Newsletters are not dead - they're having a renaissance

How to best optimize your newsletter and your growth

In the 50+ publications here and after 5.5 years in the email industry, I can’t believe I’ve never written about email! I hope all of my #emailgeek friends can forgive me.

I thought I knew a lot about email when I went to work at SparkPost. As a marketer, I did know a lot of about the front end of email marketing, but I didn’t know jack about email deliverability or the underbelly of email.

It may come as no surprise to you that email is the highest ROI per channel (you know this already), the easiest to scale, and one of the most under utilized channels in every SaaS company. Newsletters are one of the most cost-effective ways to reach and connect with your audience.

A word about email is dying…

I know, people think email is dead. It has been “dying” for the past 20 years ever since Marco De Cesaris published the phrase on LinkedIn back in 2005. And while the digital landscape is ever changing, one thing remains ubiquitous in most systems - your email address. It’s how you sign up for things. It’s your unique identifier in 99% of systems out there. So it may die some day, but like desert turtles, it will most likely outlive of us both

How to make your email program work for you

When I go into a new company, I always look at their email program because it’s usually low hanging fruit. To be honest, most of the time it’s non-existent, but sometimes it’s just broken or needs a little makeover.

🤓 Here’s what I investigate at a high level:

1. What are the metrics over the past 6 months of bounce rate, unsubscribes, clicks to open, deliverability %, clicked links.

2. What is the size of the email-able database? When was the last time, if ever, the database cleaned? Is there a regular cadence for this?

3. Do we have an email preference center or is it a standard “opt out” of all emails?

4. Do we have emails segmented by customer type? (prospect, customer, partner, vendor, competitor, etc.)

5. Is there a Welcome or onboarding series? What does it look like?

6. Is there a newsletter? Does it have a regular cadence? Who is the audience?

7. Is there a product newsletter? If not, how do we get the word out about product updates?

8. Are there any triggered emails or are they all marketing emails?

9. Do we have privacy (CASL, CCPA, GDPR) practices in place?

10. Is there a clear source of how every email address is added to the system?

The Metrics 📊

Deliverability: Just because it was delivered doesn’t mean it hit the inbox of the recipient. It just means it was handed off to an ISP to do something with it. Even if you have a really high deliverability % (98-99%), it doesn’t mean people are reading it or that it is landing in the inbox tab. It could be landing in the promotions tab or the spam folder.

This is why the other metrics are just as important to look at to understand the health of your email program.

Unsubscribes should be below 1% per send and overall.

• Excellent: Below 0.2%

• Good: 0.2% - 0.5%

• Average: 0.5% - 1%

• Elevated (Bad): Above 1%

Bounce rate should be 2% or less. Above 2% and it indicates a list hygiene problem. Also, are they soft bounces or hard bounces? Soft bounces are due to email volume, whereas, hard bounces are permanent usually due to an invalid or incorrect email address or from being blocked. (Time to spring clean!)

Click to open rate (CTOR) should be above 20% (calculated by dividing the number of unique clicks by the number of unique opens, then multiplying by 100). The higher the better, it just means your content is personalized and engaging.

Click thru rate (CTR) should be 2-5% depending on a lot of factors. For example, newsletters typically have a lower CTR than say transactional emails.

Email List Hygiene ✅

I like to go through and clean the list at a minimum once per year, ideally every 6 months — especially in this economy where people are losing their jobs and switching employers left and right.

NEVER BUY A LIST AND COLD EMAIL THOSE PEOPLE. It ruins your email IP reputation because it will most likely land in spam and then it decreases your overall deliverability.

Now, if you want to buy a list, you can, but just use it to run ads against that list rather than ruin your 1st party intent data with purchasing a list.

The Qualities of a Successful Newsletter

You will experience a 36x or more ROI in your email program if you set up your newsletters with these best practices.

1. Segmentation 👥
   This is by far THE most important thing you can do. Segment your list into smaller segments rather than batch and blast everyone with the same message. Every audience type deserves and needs tailored messaging — even if it is only the CTA button text. This is also handy for when and if you decide to implement an ABM program.
   
   Segment at a minimum on customer type: prospect, customer, vendor, partner, employees and industry. Then segment your prospects further by either: job titles, decision makers, region, language, etc. Or segment your customers further by paid/free/trial.
   
   Here’s a simple example:

   

2. Content 📖
   Each segment has specific pain points your solution solves (they may overlap, but the language or decision makers may be different). This is why segmentation comes first above all else. Once you have your lists segmented you can create personalized content beyond, “Hi 👋 {first name}.” One of the most effective pieces of content that will resonate and you can send is a case study in someone’s own industry. That’s relevant content that resonates.

3. Design 🎨
   A clear layout that is consistent in every newsletter, let’s people know where to click or what to look for. If you change the layout every time, you will have massive drop off.
   
   From a design perspective, if your audience are marketers, then by all means, have a splashy image at the top. But if they are developers or CxOs, you probably don’t want that splashy banner and want to maybe make it text only. This is something to A/B test until you get it right. Plenty of templates to choose from these days in every platform.

4. Frequency 📅
   The key is to find the right cadence as to not overwhelm and spam your audience. For example, this newsletter comes out every Wednesday, usually between 5-7am PT. Most email systems have a limit you can set for frequency so that you don’t send too many emails to one person in any given week. I like to set this to 3 or 4 for most B2B. Why? Because some segments may overlap, sometimes there is more than just the newsletter we’re promoting - like a webinar registration or an event registration, sometimes the CEO will want to address a topic, or product will have a new release. So many reasons to limit it to 3 or 4 emails per week.

5. Tracking and Optimization 📉
   I usually delegate this to the MOPS person to analyze the email data monthly. Consistently measuring it will help you identify any potential problems. I also like to A/B test subject lines and the “from” constantly in email. See what resonates. Right now, coming from a person’s name rather than “your company” is resonating more and has higher CTOR.

Great email examples in B2B

First a quick definition on transactional vs marketing (promotional) emails.

• Transactional - payments/billing, password reset, profile confirmations, system outages, onboarding, one to one emails, unsubscribe link NOT required

• Marketing - newsletters, promotional emails like webinar/dinner invites, one to many, unsubscribe link REQUIRED.

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Who: Clay’s onboarding series
Type: Transactional
Why it’s great:

1. They set clear expectations from the start — the first welcome email told me how many emails I’d receive, with a simple “(1/6)” in the subject line.

2. The first email immediately reinforced their value — “Welcome to the creative tool for growth.”

3. They spaced the emails out thoughtfully throughout my trial period (though I’d love to see these triggered by my activity, yet still, really well done).

4. They set me up for quick wins starting in the second email, offering small tasks to get me feeling successful right away. (And they were super easy to do with Clay.)

5. Every email came with step-by-step instructions, screenshots, or links to videos — making sure I succeeded and keeping me engaged. They know that great onboarding turns users into loyal advocates.
   
   This is the kind of onboarding every SaaS and AI company should aim for.

Who: Loom
Type: Marketing, product release
Why it’s great:

1. Clear messaging about product release

2. Webinar to learn more with proper CTA

3. Lastly helpful how-to video if you can’t wait for the webinar

4. Clear footer, with clear unsubscribe/email preference center

Who: Search Engine Journal
Type: Marketing, newsletter
Why it’s great:

1. Clear sections including a header story, followed by other stories

2. Concise messaging with clear calls to action (CTAs)

3. Clear and upfront about sponsored posts