What are your newsletter reading habits?
Hi everyone!
Interested to know how everyone currently keeps up to date with their newsletters while keeping it enjoyable?
I'm still testing and trying out methods the best way but currently I do the following:
• Read newsletters outside my inbox
• Spend 30 mins every morning for short reads
• Save longer reads for Sunday morning when I have more time
• Only sign up to newsletters if they really excite me (and try have max 10-15 in total)
Even with all of this it still is easy to feel guilty about missed newsletter build up and lose the habit.
Would love to know what works for you?
I keep all my newsletters in a folder (I subscribe with an alias like newsletters @myemailaddress.com so they're easy to filter out).
I'll browse through the newsletters folder every day or every other day for a few minutes. Typically I just open each one for a few seconds, scan it and if something catches my eye I'll click through. If it's a long read I'll save it to pocket.
Other times I'll head to my inbox to check my "other" mail and after I'm through with that, I'll click through each of the newsletters rather quickly to mark them as read. I have a mild obsession with being at inbox zero.
Are there any pain points for you from reading newsletters in you inbox with an alias?
I just found that the inbox wasn't really built for reading newsletters and I associate it more with work.
With you on inbox Zero addiction (i'm just not very good at it...)
I'm not sure I would call my current process painful — although it could be optimized for sure. Having newsletters go into my existing RSS feed reader would be a nice upgrade/consolidation of content consumption - though I'm not sure how willing I'd be to pay for something like that. I think I pay inoreader like $12/year. I'm just one data point though!
You probably already know it, but each Substack and Revue newsletter has an RSS feed.
I have a separate inbox where I subscribe to top newsletters that are relevant to the subject matter and target audience of my newsletter—for example, Stella Spoils, TheSkimm, and Girls Night In. I grind through them rapidly in Gmail using keyboard shortcuts — # to delete, [ to archive.
Does anyone use Hey by Basecamp for this? I'm thinking about trying it out but not sure if I want to throw in the $100
I haven't tried it myself, I've heard some good things and some bad things. I think if you want to get the most out of it you need to be prepared to re-learn a lot (not necessarily a bad thing just need some commitment).
If you are looking for something simply to improve your newsletter reading experience then try a newsletter reader (Stoop, Slick etc). I always recommend Meco app but i'm incredibly biased :)
I'm excited to know there are other alternatives! Thanks!
First off, I subscribe to a couple dozen newsletters. I subscribe only to the content I want and I'm able to read. I read all issues, mostly cover to cover.
I use Gmail's snooze feature extensively for triaging newsletter issues and reading sessions. I snooze unread newsletters so that I have a reading list separate from the main inbox, which remains cleaner (I have been doing inbox zero since before it was cool).
In addition to snoozing, Gmail provides extra buffer space for temporarily storing read-later content. If you turn on Google Tasks in the right sidebar, you can drag&drop mails to Google Tasks as to-do items. If you think about it, snoozed mails and tasks can be separate extra inboxes for things like newsletters.
As with ordinary mail triaging, if I can read a newsletter issue in a few minutes I do it right away. Otherwise I snooze it and make some time to read it later.
Thanks for sharing! So every time a newsletter comes into your inbox you manually snooze it? Or does this happen automatically?
You're welcome. I snooze and triage newsletters manually, just like any other mails.
I'm dying to ask you to try out the app i've been working on as I think it might streamline things for you but i'm aware your solution seems to be working without issue for you so i'll refrain haha
Thanks, but I must be one of the few who feel comfortable reading newsletters in plain old email apps. And, as a publisher, I'm not the biggest fan of newsletter aggregators and readers. 😀
Yeah no worries at all! From a publisher point of view what is the reason you don't like newsletter readers products?
As I wrote in the linked post, newsletter aggregators and reading tools capture the relationship with readers by subscribing with email addresses these platforms own rather than the reader's original addresses. The post has additional details.
Oh sorry I didn't originally see the linked post!
Good point and I agree with you. That is why we made our reader for Gmail users (there is no need for a new email address). You sign in using your Gmail email so we don't control the relationship, we just display the newsletters.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, really helped :)
Working from inside email apps is the right approach.