Prologue

What if, in business, the goal of every single task was to grow customer trust?

Hear me out.

I had a moment the other day when I imagined every department within an organization acting as a modified extension of the customer success team.

I feel like this is applicable even for businesses that don’t have official success teams, because we all have success initiatives (read: customer happiness goals), right?

Whatever you’re doing, dearest newsletter creator, it’s part of some plan you have to make the people who receive and open your emails happy they did.

I know I certainly am. The entire reason this newsletter exists is to help you improve your newsletter. I want you to feel like Opt In Weekly delivers ideas and stories you find so helpful that you use them and achieve success.

And I know I repeat quite regularly that a newsletter is a relationship builder that scales what feels like 1:1 and makes it 1:many.

It’s because I think the depth of that relationship, how well you prove they can trust you, is the most critical key to a newsletter’s success.

Because it’s the most critical key to a company’s success.

Think about enjoyable customer experiences you’ve had.

Do you keep that subscription?

Return to purchase more?

Tell people how amazing that company is?

They’ve earned your trust.

And it’s what we should all strive to do with the words we craft in each issue we send.

P.S. In case you missed last week’s announcement, Newsletter Fest is April 12 - 16 and we’re lining up some amazing speakers and workshops. Subscribe to get updates here and share this link with your fellow newsletter creators.

Screen Share

From Fanzine Teen To Media Man: The Evolution Of Peter Cooper’s Newsletter Biz Cooperpress

In this interview, Peter Cooper walks us through the backstory of his newsletter business Cooperpress, which publishes 13 newsletter for developers, including Java Script Weekly, Ruby Weekly, and others.

We chatted through how he’s made decisions as a publisher, how he curates content, and which parts of the work delight him (hint: sometimes it’s picking the top graphic).

We also had a lovely conversation about newsletter sponsorships.

Thanks for joining me, Peter.

Newsletter Tips

50 Lessons From The Field

Ness Labs founder and creator of Maker Mind, a newsletter about mindful productivity, Anne-Laure Le Cunff recently published 50 newsletter lessons she’s learned by sending 50 issues. There are some good ones in there, including number 15.

“Respect the reader-writer contract. Subscribers give you access to their most intimate space on the Internet: their inbox. Respect their trust by delivering exactly what you promised.”

Sound familiar?

Also, in reading this I learned she has an invite-only newsletter community on Telegram.

The February (Issue?) Of Not a Newsletter Is Out

Newsletter consultant Dan Oshinsky’s February edition (yes, edition is the better word for it) of Not a Newsletter, his monthly Google Doc of fresh newsletter resources, is now available.

This rabbit hole of information worth spending the better part of a day with is too good to sum up in one paragraph, so I’m linking to one interesting article about email marketing he included and to an Inbox Collective Google Slide Dan put together (25 Ways to Sign Someone Up For Your Newsletter). Enjoy.

Get excited because Dan is going to be speaking about newsletter business models at Newsletter Fest!

Marketing

The Product Marketing Podcast (And Course) You Didn’t Know You Needed

If you’ve been an Opt In Weekly subscriber since last fall you may remember a particularly powerful article I linked to about narrative design by Marcus Andrews. In short, he made the case for creating a brand story that reframes reality in such a way that your product is the only viable solution to the buyer’s problem.

I follow Marcus on LinkedIn and recently discovered his podcast The Product Marketing Experts, which I might have binged. The conversations are crazy insightful. It’s the kind of content you hear and then find yourself overflowing with ideas.

I’m not even going to recommend one specific episode, because it’s probably best if you find a speaker or topic that interests you and then just “goooooo!”

Psst: Marcus also recently launched a Narrative Design course that I have no doubt is amazing and may enroll in soon.

Harness The Value Of Having Real Conversations With Customers

Inessa Lurye, Product Leader at Amplitude, nailed it with this piece about why your entire company should talk with customers weekly. Get ready to settle in and study this one because it’s not a fluff piece.

Inessa gets very detailed about how her team at Yesware launched a “Voice of the Customer” initiative and provides both compelling examples of how well it worked for them and detailed instructions for doing this with your team.

Note: Getting a reply to your email newsletter saying “great job!” is not the same as intentionally booking a call to talk face to face (on Zoom or in person) to build a relationship and understand how you can better serve them.

Ahrefs Customers Say These Are The 7 Best Marketing Newsletters

My favorite part of this news: The Weekly SEO by Andrew Charlton made the list. He is a master of using Curated (just published issue 111) and was featured in a hype video we made last year.

Congratulations, Andrew!

What Your Marketing Newsletter Should Do

Joe Lazauskas at Contently has some strong thoughts about using marketing newsletters as a trust-building tactic.

“Damn near every marketer uses email as a marketing channel. But a surprising amount of marketers I speak with aren’t investing in a newsletter as a core part of their content strategy. Sure, they send campaign blasts to their database, but they’re not developing a consistent newsletter with a clear value prop.”

One of the nonnegotiable requirements he lists for marketers to use in their newsletters is to provide “unique information and perspective that your audience can’t get anywhere else.”

Sounds like good narrative design to me 😉.

Curation

What Curators Can Learn From Martin Scorsese

In this article, Matt Goldberg explains why Martin Scorsese advocates for human curation over algorithms. While the focus is on streaming services that use algorithms, I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that the same applies to curated newsletters.

If I want to know what an algorithm thinks I will enjoy reading, I’ll go check out my Facebook feed. If I want to know what a particular person or business (one that has earned my trust) thinks I will benefit from, I subscribe to their newsletter.

Publishing

When I went to create this issue, I realized I’d collected an entire newsletter worth of articles for this category. There’s so much going on in the world of media, especially in the revenue wars.

So I’m trying a little something different today. I’ve ordered these notable headlines to capture the current state of publishing. It’s a narrative at a glance, if you will.

1. Digital media companies need an eye toward adaptation, not just innovation
2. The Texas Tribune aligns product and editorial for audience retention
3. As newspapers close across Chicago suburbs, one local nonprofit newsroom steps in
4. They launched a newsletter to cover immigration under Trump. Now they’re ready to expand
5. 6AM City is expanding nationally in 2021
6. Journalists are grappling with their relationships to big tech companies. It’s time for academics to do the same
7. The old news business model is broken: Making Google and Facebook pay won’t save journalism
8. Facebook blocks news in Australia over government plan to force payment to publishers
9. Google agrees to pay for (some) Australian news
10. Google is going to start paying UK publishers for news

Let me know what you think of this approach.

Curated News

How To Make Your Images Look Great In Curated

Seth is back with another tutorial video for us. This time, he gets granular about pixels.

Check out his tips for sizing images for a Curated newsletter.

Reminder, the first ever Newsletter Fest is scheduled for April 12 - 16, 2021 and IT’S FREE.

Join publishers, marketers, and independent creators to learn success strategies from email newsletter experts.

Subscribe to get updates and register for sessions as they are announced.

ICYMI: We now have a Public Product Roadmap! Check out our recent releases and what’s up next.

Opt In Challenge

Be Creative On Demand

Tom May offers some advice for tapping back into your creativity when it feels like it might be running dry. Your Opt In Challenge this week is to try one (or all) of these techniques and be creative. Like, NOW!

Signature

Let me know. Reply, email me at Ashley[at]optinweekly.com, or find me on LinkedIn to hit me with some feedback. I’d love to know what you think.

Also, I’d appreciate it if you shared it with fellow email newsletter creators. All archived issues will be available on OptInWeekly.com, so you can send them the link to check it out.

Have a great week sending, y’all.

Thanks for reading,