Does email work as a distribution channel for paid content?
CONS
- marketers have been spamming this channel for decade+
- assuming you have some valuable content coming through this channel, it may get lost with all the garbage posts coming in daily
- people not checking their email; I often see screenshots with 99+ unreads in the email app badge
PROS
- IMO, more personal than some other delivery channels because it is your personal inbox
- cross platform, widely adopted medium, many clients so user can choose what they like
What are your thoughts? Could you ever see yourself subscribing to paid email content OR have you ever used it as a distribution channel yourself?
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Paid newsletters are a way bigger business than I thought a few years ago when I got started in the newsletter business.
The "secret" is that they provide highly focused information on a topic, usually for business people.
There are some old-school financial newsletters that use a paid model. I am not familiar enough with them to give them as an example, plus they are old, right? Might not be for trending topics.
That said, there's 2PM, and also Trends that are somewhat newcomers to this.
Spam filters are actually quite aggressive these days so it's unlikely spammers "hurt" that much anymore.
The fact that everyone has 9,999+ unread emails is just a result of bad inbox management. People also have 999 icons on their desktops and still use their computer just fine, haha.
What will matter is whether or not the information you provide in your newsletter is worth the subscription fee. Open rates are actually secondary to that imo.
Taking an extreme example, if you have a free newsletter that monetizes with ads but all subscribers block tracking, you are doomed at 0% open rate.
On the other hand, imagine you have a paid newsletter and your readers block tracking but stay subscribed. You still have a business!
The details of what your content is, where your audience is based, maybe also age, etc. will matter when it comes to deciding if email is the best medium but it's certainly good if looked at in general.
Thank you so much @Manu_C for taking the time to analyze this and at such great detail!
I am looking at both of these examples you shared and it appears they are both promoting a sense of community and other perks over being "just" a newsletter; which helps to explain why they are appealing at scale and can charge money.
I am also getting a sense that these are both very industry-focused (as in corporate America). Would you say this is the typical demographic for people who are willing to pay for email content? Are you aware of any examples where the content is perhaps more on the casual or entertaining side?
Based on these examples my broad understanding is when the content is such that it helps the subscriber to perform better at their work (and thus maybe make more money) it is valuable and thus worth subscribing to.
Honestly, I don't know if what I have will work, which is why I am trying to gather some background info and successful examples to help guide me through the next steps. I built something very quickly to test out an idea, and I am trying to identify some successful strategies that could help conversions. I want to target marketers, content creators (yt/ig/blog), maybe small business; if that makes any difference.
Both examples also have a free newsletter and free content, in general, that attracts people into their communities. I think it's easier to start a free newsletter and gather a community that way then later create a paid product but it depends on the quality of content and your existing reach with other channels, I believe.
I don't know any examples that are more for entertainment. I think entertaining content is abundantly free and not often in written form. Think Twitch live streams, YouTube memberships, etc.
The great thing about newsletters is that you can test the concept very quickly. For paid content, you can also have pre-launch to gather interest. If not enough people buy, you can refund everyone and move on.
What worked well when we launched our newsletter was to have a few friends with some reach in the industry give us a shoutout. That helped us get a few hundred subscribers early on, which then could help us with feedback to shape the product better as we grew.
Good insight, thanks again!
No problem! 👍