The strange intimacy of newsletters.
Ah, the internet: endless rabbit holes, endless opportunities for distraction. Arrogant influencers and self-styled news anchors with a spiteful tone of voice, making cringy noise for clickbait, ticking off boxes to satisfy a best guess as to what a hidden algorithm wants.
I was one of the first people to get my hands on 2.0 content for brands, and I feel partly responsible for what it has become. I was naive to think that everyone had a voice, that this would make us a better society. I remember all those long nights doing social strategies, praying for my clients to give me an opportunity to use some of those 2.0 features, instead of their stupid email marketing. Now, I long for those emails like freshwater, as I navigate this strange desert of “content” - a description which is almost ironic at this point.
So, twenty years later, this is my love letter to newsletters, on why your email strategy might be the next big thing you need to focus on, to build true engagement and a real audience.
We all do it: you sit down, get a cup of coffee and read your inbox. One by one, you decide which ones you need to open urgently and skim, and what you want to keep to read later, when you have more time. In a world where we’re never more than a flick of the thumb away from the Next Thing To Look At, it’s almost a treat to only have to focus on one piece of text, to have time to think and process it without ten “Up Next!” links fighting for your eyeballs.
With that said, here are some things to keep in mind when writing an email:
Keep it short and sweet. Without images and page layouts to break up text, a little can seem like a lot. Line breaks are your friend.
Create cool calls to actions only if they are worth it. Your audience is taking a break from being bombarded with links, don’t ruin that!
Make it personal and unique. It’s not hard to make something more charming and human than AI-generated slop, and that’s what you’re up against. The reader wants to feel like they’re being addressed personally, not listening to a talk.
I aim to take my own advice and try to write beautiful things! In the meantime, these are my favorite writers and newsletters:
Rushing Robotics Everything AI by Zoltan Tapi & AI chatbots of all sorts.
Link in Bio A Social media must by Rachel Karten.
Athletech News Wellness, recovery and fitness industry news.
Platformer, Casey Newton´s blog. Amazing tech column.
404 Media: All the good internet somehow ends up there.
NYtimes cooking The veggie Cooking happy and healthy.
https://www.nytimes.com/column/the-veggie
And my very favorite, Nick Cave´s Red Right Hand. My favorite catholic rockstar answers morals, religion and music.
https://www.theredhandfiles.com/
Stop doom-scrolling, start a relationship with human authors. Stop ‘engaging’, start enjoying. We could all use a little more of the human touch in our lives, and in a post-GPT age, a human reading something written by and for humans is almost revolutionary.
All my love to my favorite writers and also to you, dear reader.
Mariana