Three secrets I’ve learned about great newsletters

I remember my first day on the job at BuzzFeed, where I’d just been hired in a brand-new role as their newsletter editor. A manager brought me to my desk and asked, “You know what you’re supposed to be doing, right?”

The answer, truthfully, was no.

I’d launched small newsletters before, but nothing quite like what we wanted to do at BuzzFeed. I wasn’t sure what would make a great newsletter, how to monetize an email program, or even what metrics would indicate success.

But over time, I started to learn. Two things helped: I asked a lot of questions, and I worked at a place that was willing to let me and my team experiment. Over the course of five years, we launched more than 35 newsletters — from daily newsletters to pop-up products. In the end, we learned three big secrets:

1.) Start with a building block — Every newsletter should be built around at least one of these four pillars:

Identity — Who you are and what you care about.

Service — Content and stories you want more of. These are typically around your passions or likes — for instance, newsletters to help you find books to read or recipes to cook.

Utility — Content and stories you need more of. These are usually about your city or your work. You might need a newsletter to tell you about news in your neighborhood, or newsletters to inform you about issues affecting your industry.

Personality — Stories built around a specific person or voice.

2.) Every great newsletter starts with a clearly-defined audience — Understand who your readers are and what makes them unique. So often, I’ll ask a reader like you who their newsletter is written for, and they’ll say, “It’s for everybody!” But I've found that it's far more effective to define your audience. For instance, here’s how a local newsroom might describe their daily briefing:

• It’s for people in their 20s or 30s who live in our city.
• They commute via bus or train, so they only have a few minutes to read, and will probably do so on their phone.
• These readers care deeply about how news will affect life in their neighborhood.
• They also want to understand how to get involved in big issues and take action at the local level. 

If you know that, you can build a newsletter with the right voice and content to serve them.

3.) Focus on the job that the newsletter does for your audience — Think about what you’re uniquely suited to providing your readers. What do they need from you that they can’t get anywhere else? What are they relying on you for? What does every email need to do to make it useful for a reader?

It took me a few years to figure out the secrets of great newsletters, and I’d love to share what I’ve learned with you. I’ve put together a newsletter strategy positioning doc to help you work through the questions you’ll need to answer to build your next newsletter — and it’s just for Not a Newsletter readers! Fill it out, and you’ll be a few steps closer to launching your next great newsletter.

—Dan