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11 Comments

What are alternatives for newsletters (audience building)?

It seems to be that newsletters might no be so prominent in the future.
What are other ways to gather an audience you stand by?

  1. 3

    I don't have a newsletter, but I'm curious why you believe newsletters won't be prominent in the future.

    I'm not necessarily disagreeing, just curious about your perspective.

    1. 1

      Well, basically I was an avid newsletter consumer, but it just started to be too much work, too many emails, some are also scattered with ads which make it not as readable as they used to be.

      I like to separate my work (email) with my link discovery (newsletters < other ways). Also I am pretty sure that GenZ are not going en masse to use newsletters like they aren't using facebook. It doesn't mean that it is bad it just means that it seems like it is in decline.

  2. 2

    I'm trying to do some impromptu "market research" on this. I have two siblings still in their 20s, plus several cousins.

    So far, they don't subscribe to newsletters. One cousin in their 30s does.

    Google news feed, creators on instagram, youtube, podcasts... is what I'm hearing.

    1. 3

      This is pretty interesting insight.

      To Millennials, maybe email still works. For Gen Y, its TikTok and IG lol!

      Food for thought.

    2. 1

      Yep, my experience too.

  3. 2

    What I think would be great, is to have a better way to categorise your newsletter. So you can filter and see what you feel like to read that day, moment, time of day etc. Now, indeed, what you are saying, newsletters getting too much.

    It's a shame that Whatsapp newsletters aren't there anymore, since that was a nice channel to send snippets.

    1. 2

      Seems like “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” to me. But yeah, that is part of the problem.

  4. 1

    I guess it depends on the market. For B2B products, I see LinkedIn for building an audience. Also, more and more B2B startups build an audience on Instagram.

    1. 1

      I see InstaSPAM as a market to take people from and bring them somewhere else, so I'm a bit of a cynic when building and audience there is an objective, and rather look at even using Trollbait and teasers to bring them elsewhere.

  5. 1

    Not an expert in this but love to just join the discussion.

    So far I see that email is still a pretty strong way to connect with the audience. But we all know it is getting crowded.

    Personally I start unsub-ing newsletters that I don't read and I see that people do that for my last startup too, so I think people still save their "inbox" for what they want to read. Just need to make sure you have great content + right audience.

    1. 1

      Like I commented to others, I feel like email just isn't the right medium going forward. It is too personal / work related. I already have a hard time mainatainng my email, why do I need 10 more email newsletters there to add to the clutter.
      Again, I think there will always be a space for email, I just view it as a medium in decline.

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