This is an archive version of the 99 Newsletter Project newsletter originally published in February 2024. Columbia Journalism Review published a post about a University of Pennsylvania study. The doom & gloom headline was: They gave local news away for free. Virtually nobody wanted it. I saw this getting kicked around online, and I can’t…
Designing emails is hard. Email is an old format. It’s restricted from different directions by different inbox providers. There’s so much that doesn’t work in email the way it might on the web or in an app. Or it works in Gmail but doesn’t work in Outlook. Or vice versa. This leads email newsletter design…
I don’t know what people think is the best-designed newsletter out there today, but I see who people are copying: Axios. I’m a former designer, so I picked six newsletter designs better than Axios. They key context here is that Axios’s visual design is driven by it’s in-house writing style — as it should be. Design…
Over the last several years, publishers have invested heavily in newsletters. That’s great! Newsletters make great products and are effective tools for distributing content. They also are useful for acquiring more paying subscribers or donors. Likewise, readers love newsletters as an alternative to social media recommendation engines. A great user experience goes far in building…
Note: This post was originally published May 2020. The analysis and screenshots reflect that period in time, but may no longer reflect the current sign-up process. The New York Times got a lot of buzz last week when it claimed a whopping 17 million subscribers to “The Morning.” The thing is? 17 million is a…