Prologue

Hello, Newsletter People.

I’ve missed you.

So much has happened since my last send 2 weeks ago.

Namely, Apple’s announcement of new privacy features that will mean open rates won’t mean what they used to. I’ve included plenty of content about that in the Newsletter Tips section of this issue, so go ahead and scroll if it’s what you’re most interested in today.

You won’t hurt my feelings. Promise.

But I do have a little story… because I’m me.

You may remember my family moved states from Florida to Mississippi last week.

Everything is going well.

We’ll be unpacking boxes for a while.

In addition to having a dedicated office from which I can draft you this epistolary thing we call Opt In Weekly, we’re now in a neighborhood with children.

This is huge for our daughters.

Our Florida neighborhood was lovely, but it was mostly retirees. There was a brief time period when a girl near their ages lived next door and it was really nice to let them play together. But that was a 6-month rental situation. It ended and things got boring again.

So as we chose this house, knowing there would be other children in the neighborhood was really important.

The result?

They can look out windows, see other children playing, go outside to introduce themselves, and experience the joy of not having to go somewhere to engage with friends. It’s a pretty amazing transition for them.

And here’s how you can apply this little joy we’re experiencing to your newsletter:

You need to (intentionally) be where the audience you want to attract hangs out. If you don’t know where that is, find out.

Don’t go there to sell them something or to try to bring them to your newsletter.

Go there to become one of them. To understand them. To learn to write in their language.

This week’s issue is a little on the light side (let’s get real: you care about Apple’s changes right now and I get that, so I prioritized that news). But let’s not forget that open rates are just one of the ways we know we’re reaching people with our content. The relationship you use your newsletter to build transcends quantitative data.

We’re cooking up some ideas at Curated to help you through this challenge, so stay tuned for that.

Reply to let me know your thoughts and concerns, if you even have any.

Screen Share

Newsletter Readers Pay With Their Attention When You Deliver Value

This short clip (3 minutes) from a discussion Russ Henneberry (founder of theCLIKK) and I had last fall walks viewers through their content strategy. It includes both curated and created content, all offering value in a variety of segments.

Watch to understand how he thinks about structuring that value, what’s timely, what’s evergreen, and what just makes you go “bleck!”

Psst! Russ and I are teaching newsletter content strategy in a live session next Friday. It’s going to be intense, in a good way.

Newsletter Tips

There’s No Reason To Panic About Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection

You heard, right? Apple announced this week that iOS 15 and Mac OS Monterey will introduce new email privacy options including pixel blocking.

For the newsletter newcomers, the way your email service provider creates an open rate report is by including pixels in images and counting each unique pixel view as an open. It’s never been perfect, because some email clients block images, so even if a subscriber opens, they may not be counted as an open.

Note: Curated currently tracks both pixel views and clicks as opens. This means that if someone has images blocked but clicks a link, they’re added as an “open.”

It seems we newsletter senders live and die by open rates. So, naturally, we’re all a little concerned that the metric we depend on (even if we know it’s a little fuzzy) is about to become much fuzzier because Apple Mail’s solution to blocking pixels is going to mean that if someone blocks pixels, they’ll count as an open even if they don’t actually open.

And it won’t just be outliers. Last month, Litmus reported that 93.5% of all email opens on phones come in Apple Mail on iPhones or iPads. On desktop, Apple Mail on Mac represents for 58.4% of all email opens (same report).

Now might be the time to start measuring beyond open rates, which makes me sad because it’s such an easy way to measure newsletter engagement, but I’m not anti-privacy and if this is the wave of the future then we’ll just have to find another (less invasive?) way.

In Will Apple end the newsletter boom?, newsletter writer and reporter Casey Newton interviewed email industry experts who advise newsletter creators to pause, chill, and look on the bright side.

“The advertising industry has addicted itself to tracking, prioritizing bottom of the funnel metrics at the expense of great content and creative. It’s tragic,” said Alex Kantrowitz, author of the free, ad-supported newsletter Big Technology. (He previously covered the industry for Ad Age.) “And it’s why people hate advertising and ad companies.”

“Pixel blocking makes placements like this more valuable and gives quality email newsletters a leg up on the junk clogging most people’s inboxes,” Kantrowitz said.

Casey reports that publishing industry executives told him writers “can triangulate reader engagement by plenty of metrics that are still available to them, including the views their stories get on the web, the overall growth of their mailing list, and — most meaningful of all — the growth of their revenue.”

The piece is worth a read and stays fairly unbiased, although he does speculate that Apple is implementing privacy policies with the intention of funneling ad money away from other platforms to its own.

I’ve seen varying degrees of frustration and “don’t worry, it’s not the end of the world” about this issue in my social scrolling and email reading this week. The following is a round up of those thoughts in one list.

“Apple: You can't track email open rates anymore.

Marketers: OH NO! The world is ending. Email marketing is dead.

NEWS FLASH: Email open rates have NEVER been accurate.

—Liz Willits, LinkedIn

“If you send good email that your readers love, you’re going to be fine.

The metrics you use to measure success may change, but you’re still going to be able to measure plenty of things when it comes to email.”

—Dan Oshinsky, LinkedIn

“There’s a middle ground position that could be had here that protects users’ privacy and offers just enough data for email senders to work with, but Apple has chosen to paint people who simply want to run a small business over email in the worst possible light instead.”

—Ernie Smith, MidRange

Creators often debate if they should clean subscribers off their email lists who are no longer engaged. We know from running an email provider that sends over 1 billion emails per month, the data is very clear: to maintain great inbox placement you must clean inactive subscribers...

...Inbox providers like Apple ask that senders keep their list clean and engaged, but then take away the metrics senders need to actually do that.

If creators rely on click tracking—the only remaining method of determining engagement—to clean their lists they’ll remove a lot of engaged subscribers who simply consume the emails without clicking through to the web.”

—Nathan Barry, Convert Kit

Did You Choose A “Top 10” Email Font?

Saffa Faisal provides a little font wisdom in this Unlayer article, which rounds up the “10 Best Fonts for Email Design in 2021.”

Is yours on the list?

I use Merriweather and Lato.

Discovered via Really Good Emails.

Newsletter Content The Axios Way

You may recall an article I curated last fall about what someone learned from analyzing 1,300 Axios emails.

This one comes from a different writer, but it’s a similar story. In this round of breaking down Axios newsletters, Arik Hanson focuses on 5 content lessons the newsletter powerhouse’s local issues can teach us.

They’re all solid ideas, but I’m partial to the curation one, which recommends following their Catch Up Quick list of stories readers might have missed.

Click through to see if you can implement any of these ideas.

Marketing

3 Steps To Stop Gating eBooks

To gate or not to gate, is that the question?

Jonathan Bland thinks you should stop gating ebooks. In this LinkedIn post, he walks us through the steps he thinks will help marketers convince leadership to drop the forms:

1. Calculate # of e-book downloads converted into pipeline
2. Determine the CAC (customer acquisition cost) off those leads
3. Show your boss and propose a new plan (content written with the intention to create demand vs capturing it)

Where do you land on this issue?

Related: Here’s some more solid advice from LinkedIn, this time from Sidney Waterfall at Refine Labs. She explains how to ditch a press release announcement with these alternative approaches to new SaaS feature announcements.

Also Related (and also from LinkedIn): Content marketer Jacalyn Beales explains why you might want to ditch case studies.

Publishing

Is Media’s Future ONLY Newsletters And Podcasts?

There’s an unintentional Axios subplot in this issue.

The Fix author David Tvrod breaks down how Axios is leaning into newsletters and podcasts and why.

“The main point, though, is this: Axios treats email as the primary product. Both Morning Brew and Axios understand it and that’s why they were able to create a lot of value and scale up quickly. Also, that’s a reason why independent journalists are increasingly opting for this model.”

What do you think?

Will all media follow this line of thinking soon?

Publishers walking the tightrope of how to digitally deliver value to your audience might enjoy Eric Barne’s Newsletter Fest discussion of How the Daily Memphian Used Email to Break Through 15,500 Paid Subscribers.

Online Journalism Awards To Be Announced Starting June 22

The Online Journalism Awards will be held (online!) June 22-25.

There are two categories for Excellence in Journalism:

Single Newsletter: This award honors a single newsletter published under the same brand. Entrants may include up to five URLs linking to examples or archives of your single newsletter.

Portfolio: This award honors a set of different newsletters published under the same brand. Entrants may include up to five URLs linking to examples or archives of the portfolio of newsletters.

Check out the other categories here.

Money Matters

Could This Be The Internet Of The Future?

In this article for Wired, Jason Parham describes a future internet where nothing appears without approval, there are no algorithms, no ad tracking, and no public-status markers.

“The next frontier is a world where everyone is an influencer, and we are all just paying for, and being paid for, a litany of perfectly curated feeds.”

Hello, creator economy.

Curated News

Live Newsletter Content Strategy Session June 18

The legendary Russ Henneberry and I are leading a newsletter content strategy live training session next Friday, June 18.

It’s not just another webinar.

It's a 4-hour mastermind session to take you through the steps of strategizing your newsletter—from picking a name and domain, to the content you’ll deliver, to conducting a soft launch and iterating.

We’re going to take Q&A throughout and keep it really actionable.

Price: $299 (which gets you a $200 Curated credit for whenever you want to use it).

Register here.

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

Opt In Challenge

Celebrate National Email Week

Did you know next week (June 14-18) is National Email Week?

Your challenge is to do something to celebrate it.

A great option? Email on Acid is hosting a free virtual event, Splat Fest, with some interesting sessions and speakers, including a super low-friction Twitter chat on Monday.

Look for the hashtag #splatfestchat.

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 (and sharing?),