Just subscribed to 50+ newsletters in the past hour
(for a side project)

Here are some lessons I've learned

Thread

Everyone has a newsletter.

Everyone has something to share.

What can one do to stand out?

We'll examine it here.

1/ Clear Value Proposition

Do you articulate clearly the following?

- What content you write about
- Who your newsletter is for
- How your audience will benefit from your newsletter?

2/ Landing Page

- Make it easy for people to sign up
- Have an obvious box for people to drop their emails into
- The more clicks you make your audience take, the less likely they are to sign up
- Have a clear call-to-action button
- Use social proof & reviews

3/ Past Issues

- If you're writing on Substack, highlight your best issue
- If you have your own landing page, give readers a sample of what your newsletter looks like

People don't like to part with their email addresses if they don't know what they're in for

4/ Confirmation Emails - Admin

- Most Substack newsletters don't do double opt-ins
- Other providers enforce it, and I'm a fan of it as it ensures that you get quality subscribers
- But why in the world did @Mailchimp make me do a captcha so many times just to confirm?

5/ Build in virality

Some smart newsletters included a "Share this with your network" Tweet button in their confirmation email.

Get people dropping your newsletter on social media like it's hot

6/ Confirmation Emails - Questions

- Some ask questions to open up conversations with their audience (see what @anthilemoon does for Maker Mind)
- @Leonlinsx tries to understand what his audience likes to read

7/ Confirmation Emails - Setting Expectations

@noCSdegree alerts his audience when they can expect to receive the weekly emails

8/ Confirmation Emails - Pointing You To Their Sites

@farnamstreet points you to the different social platforms that you can follow

9/ Confirmation Emails - Make It Personal

@ytothej posts an image of a handwritten postcard in his confirmation email

P.S. Check out his unique take on newsletters here: https://ytothej.substack.com/p/postcard-01 

10/ Confirmation Email - Sharing your best hits

@packyM shows his readers some of his best recent posts.

Gets them excited from the get go!

11/ Confirmation Emails - Whitelist

@harrydry of @GoodMarketingHQ tells you where to put the newsletter

12/ The original thread I've used to uncover newsletters with a unique voice is here:

https://twitter.com/thisiskp_/status/1289968323954966530?s=20

Still looking to follow more non-curated newsletters.

Comment below if you have any other suggestions!

P.S. my newsletter doesn’t have a good confirmation email but I’m working on it.

But it has a pretty good landing page (I hope?)

The biggest missed opportunity in the newsletter world is optimising your welcome emails.

Learn how to improve them with examples & best practices in this post on @newslettercrew https://newslettercrew.com/improve-your-newsletter-welcome-emails/