Publishers are rethinking newsletters and are looking for more ways to collect e-mail addresses to be able to uniquely identify a visitor- one of the challenges when implementing a data management platform. Although newsletters are still a great tool to get readers to their site and increase loyalty, the effectiveness of them as an engagement tool is dropping. Back in 2015 the gross open rate for media and publishing newsletters was 38.5 percent. This number dropped to 22.14% in February 2017, according to email marketing company MailChimp. The click-through was 4.70% only.
The question is: why did the open rate drop by more than 40%? We at Klangoo discussed this issue with our customers. The consensus:
- Many newsletters contain “Top Stories”, the articles and videos that have been best read/viewed during the day. Often it is the same content that has been pushed to social channels and has prime positions on the home page. And often the content is available on competitor’s sites and apps.
- Newsletters contain content that the receiver already read or watched during the day.
- There is little or no personalization. Many publishers offer readers a Sports newsletter. But a more agile way of receiving sports content is not available. As a Formula 1 fan I still receive Golf recommendations.
- The layout of newsletters is not optimized for mobile devices.
Personalization is key. According to an article on Digiday The New York Times sees a 70% open rate for personalized newsletters, but not all publishers are able to fund a 12-person (!) dedicated newsletter team.
Technology, like Klangoo’s Magnet, enables you to send out personalized newsletters and follow e-mails.
- Follow Article or Video – Enabling your audience to leave their e-mail address with a story (not with a tag… but with a story). When new content comes available on the topics covered by the story, the reader/ viewer receives an alert in their mailbox. A great way of supporting the editorial story telling. Our customers find a (non-duplicate) open rate of over 43% and a click through of 23%.
- Follow section, sub-section, entity, opinion leader, editor – Enabling your audience to follow everything written by a certain opinion leader, for example receive all content about Formula 1 or FC Barcelona (and not the content where these entities are merely mentioned).
- Truly personalized newsletters – A newsletter that includes mainly content that Magnet knows an individual is interested in, and that he or she did not read or watch yet.
- The newsletters are customizable to reflect your brand as well as the ability to serve up ads to monetize the emails.
Open rates of personalized newsletters are up to 40% and the click through 13%, 5 times better than the industry average.
And the latest technology does not rely on your editorial team tagging the content, it’s all fully automated.
If you want to know more, reach out to me on Linkedin.