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Exploring the driving forces reshaping media, publishing and the creative industries: subscription models, mobile-first world, formats, technology and the disrupting potential of the passion economy. By Valentina Giannella

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Back to Latest Posts
Content and messages

Decoding newsletters, part three. Make your newsletters shine.

10 things to do to make your editorial newsletter a stellar experience.

Posted on 02/10/2020 by Valentina

Content and messages

Learning with newsletters.

Newsletters: the swiss army knife for publishers and organizations to share news, long-form storytelling, but also learnings and training.

Posted on 24/09/2020 by Giannelv

Content and messages

Decoding newsletters, part two. Types and genre.

Mapping newsletter with a simple taxonomy.

Posted on 18/09/2020 by Valentina

Content and messages

Decoding newsletters, part one. The value of curated newsletters.

Why newsletters thrive. And what you need to consider to start your newsletter. Part 1/3.

Posted on 12/09/2020 by Valentina

Passion economy

Inside Patreon, the champion of the Passion Economy.

Too much hyped or a true game changer?

Posted on 24/08/2020 by Valentina

Media and makers

Rebundling the unbundled.

Newsletter bundles are reinventing newsrooms and magazines and give readers more reason to pay for subscriptions.

Posted on 05/08/2020 by Giannelv

Passion economy

Is there a future beyond the platform economy? Yes, and it has a name: welcome to the passion economy.

Patreon is the original champion of a new ecosystem that has been popularised in the late 2019 by Jin Li, a former investor at Andreessen Horowitz, and Adam Davidson, an American...

Posted on 27/07/2020 by Giannelv

Technology and tools

The intranet strikes back.

Coronavirus and home working: a better intranet to master a new working life.

Posted on 26/05/2020 by Giannelv

Content and messages

Coronavirus crisis: can data visualization save lives?

From numbers to graphs and charts: how the COVID-19 communication embraced data visualization to inform, educate and change people behaviour.

Posted on 16/04/2020 by Valentina

Content and messages

A chance to rebuild the world for the better.

What if the Coronavirus crisis is our chance to rebuild the world for the better?

Posted on 10/03/2020 by Valentina

Technology and tools

Data Visualization tools for non-developers: top choices.

A selection of tools for creators, storytellers and newsrooms.

Posted on 25/02/2020 by Valentina

Media and makers

Thriving in a world without third-party cookies.

A compendium for publishers and media makers.

Posted on 07/02/2020 by Valentina

Technology and tools

The making of a better Internet, one solution at a time: meet Scroll.

No ads, better UX, cross-device and with hundreds of websites available: Scroll wants to be the solution to get casual news readers enjoy an ad-free news experience, seamless and frictionless.

Posted on 29/01/2020 by Valentina

Media and makers

Beyond the buzzwords: the real streaming war is not what you expect.

What does that mean for the European media in 2020?

Posted on 25/01/2020 by Valentina

Content and messages

It´s a mobile-first world: Quibi, the video changemaker.

Quibi stands for “quick bites”. It is a subscription-based mobile video app to be launched in April 2020 in the United States and later worldwide. Quibi is the creation of Jeffrey...

Posted on 15/01/2020 by Valentina

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Content and messages

Decoding newsletters, part three. Make your newsletters shine.

10 things to do to make your editorial newsletter a stellar experience.


Valentina
Decoding newsletters, part three. Make your...
Posted on 02/10/2020 by Valentina

1. A compelling subject line. Use the first words to shine. 

Use the first words to shine. Some newsletters start with an explainer-style headline of their cover story: “How Anthony Fauci Became America’s Doctor” (New Yorker, The Daily). Other formats tease multiple pieces of content with a few words each: for instance, the Vox Sentences newsletter.

New Yorker | The Daily
Vox.com | Newsletters

2. A tagline to promote your newsletter USP.

What can readers expect from your newsletters? What makes it special, and the right choice to them?


3. Make it easy to scan, easy to read.

Bullet points are not the devil. Used smartly, as do the authors of Vox Sentences and Axios, bullet points help to give a structure to your content and a way for readers to scan the text topic by topic, chunk by chunk, to find out what to read and where to dig deeper.

Vox.com | Newsletters

Talking hyperlinks. The “Vox Sentences” newsletter is half an in-the-newsletter reading experience, half a teaser of articles. Not all the hyperlinks point to vox.com: as a curated digest made to be relevant, it selects and suggests the next readings with the readers in mind, not with the traffic needs of vox.com.

Axios World

Look at how bullet points define the “smart brevity” format of the Axios newsletters. What does “smart” means for Axios? The news is not only delivered in brief paragraphs, but they tag each item (with words written in bold) so to introduce the message: 

  • The big picture 
  • Driving the news
  • Yes, but
  • The bottom line
  • What’s next 
  • Why it matters
  • Other details 
  • Go deeper 

The Axios newsletters consistently use labels, and that makes their “smart brevity” a distinctive format and a brand mark of their newsletters.


4. Mobile-first, but loving all screens. UX matters.

A newsletter is a product. When well-executed, it is a habit-forming product, and one of the most portable. If you want to know if your newsletter works, check it always and primarily on your mobile (and on more smartphone types). Email publishing and email delivery tools: use only those that allow readers to view the newsletters also in the browser. Mobile-first, but fitting all screens. It sounds trivial, yet it is not the most common way to do newsletters.


5. Text matters, visuals too.

For newsletters, it has been a challenge for a long time – and partially it still is – to deal with visuals, especially embedded videos, charts, infographics and sophisticated illustrations. However, it is worth the effort to create original visuals for a newsletter – or to adapt them for a constrained-by-the-platform experience. A stunning photo, a suggestive illustration can make a difference. See this:

On Tech with Shira Ovide | The New York Times

6. Author, host, editor. The pen behind the newsletter. A name to know, a face to see, a person to trust.

At the New York Times, they have appointed “hosts” for some of their most popular newsletters. Author, host, editor, whatever the name you give to them, to have one person responsible for the newsletter is not only a way to make you accountable in front of your readers. It is a way to establish a personal relationship with them.

An author name, or even better a portrait and a few lines of bio, sends a message: this newsletter is not a marketing tool, not an automated thing, but a product that our editor crafts for you. A matter of trust, that a public face and an email address you can reach out to send your comments can make deep and long-lasting.

Another brilliant example of a newsletter with a very personal touch is the millennial-oriented “Elevate the Conversation” by The Wall Street Journal.

Elevate the Conversation | WSJ

7. Make readers part of your narrative.

Newsletters can be more than habit-forming products. They can develop a community feeling.See this example, coming from the New York Times´ Coronavirus Briefing newsletter.

At the end of each issue, the newsletter lets one of their readers use their words to tell what they are doing to tackle these challenging times. Day after day, newsletter after newsletter, you feel that you are in this together with many others from the East to the West Coast. You cannot but empathise with them. Sometimes, their short stories of resilience make you feel better. Or even help you make sense of this shared experience.

NYT | Coronavirus Briefing

Other newsletters encourage their readers to come up with suggestions, memories, and details to add up to feature stories. In this example of the Berlin-based newspaper die Tageszeitung, the newsletter asks readers to deliver their personal experience involving the 2015 migrant crisis and how the integration of over 1,5 million people worked in their towns, neighbourhoods and cities.

Tagespiegel

8. Onboarding.

“Onboarding” is an obsession for content marketers and service designers. How to ensure that the first moments after a conversion keep your new leads? For editorial newsletters, this aspect does not always stay on your top editorial priority.

Once you have subscribed to a newsletter and completed the double opt-in, the newsletter goes straight in its day-by-day delivery. And this is fine. But if your newsletter is new, or the value proposition needs some introduction, consider doing more than a short welcome email. Use some lines of text, or a video or whatever creative format to give readers a taste of what will reach them in their inbox from now on.

New York Magazine | One Great Story

9. Mix things up. Take care of the reading experience.

Why not suggest the right music background for reading your newsletter?

WSJ | The Money Challenge

10. The ending is important, like in novels.

The end of your newsletter is an opportunity to do more than just promoting additional content. Too much bad news? Find a heart-warming tiny story to give hope. Too serious? Leave them with something funny. Too newsy? Give some words to remember, some ideas to inspire, some visuals to surprise.

Vox.com
Intech | NYT and The Guardian | This is Europe

NEWSLETTERS – A SUPERSHORT GUIDE TO GUIDES IN FOUR LINKS. 

  • HARVARD KENNEDY SCHOOL: A 201 GUIDE FOR TAKING YOUR NEWSLETTER TO THE NEXT LEVEL 
  • 2. INMA – HOW NEWSLETTERS ARE REDEFINING MEDIA SUBSCRIPTIONS  How-Newsletters-Are-Redefining-Media-Subscriptions
  • NEWSLETTERS ABOUT NEWSLETTERS
    • REVUE – WEEK IN NEWSLETTERS
    • NOT A NEWSLETTER: A NEWSLETTER ABOUT NEWSLETTERS

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Axios HQ: transforming an editorial format into a new business.

It is not new that some publishers, after having invested in developing their own editorial platforms and adTech tools, have started a side business by licensing those...

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Gradually, then suddenly. Climate change communication.

What can we learn from climate change communication to better inform citizens and promote an informed public opinion on complex, challenging topics?

Posted on 03/12/2019 by Valentina