Newsletters are an integral part of all effective email marketing strategies. They engage your audience, help you nurture leads, and can increase conversions. Yet, creating a successful newsletter is pretty tricky. In this guide, we’ll lay out seven email newsletter examples.
We’ll also show you how they do it and give you helpful advice you can use for your own newsletter.
7 of the Best Email Newsletter Examples
Did you know that 79% of B2B marketers say that email is the best channel for content distribution? That’s why getting your email newsletter right is so important. You need to consider:
- The layout
- The formatting
- Maintaining brand identity
- The frequency
- The topics you’ll cover
And much more.
To give you a head start, we’ll show you seven great newsletter examples from various verticals. We’ll highlight why we think they’re so effective and what you can learn to help you create the best newsletter possible.
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1. Morning Brew
The first newsletter example on the list is Morning Brew. It’s sent out six days a week and provides concise summaries of tech and business news. It has around 4 million subscribers and is designed to be read in a few minutes while you enjoy your morning coffee.
Generally, each newsletter contains three to five stories that are making headlines around the world.
Why does it work?
One of the things I like about Morning Brew is that it strikes a balance between a serious and a comical tone. It often includes funny memes that lighten the mood when tackling big subjects like financial markets:
I think the formatting is great, too. As a reader, you’re never presented with big walls of text. Instead, the content is broken up into headings and bullet points, making it easily digestible.
In the image above, you can also see a clear CTA asking readers to subscribe to another newsletter. This is an effective way to increase subscriber numbers, and you should always use CTAs as part of your email marketing strategy.
2. James Clear’s 3-2-1
James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter is a master class in condensing big ideas down into concise phrases. The 3-2-1 newsletter contains three ideas from James Clear, two quotes, and one thought-provoking question.
This weekly newsletter, sent every Thursday, is one of the most popular newsletters in the world, with over 3 million subscribers. So, why is it so successful? Let’s take a look.
Why does it work?
One of the reasons this newsletter works so well is its simple, scannable structure. It only takes a couple of minutes to read.
James’ ideas are very concise – the perfect length for sharing on X (Twitter). Underneath each one, there’s a call-to-action (CTA) button to do just that.
The question included in the email is broad and can be applied to subscribers in all fields. Clearly, this isn’t a highly targeted newsletter aimed at a specific audience segment. It’s designed to appeal to as wide an audience as possible.
Below the question, there’s another CTA that increases the shareability of this newsletter even more.
James Clear ends the newsletter with a sign-off that demonstrates his credibility by referencing his best-selling book and his huge number of subscribers.
This establishes trust and authority and makes readers more likely to share the newsletter with others.
3. Healthline Wellness Wire
Healthline Wellness Wire gives you expert advice on everything to do with wellness and keeps you up to date with all the most recent developments in the field.
Why does it work?
Healthline is already regarded as a voice of authority in their space. Naturally, this means their writers are thought of as experts on health-related topics.
To communicate this expertise, Healthline often includes author info at the bottom of the stories in its newsletter.
By doing this, Healthline improves the transparency of its newsletter, builds user trust, and adds credibility to its content.
Many sites routinely include this information at the bottom of a blog post but don’t necessarily do it for newsletter stories. I’d recommend taking a page out of Healthline’s book and doing this in your email newsletter.
Healthline is also really good at demonstrating experience by including personal stories, like this:
This further enhances Healthline’s authority within its niche and provides accounts of real-world experiences that are helpful and valuable to the reader.
4. Quartz Daily Brief
The Quartz Daily Brief newsletter delivers concise, valuable content to your inbox every day. It breaks down the most important global economic news stories into bite-sized chunks. This helps you keep on top of daily developments without having to sift through all the information and data yourself.
This is very helpful for busy professionals working in the finance sector, and the newsletter is a trusted resource within its niche.
Why does it work?
The Daily Brief’s email newsletter example provides short summaries of stories from around the world. It gives readers the most pressing information and then internally links to full articles about these stories so that users can learn more about them.
This linking strategy provides extra value to the reader as it allows them to explore more in-depth, relevant content aligned with their interests.
It’s also a great way for Quartz to increase traffic to its site and highlight its expertise by promoting authoritative content.
5. Now I Know
The Now I Know newsletter takes a fairly unique approach by covering a wide range of interesting topics including history, pop culture, science, and current events.
I’ve been a subscriber for years. I continue to be amazed with how author Dan Lewis manages to keep finding fascinating stories for a daily newsletter.
Why does it work?
Now I Know has been going since 2010 and it has over 100,000 subscribers. How are they doing things right?
The secret lies in its unpredictability. When I open it each day, I have no idea what type of story I’m going to find. Yet, they’re always engaging and shine a light on lesser-known events that aren’t necessarily appearing in the news.
For instance, recently I was reading about a giraffe named Asiwa.
The content is well-written and highly readable. Plus, it includes external links to high-authority sources:
This helps to enhance the newsletter’s credibility and provides added value to readers, as they can explore relevant topics in more detail.
When readers see that you back up claims with trusted resources, it increases engagement with your content. As a result, this can lead to improved dwell time and reduced bounce rates.
6. Futurity
Futurity is a slightly different newsletter example from the others on our list. The newsletter itself doesn’t contain long-form content for recipients to read. Instead, it provides brief summaries of scientific research news from world-leading universities and links to the full stories on its site.
Why does it work?
Futurity works because the sources for its stories are as authoritative as it gets. For example, this one comes directly from Yale University:
The idea behind the newsletter is to garner publicity for exciting university research in the fields of health, science, the environment, and culture.
Over the years, high-quality research has featured less and less in the mainstream media. So, Futurity’s mission is to give it the attention it deserves.
As these stories can be fairly complex, Futurity links to the full articles rather than condensing them into smaller chunks. This approach likely won’t work for all newsletters, but I think it works really well for Futurity due to the nature of the topics it covers.
This approach is also good for the site’s SEO. Linking to the article pages increases organic traffic and should have a positive effect on the page rankings in the search engine results pages.
7. Serpstat
Our final newsletter example comes courtesy of Serpstat. It focuses on topics related to digital marketing, SEO, and the specific features of the Serpstat tool. It also promotes upcoming events and gives readers access to exclusive offers.
Why does it work?
One of the things the Serpstat newsletter gets right is maintaining a strong brand identity throughout. It uses consistent branding elements that you’ll find on all of its digital marketing channels.
In terms of content, Serpstat keeps it short and sweet. Additionally, it uses eye-catching visuals to communicate technical information in a straightforward manner:
It includes a clear, compelling CTA designed to increase conversions.
It also makes good use of the footer by including social media links to encourage engagement with its other channels, and an unsubscribe link (which is legally required).
Overall, it’s probably the best email newsletter example on the list for demonstrating how to absolutely nail the basics. If you get these right, you should see an improvement in user engagement, dwell time, and conversion rates.
Build Your Exceptional Newsletter Today.
Creating an effective newsletter can be tricky. However, if you pay close attention to these email newsletter design examples above and use a similar approach, you’ll be ready to craft a newsletter that gets your subscribers excited.
Remember, the key point is to ensure the content you provide is relevant and valuable. You need to understand your audience before you start working on your newsletter. This is the best way to engage readers and start increasing your conversions.
FAQs
What’s the best email marketing platform for creating a good email newsletter?
There isn’t a single email marketing platform that’s best for creating newsletters. There are a number of platforms you can use, such as:
- Klaviyo
- Mailchimp
- ActiveCampaign
- Drip
- MailerLite
- GetResponse
Is it best to send my email newsletter daily, weekly, or monthly?
Whether it’s best to send a daily, weekly, or monthly newsletter depends on your business goals, the type of newsletter, and the preferences of your target audience.
The important thing to set proper expectations upfront. If you say you’re going to send weekly, send weekly. If you’re going to send daily, try your best to send daily.
If you’re unsure or haven’t set those expectations, it’s a great place for testing. You could try different frequencies and monitor your performance metrics. This will indicate the frequency your audience prefers.
Is it a good idea to personalize the subject line of my newsletter?
Yes, definitely! Personalizing the subject line of an email newsletter has been shown to improve open rates. Recipients tend to be more willing to open emails addressed directly to them rather than generic emails that aren’t addressed to anyone.
In case you are looking for some specific newsletter inspirations feel free to check our other peices of newsletter examples like –
- B2B Newsletter examples
- Newsletter examples for Nonprofit organizations
- Newsletter inspiration for saas companies
