Newsletters are the primary way — from beginning to end — that we can control how we engage with our audiences, said Katrice Hardy, executive editor at The Dallas Morning News.

So what is the strategy at The Dallas Morning News?

• Data-driven: Focusing on what the data tells us allows us to strategically create personalised newsletters and journeys for our readers. *Interesting data point: E-mails are the third-highest traffic source overall for The Dallas Morning News and No. 1 among subscribers.

• Adaptability: Constantly learning, testing, and training newsroom personnel that deploy newsletters. Working in partnership with the newsletter audience team.

• Audience growth: What we can control to grow our newsletter audience and develop a habit in our readers’ lives.

• What’s working: Mimicking SEO strategies in newsletters such as round-ups, listicles, delivering what the top stories are directly to their inbox, and creating a sense of urgency with breaking and news alerts.

Saher Merchant, director of audience development at The Dallas Morning News, said breaking news newsletters have been a win in Dallas. Beyond traditional breaking news, they have segmented e-mail alerts for up-to-the-minute news on specific topics, like business.

“How do we get new users into our ecosystem and develop habit? These targeted newsletters brought in new audiences and higher loyalty,” Merchant said.

Merchant said her team worried about over-saturating the targeted segments with too many e-mail alerts, but results have shown subscribers to those newsletters have a strong appetite for them.

David Topping, director of newsletters for Torstar, said breaking news alerts work well at the Toronto Star, too. He also offered an important distinction between e-mail alerts and e-mail newsletters:

• Alert: an urgent editorial message about a single item, primarily intended to drive traffic off-platform to it.

• Newsletter: a themed editorial package that can be urgent or built to drive traffic off-platform — but needn't be either.

“It makes alerts purer to measure the results from — on alerts, you focus on getting the click, and that’s when they are successful,” he said. “They’re exceptionally good at driving traffic, but they don’t drive a lot of subscriptions.”

In addition to breaking news e-mail alerts (which has a large e-mail list), the Toronto Star also sends investigations, columnist, and topical alerts. They don’t drive the same volume of traffic, but they appeal to a segment of the audience and can lead to subscription conversions, Topping said. They also experimented with neighbourhood and recurring features alerts, but those did not prove successful.

“We had a few month’s worth, and I was looking for any signal of hope. What I saw from other alerts at the same time were some signals but not from those,” Topping said.

And how did Torstar find a balance of how many to send — gauging interest vs. worrying receivers would see them as spam?

Topping said they watch unsubscribes and traffic volumes closely.  

If you’d like to subscribe to my bi-weekly newsletter, INMA members can do so here.

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