
Email Newsletters Are Still A Serious Business - jasonlbaptiste
http://jasonlbaptiste.com/startups/email-newsletters-are-still-a-serious-business/
======
eli
Email is huge for B2B. Executives -- especially those in non-technical fields
-- generally couldn't care less about RSS or Twitter. But they spend half of
their day in Outlook or (god forbid) Lotus Notes.

~~~
thwarted
I've always thought that RSS would have had wider understanding and use if
Outlook could discover, consume, and display RSS feeds -- formatted as email
messages so as not to confuse the user of Outlook too much.

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aaronbrethorst
That's exactly what Outlook does.

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thwarted
True, I haven't actually used Outlook in years, last time I did I know the
version I used didn't do this. RSS has existed in some form since 1999.
Outlook seems to have just achieved the ability to consume the format with
Office 2007 [1] [2]. And it's buried in the account settings [3]. Which I
guess makes sense, but it really should be accessible from the folder
pane/list.

[1] [http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-
help/introduction-...](http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-
help/introduction-to-rss-HA001230463.aspx)

[2] [http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/view-rss-
and-...](http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/view-rss-and-atom-
feeds-in-outlook-HA001175000.aspx)

[3] [http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/add-an-rss-
fe...](http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/add-an-rss-feed-
HA010159539.aspx?CTT=3)

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jseliger
_I don’t think things are going to stop here by any means. Content is a huge
business and customer acquisition can be done fairly easily if you’re sticking
to a specific niche._

This is interesting to me because my family's business, Seliger + Associates
Grant Writing (<http://blog.seliger.com>), runs an e-mail grant newsletter
that's been far more useful to us than anything else we've done in terms of
advertising and in terms of getting people's attention. In addition, we
regularly look for e-mail newsletter where we can advertise but have trouble
finding them—a lot of people want to sell us banner ads on their websites,
which have proven useless, but relatively few have newsletters.

I'm not sure why this is; I would guess part of it is because people have to
actively sign up for a newsletter, rather than merely finding the website
through Google or whatever. Maybe the ads are better integrated.

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edkennedy
A number of pay per click affiliates found that by including an opt-in to a
list during the sales process they were able to make sales again and again and
again. Shifting from short term to long term profitability. Why make one sale
to a client when you could make several?

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jacquesm
Repeat sales to existing customers are the backbone of the economy, this
should not be a surprise to anyone.

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
I agree, sadly not enough people pay attention to this. Jacques, I wish you'd
write a lot more. You have a ton to teach/smart things to say.

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antidaily
I wish the article offered more insight into _how_ these newsletters are worth
so much?

~~~
champion
My understanding is that sites like DailyCandy, etc. do well by having very
good open/CTRs for their emails and known/attractive demographics, and can
therefore charge quite a bit to place ads. (They don't list ad unit prices,
but some more info: <http://www.dailycandy.com/mediakit/>)

~~~
GFischer
Wow, the sale price for DailyCandy is an eye-opener (125 million)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DailyCandy>

Edit: already stated in Jason's original post:

[http://jasonlbaptiste.com/commentary/email-newsletters-
busin...](http://jasonlbaptiste.com/commentary/email-newsletters-business/)

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derekc
You mentioned a list of potential verticals. Care to name a few?

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
Sure. It's funny. I almost ended up doing something in this space (mix of
content and monetization). If it weren't for Andres pushing me + attending
startupweekend, i'd be doing something here instead of Cloudomatic. Some
verticals I identified:

\- Casual geeks. People who want to know what we know, but just don't have the
time + know geeky tricks.

\- Urban demographic. It's valuable and something overlooked in the tech
space. Why do you think all of those things trend on twitter with weird
hashtags? It's because of the urban demographic.

\- Family living. People want tips for better family living. It's also a
valuable demographic.

\- College focused. Do .edu email addresses only and segment by city. This is
how facebook got started and college humor spread. It's highly viral and
highly valuable. Think financial companies paying for a dedicated email to
100k college kids with good editorial content.

\- Male fitness. Sort of mens health meets GQ. Fashion, sex,
fitness,money,etc. Women often get all the love here when it comes to content
online, but this is a gaping hole. If you've ever picked up a fitness
magazine, you would know advertisers spend a ton here.

I think there's more. I'd start with either the first one or last one. If you
end up doing one of those, I'd love to help in some way possible.

~~~
zds
Great post with some really great points in the comments as well. There are a
TON of upstarts in this space and some already target the areas you've
mentioned. Of particular note is Startup Digest (www.thestartupdigest.com),
which already has thousands of subscribers and an established presence in tons
of cities. At the moment, they send out a weekly newsletter with startup
events in each city. Definitely worth subscribing to if you're an
entrepreneur.

~~~
silvia77
here is the link: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1489352>

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jgrahamc
I'm not surprised HARO was successful. It's an incredibly useful service.

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jasonlbaptiste
Agreed. It was well run too. I'm actually very curious, what else would do
well with something very HARO like - ie- 1-3 emails a day connecting people
together.

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jeromec
Television/film casting is like that. Being from Los Angeles I had dabbled in
"extra" work a bit (still have my expired SAG card! :) Casting agents always
need certain looks or skills, e.g. someone tall with red hair that can
horseback ride, or has a running car older than 1970. Stuff like that goes out
in casting calls, and the best they can do is ask people to work their social
network in the traditional way, i.e. family or friends they might know etc.
Come to think of it Hollywood in general is pretty low tech...

~~~
jgrahamc
Great insight. Sounds like HAPO (help a producer out) might work. Clearly not
just LA because there's also NYC.

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jasonlbaptiste
This is a really good idea. There's a service that does this I heard about on
mixergy, but not email/haro like.

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jgrahamc
So, shall we build it? I've got next weekend free. Just need someone who can
market it to producers.

~~~
jeromec
Unfortunately, marketing is my weakest suit. I'm more of a developer role.

Edit: As a matter of fact this all reminds me of a project I started with an
aspiring director, which I still think is a good idea. He approached me with
the idea to connect script writers with studios. He had some web design skills
and supposed connections. I was to build the backend of the site. I was
enthusiastic about that project and even started the coding, but he never
delivered on the marketing. He lost his motivation after a competitor site
upgraded and corrected many of its flaws (inktip.com).

