Case study: Mashable and the 5 must-have elements of a solid newsletter
What goes into a successful email newsletter? Here is a short list:
- Multiple, interesting stories
- Clear and obvious links to the content
- Reliable, consistent publishing schedule
- Branding of your brand
- Functional on mobile
- Thumbnail images (optional but, come on, everyone loves images)
Mashable, the Internet’s best blog about the Internet, produces a fantastically simple email newsletter that touches on each of these must-have elements. It is a joy to look at and interesting to read and, by the looks of it, not all that time-consuming to put together. It’s the trifecta of newsletters!
Here is how Mashable pulls it off.
1. Multiple, interesting stories
A newsletter isn’t a newsletter if there’s no news (or only one news—that makes it an alert). Mashable crams 11 stories into its newsletter, hitting on a range of topics that the website covers—technology, social media, business, and more.
The links all return to Mashable articles, which is one way of doing it. Other newsletters choose to link to content outside the friendly confines of their own blog. Each strategy is fine, so long as you’re doing it purposefully. For a site like Mashable that publishes dozens of posts each day, a newsletter of the highlights is valuable for readers. For sites that publish less frequently, it is likely that readers have already found the blog content and are interested in more, elsewhere. You get to decide what’s best.
Mashable extra credit: Their newsletter works the multiple story angle into the subject line, which provides the title of the first article along with “and 10 more.” That’s a total of 11, for those counting at home, and it lets readers know what they’re getting themselves into.
2. Clear and obvious links to the content
This point about clear and obvious links should be clear and obvious. Of course links need to look like links. How else will people click on them? You’d be surprised, though, at the different layers to an issue like this. For instance, are images clickable? Are headings clickable? Will you use a button? Is the link color different enough from the text color? It’s a menagerie of issues that solid design needs to solve.
Mashable takes an all-in approach and makes everything clickable but the small-text blurb.
When in doubt, keep it simple and link everything. Readers will appreciate.
3. Reliable, consistent publishing schedule
The first two newsletter elements were kind of duh, but this one? Super secret email open magic!
Successful newsletters are sent consistently. Readers know when to expect them. Readers get in the habit of receiving and opening. There needs to be a symbiotic relationship between a newsletter and reliable schedule.
Mashable sends theirs daily, including weekends. Others send on weekdays, once a week, once a month, or once a quarter.
Note: If the newsletter sending happens any less frequently than daily, it would help to stick the timeframe in the subject line. Say “weekly newsletter” instead of “newsletter.” People are liable to forget, what with all the other email in their inbox.
4. Branding of your brand
Of course, sending news links in a timely manner won’t do you much good if there is no tie back to your brand. Don’t forget to tell people who you are, especially if you’re not linking to yourself and your content.
The header is an obvious place for this. Equally important (but maybe less obvious) is the From Name. Mashable’s is a simple and concise: “Mashable.”
5. Functional on mobile
Email open rate on mobile devices is approaching 50 percent, so your newsletter must work on a phone as well as a desktop. That means responsive design or scalable design or something that is at least legible and clickable on a tiny screen.
5. Thumbnails (optional)
To thumbnail or not to thumbnail? The choice is up to you, and here are a couple questions to keep in mind:
- Pictures drive clicks, sometimes better than any other tool you’ve got
- Pictures take an incredible amount of time and energy if the process isn’t automated
Mashable, being a gigantic media conglomerate, has time, resources, and automation to spare. They chose thumbnails.
Thumbnails are likely the best way to go if you have the resources to pull it off, and if not, no worries. Some of the greatest daily newsletters—Dave Pell’s NextDraft and Digg’s daily email—have zero thumbnails. Ideally, your subscribers are interested in your content—thumbnails or no.
Mashable extras
Mashable does a few extra things that not all newsletters need to have. Overachievers! Here are two bonus items:
- Social media sharing buttons on each item
- Pretty ads for themselves
One area for improvement on the Mashable newsletter would be the preheader, which reads: “Not displaying correctly? View this newsletter online.” It’s not exactly clickbait. Something more representative of the content of the email might drive a better open rate.
And one more thing, Mashable’s email would appear to be automated rather than curated, which could lead to some odd stories sprinkled into the newsletter (for instance, a story about the YouTube Video Awards airing Sunday featured in the newsletter the following Monday).
Takeaways
Building a newsletter isn’t difficult, which is maybe why so many exist. However, a newsletter built well doesn’t take a Herculean effort either. Keep it simple like Mashable’s. Link clearly to multiple stories, send regularly, sell yourself, look good on mobile, and use pictures if you (and your readers) want.
