Newsletter Analysis: What My Favorite Newsletters Have in Common

I read a lot of newsletters as part of my content consumption workflow, and since I have my own newsletter as well (started in 2015 before it was cool!), I’m hyper-curious about what works and what doesn’t.

More specifically, I see lots of similar tricks being used across the 20-or-so that I subscribe to. These are things like having a personal intro, a custom subject line, asking people to share, using links within the copy, running a referral program, etc.

Attribute breakdowns

So I decided to take my top 10+ newsletters, break down those tricks as features, and put them in a spreadsheet.

The main two purposes I had were:

Learn what the common tropes/memes that are spreading within top newslettersLook for things that my favorite people are doing with their newsletters that I am not

…and here’s the full list of attributes I looked at:

See the raw data.

Click to enhance

Use of imagesA personal introA table of contentsInline linksNewsletter sizeA newsletter value propA custom title per episodeA referral programA call to shareA link to subscribeHow much humor is usedThe type of ads usedThe tech platformUse of an inspirational quoteMy takeaways

I also just wanted to play with the raw data Google Sheets and Google Data Studio.

Most Top Newsletters Have a Value Proposition: This means a short blurb at the top that reminds readers (especially new subscribers) what value the newsletter is bringing them.

All Three Top-tier Newsletters Include an Intro: This is a decent signal that those who don’t (including me) might want to include one.All Three Top-tier Newsletters (and the majority) Use Custom Email Subjects and/or Headers: This is where each episode has a tagline that tells you what’s in it. It takes more time but the top offerings almost universally have it.Only Super-long Newsletters Tend to Have a Table of Contents: Of the biggest three that I follow, only Trends.vc has a table of contents. And it’s basically a giant index of content so that makes sense.

Very Few Newsletters Have Referral Programs: Only two out of the 12 have them, but I expect this to change shortly. I’m adding a program to mine very soon as well.Most Don’t have a Sign-up Link, Probably Because They Assume Someone Reading is Already Signed Up: Two of the three top don’t have it, but 1440 does. The idea is to catch people who had the newsletter forwarded to them.Most Have a Read-on-Web Option: This still seems important for some people, since the majority still include it.

Three of My Top 4 Have No Images: While there are a number of newsletters that have images now, it seems like the top ones are still mostly text.My Top 4 Have Virtually No Humor: It seems like mass-appeal skews towards being neutral, and humor isn’t neutral.Substack Had the Highest Platform Representation: This was followed by Mailchimp.

To make this prescriptive, if you run a newsletter I recommend you do the following.

Unless you’re over a million subscribers, include a value propositionConsider opening with a brief, personal introUse a custom email subject that describes the episodeConsider getting a referral program to jumpstart growthMy top 4 recommendations

You should obviously consider following every newsletter I mentioned here, but here are my must-haves:

1440—Unbiased, broad-spectrum news. Subscribe3-2-1 Thursdays—A concise, inspirational newsletter by the author of Atomic Habits. SubscribeTLDRSec—An ultra high-quality newsletter focused on application and cloud security. SubscribeUnsupervised Learning—My own newsletter that combines news, analysis, and original ideas in security, tech, and society. Subscribe

Thanks for reading, and I hope this helps you on your journey.

And if I missed any newsletters or attributes you think I should add, please let me know.