Why this newsletter creator "never misses"

"An obsession with quality" is what I wish 12-year-old me had… but alas, I ended up with boatloads of Forever 21 T-shirts.

As it turns out, quality really does matter. Our master today told me her "obsession with quality" is the reason she's been so successful in the newsletter space.

On tap for today:

Why the creator of the MKT1 newsletter "never misses"
OpenAI isn't in the lead anymore
Returning to the office isn't going to fix your employee engagement problem

MEET THE MASTER

Name: Emily Kramer, marketer, investor, and advisor for B2B growth-stage startups

Job: Helps founders and marketers build and scale their marketing functions and creates content for her MKT1 newsletter & courses

Claim to fame: She's invested in and advised over 100 B2B startups, as well as worked at four startups in-house (three with exits!)

Fun fact: She's been to over 500 concerts in her life

Lesson 1: Be ready to tell leaders what you'll stop, start, and continue.

Kramer has been the "first-ish” marketer four times at companies ranging from 10 to 300 employees, so my first question was an easy one: If you're the first marketer at a company, where the heck should you start?

Kramer told me whether you're a team of one or leading a 200-person marketing department, the answer is the same: Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize.

"First, you need to figure out where you can win. Where can you stand out? Where do you have the biggest advantage over competitors? What channels make the most sense for your business?"

This translates to: Stop doomscrolling through TikTok for "inspiration" or convincing yourself a snazzy newsletter giveaway will save the day. Start with what matters most.

"You've got to have a framework for how you're prioritizing — you have to put a stake in the ground about what you think is important, and why. If you don't, you'll just get barraged with requests."

One of Kramer's go-to moves when joining a new company is to create a "start, stop, continue" plan. That way, execs can quickly see, "Oh, we already tried that," or "We’re stopping this, and here’s why."

Otherwise, your founder might just get a little too obsessed with the idea of you publishing ebooks on Amazon as the "next best marketing move."

(Not speaking from experience or anything.)

Lesson 2: To sell marketing to execs, compare it to the product team.

"The biggest challenge in my career has been selling marketing. Early in my career, I didn't understand the delta between what I understood about marketing, and what founders or other teams knew about marketing," Kramer says.

I feel her: As someone who comes from a family of salespeople, I spend most of my Thanksgiving dinners trying to explain that brand awareness is still a valuable outcome.

Luckily, Kramer's landed on a metaphor that seems to work: She likes to tell founders and execs that marketing teams are like product teams… Not sales.

A few key similarities: Both product and marketing are multidisciplinary; both have a portfolio of ideas and a roadmap of the big things they plan to do; and both require a balance of optimizing certain features/campaigns — while launching new ones — in order to help the biz grow.

Kramer also encourages marketers to make sure they know exactly what their founders think marketing is.

"During the interview process, just ask the founder, 'Hey, when you think of what marketers do, what's top of mind?' Because what if they respond and say 'trade shows,' and you hate trade shows?"

Her point is a simple but sound one: Make sure your vision of marketing aligns with your founder's, or get ready for a long road of pushback and a lot less creative freedom.

Lesson 3: Don't create a newsletter if you don't have anything interesting to say.

Kramer's MKT1 newsletter (subscriber count: 40k) success hinges on one question: "Would I text this piece of content to everyone I know that's in the space?"

Kramer's obsession with quality is evident in her newsletter cadence: While many marketers like to send newsletters out on a weekly or even daily basis, Kramer prefers to send hers roughly 2X per month. She only wants to send a newsletter if it's saying something new.

"People tell me 'I never miss' with my newsletter — I don't know if that's true," she adds with a wry grin. "I definitely miss. But that obsession with quality is there."

And she has some wise words for anyone who wants to create their own: "If you don't have a storyline that you can talk about in a unique, engaging way — better than everyone else — you shouldn't do it. You can't just say, 'I want to start a newsletter' and then stick content into it. It doesn't work that way."

Check Out Past MiM Interviews

A HELPFUL RESOURCE

How to launch a legendary newsletter, by Trends

Stop loafing — start loading up some sends.

This email newsletter manual covers how to launch, write, and grow your own profitable content engine, with case studies from Morning Brew, The New York Times, and more.

Best of all, it’s free. Enjoy.

Inside the gnarly newsletter lookbook:

How to price ads, structure terms, and delight prospects
How to build profitable paid acquisition channels
Illustrated breakdowns of common tech stacks
Referral program tactics and tools

6 chapters. 240+ slides. Consider it the blueprint.

How to nail a newsletter 🔨

OPEN TABS

OpenAI isn't the T-Swift of AI anymore: A new State of AI report finds that other AI labs like Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Google’s Gemini 1.5, X’s Grok 2, and even Meta’s open-source Llama 3.1 405 B (I swear my keyboard isn't glitching — these are real model names) have equaled or even surpassed OpenAI's GPT-4o.
Return-to-office policies won't fix it: Employers think forcing their employees back in-office will rekindle interpersonal connections, but they're wrong… HBR looks at how other connections in the workplace (including connections with colleagues, leaders, employers, and roles) are vital for employee satisfaction.
Getting rich off AI and SaaS: Kieran chats with Varun Anand (co-founder and COO of Clay) on how he built a $500M/year AI SaaS business.

LINGERING QUESTIONS

THIS WEEK'S LINGERING QUESTION

What global campaigns have you seen that would translate well and that we should learn from?—Maryam Banikarim, managing director of Fortune Media

THIS WEEK'S ANSWER

Kramer: "Orange, the mobile and internet company in France, made an ad to highlight its sponsorship of the FIFA Women's World Cup. The ad showed a bunch of clips of the men's soccer team, but at the end they reveal the players are actually from the women's team — they used deepfakes/VFX to make them look like the men's team."

"Some takeaways: Don't just sponsor events as one-offs. Think about the sponsorship as part of a campaign to make it worthwhile. Be on the right side of history as a brand. Lean into trends or existing conversations — like deepfakes and fake content — in an unexpected way."

NEXT WEEK'S LINGERING QUESTION

Kramer asks: What marketing framework has been most useful to you in your career?

This week's email was brought to you by Caroline Forsey. Edited by Laura M. Browning and Curt del Principe.

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Why this newsletter creator "never misses"

How to launch a legendary newsletter, by Trends

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