This trick will get your email opened every time

Flipboard is a great platform for publishers. But how can you find the readers interested in your topic? With new data from Parse.ly, it’s possible to map the top 1,000 most popular topics — in order of how much traffic they send to publishers.

Great email subject lines have certain things in common. This is how to write an email subject line that will get opened.

In this second installment of “spending money to make money,” consultant Phillip Smith takes a deep dive into how a few publications are doing paid acquisition — spending money on things like Facebook ads to grow leads and subscribers. Including a segment on my favorite tactic — Content-to-Capture — you’ll want to read this one closely and copy down some ideas for your own playbook. (As the title implies, this is Part II; see Part I here.)

A Guardian analysis of 218,100 ads reveals how the Trump campaign’s sophisticated social media machine targeted conservative voters. Putting aside the politics, it’s a fascinating look at how one political campaign used a variety of social-media dark arts — from quizzes to contests to scary videos — to build a massive email harvesting operation. Some of this is just darkly fascinating; but some of it may give you a useful idea or two about how to hack lead generation on Facebook.

Learn how to improve your newsletter opt-in form based on who someone is and what they need from you. A step-by-step look at how you can use surveys to sign up new users.

As people move off of Facebook, where will they go? This article from Harvard Business Review looks at what it calls “digital campfires.” Why does dining review site The Infatuation have a private texting app (called Text Rex)? Why did beauty brand Glossier start a private Slack group? People want more intimate spaces, sheltered from the negativity of social media — and outside the control of the algorithms. This article isn’t about media; but the opportunity here for media is huge. How could you create your audience’s digital campfire?

A Media Subscriptions Week workshop with Inbox Collective’s Dan Oshinsky took a deep dive into email and newsletter marketing strategy, including specific tactics to drive engagement and conversion. You’ve got new readers signed up — now take a look at the tactics here (from onboarding to habit building) to keep them coming back.

Harvard Business Review, The New Yorker, and The Economist all use audio to boost reach and retention. Stratechery is doing something similar, with its Daily Update Podcast. I’m a longtime podcast skeptic, but this does look like an effective way to build habits and retain subscribers who might otherwise not have enough time to consume your writing.

A report from the Reuters Institute provides 12 lessons. Among them: Subscription companies must obsess about their core audience; Readers appreciate a product they can finish, and Reducing churn is much more important than acquisition.

A lot of publishers get caught up offering a plethora of pricing options to readers. But, as one Axel Springer exec put it: “I don’t see three prices on Netflix.” Fewer tiers of subscription offerings have led to more subscription revenue. Simplify, simplify.

When The Information launched, many in mainstream media scoffed. There was no way a hard paywall could work, they said. And yet, it did. But it’s not going to work for every publisher. For those publishers that do figure out a subscription model that works, it will likely be because they moved away from producing a lot of content and moved instead toward creating top quality content. It’s more important to cover the topic with unique information than it is to have every piece of information. Depth is far more important than quantity.

Morning Brew quickly grew an audience — and its profits — on the back of a single email newsletter. But to keep growth strong in 2020, the business newsletter startup will focus on specializing its sales team as its portfolio of brands continues to grow. Morning Brew’s revenue grew dramatically in one year, from $3 million in 2018 to $13 million in 2019.

The Markup set up a new Gmail account to find out how the company filters political email from candidates, think tanks, advocacy groups, and nonprofits. They found that few of the emails they’d signed up to receive —11% — made it to the primary inbox, the first one a user sees when opening Gmail. Here’s how Google’s black box algorithm controls which political emails land in your main inbox.

The folks behind Basecamp are launching a new email product. All very mysterious for now, but you can get an early look by signing up here.

A good ‘mailto’ link in an email can feel like a magic trick to users, auto-populating a subject, body, cc, and bcc. This neat tool auto-generates the code, so that even a novice can create something automagical.

The emoji search engine. A fast emoji search experience with options to browse every emoji by name, category, or platform. Emojipedia factored heavily into the creation of this email. 👍

Want to get some insight into a competitor’s ad tech or marketing? This tool traces the redirect path of a URL to show you exactly how you’re being routed when you click. Try it on some of the ads you see in your email.