Kat Borgerding (@katborgerding), a volunteer with the ONA Resource Team, compiled these key moments from the ONA20 session on Oct. 7, 2020. To view a recording of the session, register for on-demand access to the ONA20 archive. Session participants included:
- Nicole Lewis, Staff Writer, The Marshall Project
- Jere Hester, Editor in Chief, THE CITY
- Judd Legum, Founder and Author, Popular Information
- Kendall Baker, AXIOS
- Neema Roshania Patel, Editor, The Lily (The Washington Post)
- Moderator: Annemarie Dooling, Engagement Experiences Product Lead, WSJ
5 key takeaways:
- Personalize the voice in your newsletter to be from one person going to a direct group. Axios does this with their newsletter that comes directly from Mike Allen each day. The City does this by addressing their newsletter directly to residents of NYC.
- To build engagement and loyalty as a small newsletter operation, Popular Information author Judd Legum invites his subscribers to email him back and will reply through email to each one.
- LilyLines hosts a short informal Q+A at the end of the newsletter with the people who produce the newsletter. LilyLines attempts to make the newsletter personal from one member of the team at a time.
- To build a list from scratch, Popular Information author Judd Legum sent an individual message to each person he had ever emailed saying, “Hey, I’ve started a newsletter. I’d love if you would just try it out and let me know what you think.” He then asked that people share it with others in their networks.
- Use newsletters to experiment, and add bonus newsletters or short newsletter series around big topics, like The Lily.
Memorable/tweetable quotes:
- “It’s about connecting with thousands of people, not millions of people, and hopefully many thousands of people. Really delivering them something that matters to them. The most important thing is to understand the competitive landscape.” —Judd Legum, Founder and Author, Popular Information
- “I devote each [issue] of my newsletter, with a few exceptions, to one topic, which I dig into in some depth, usually 1200 to … 2000 words, and try to find something that people won’t be able to find on Twitter [or] other newsletters that delivers unique value to them.” —Judd Legum, Founder and Author, Popular Information
- “As we think about what makes our newsletter successful, we’re thinking about what would be most respectful to the needs and user experiences of our readers while also meeting them in those places as best we can on a week-to-week basis as well as continuing to make sure that we are meeting to the goals of our team.” — Neema Roshania Patel, Editor, The Lily (The Washington Post)