevant in this space because you have a whole world of research-oriented white papers or really dry, serious writing. Roy cited TheSkimm, which is aimed at female millennials, and CB Insights, which highlights tech industry trends, as examples of newsletters with strong voice. “Voice is one of the most critical components in a good newsletter,” said Ranjan Roy, founder of The Edge Group, a New York-based firm that consults on newsletters. ![]() But going too far can be counterproductive. A conversational, familiar style makes your newsletter a welcome presence in people’s in-box. Write like a person, not a robot.Įveryone talks about the importance of tone. To investigate further, the Medill Local News Initiative talked to a half dozen people who know newsletters well and were happy to share their insights. The recent Medill News Leaders Project 2019 likened newsletters to “a newspaper on the doorstep” – a prompt to encourage consumption. And the rise of subscriber-only newsletters suggests that email products can drive loyalty even when they are stand-alone offerings that don’t send readers to websites. Major data research conducted by Northwestern University’s Spiegel Research Center and released by the Medill Local News Initiative in February established that readers who visited news websites regularly were more likely to remain as subscribers. Which is a shame, since newsletters have been identified as a key way to build subscriber loyalty as local news operations shift from reliance on advertising dollars to a customer revenue model. Everyone seems to produce email newsletters these days. ![]()
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