53% of publishers have increased their email newsletter frequency. But, despite their efforts to ignite further engagement, clickthrough rates can be as low as 2%. Check out this Slideshare to learn how you can optimize your media newsletters to increase retention and engagement -- and a look at the brands who are getting it right.

1. Brought to you by the email marketing experts at Sailthru
The Best of the Best:
Media and Publishing
Newsletter Edition
How to Optimize Your Email Newsletter for
Retention — And the Brands Who Get it Right
@Sailthru

2. 82%
of publishing and
media marketers
use email
marketing…

3. And over the past 6 months,
53% of publishers
have increased their email
newsletter frequency...

4. But on a good day,
and
clickthrough
rates are as low
as 2.2%...
subscriber
open rates
barely peak
at 16%

5. Where does this
leave the industry?
Traffic and pageviews can now
make or break your revenue...
When it comes to digital news organizations, the
majority of digital revenue comes from display ads,
whichgrew27%in2014($10.9billion).

6. While email typically drives an
average of 10% of overall traffic,
email subscribers consistently generate
the highest pageviews, return rates and
subscription rates of all readers.

7. And don’t forget,
for every dollar spent
on an email campaign,
the average return on
investment is $44.25.
Conversions from email far
exceed the ROI marketers will
achieve from social media,
retargeting and other modern
digital marketing efforts...

8. In order to better monetize, digital
publishers are challenged to provide value
to both readers and advertisers.
So, how can you optimize your newsletters
to increase retention and engagement?

9. Business Insider, the fastest growing business news publisher in the
world, leverages Sailthru’s email personalization technology and
have increased email revenue through our approach to behavioral
email, predictive segmentation and 1:1 personalization.
CHECK OUT CASE STUDY NOW
@Sailthru

10. In this slideshare, we’ll showcase publishers that
are effectively championing their email marketing
with personalization, engagement and design.
Learn who is doing it right, and insights
for how to apply the same leading
practices to your own email strategy.

11. The Best of the Best: Personalization
1

12. Business Insider highlights
their vast library of content
by personalizing their
daily newsletters.
Content is dynamically populated by Sailthru’s personalization algorithm
so subscribers receive unique newsletters, filled with the stories they’re
most interested. It also cuts the time their team spends on email in half!
Business Insider
The Best of the Best: Personalization

13. The results?
A whopping 60% increase
in email clickthrough rates!

14. Mashable is taking
personalization beyond content.
When a reader signs up for
emails, Mashable can select
how often and what type of
content they want to receive.
By taking into account the preferred cadence and content types for each
subscriber, they are creating a tailored experience for every reader.
Mashable
The Best of the Best: Personalization

15. If you’re looking for that extra boost in opens, clicks,
and pageviews, we suggest investing in a technology
that can automate personalized send times.
When publishers measure personalized send time vs.
standard batch and blast, the personalized send time
outperformed the others in opens, clicks AND pageviews...

16. See the results for yourself:
11%
increase in
open rate
4%
increase in
click-to-open
10%
increase in
pageviews per
thousand users

17. The Best of the Best: Engagement
2

18. With the listen feature,
Huffington Post subscribers can
engage with their morning email
without having to do anything
at all...except press play.
This is a seamless way to engage
your readers with your content
that is quick, easy and accessible.
Huffington Post
The Best of the Best: Engagement

19. If you’re looking for a great way
to keep readers engaged, take
a page out of Maxim’s book.
In their This Week in Maxim
newsletter, popular or trending
content is curated and served to
the reader to let readers quickly
access the hottest content
of the week. And because
people often times gravitate
towards what other people are
reading, Maxim has seen killer
engagement from this newsletter.
Maxim
The Best of the Best: Engagement

20. If you don’t have the bandwidth to
offer your readers a recorded version
of your newsletter, keep it simple like
Vanity Fair does with their Cocktail
Hour newsletter. This timely newsletter
gives subscribers some conversation
topics to discuss over drinks with
friends or just on your commute home!
Vanity Fair
The Best of the Best: Engagement

21. The Best of the Best: Design
3

22. The combination of stunning imagery and
photography that National Geographic is known
for is beautifully crafted alongside engaging
videos for their email subscribers to enjoy.
National Geographic
The Best of the Best: Design

23. Mashable comes in again on our list because
of their simple but optimized Top Stories
template. This particular template is a
tried-and-true combination of creative and
copy, with a spot-on content hierarchy that
fosters incredible pageview generation.
Mashable
The Best of the Best: Design

24. With the introduction of Moments, Twitter
users now have the option to view top
trending news stories about politics, movies,
sports and more all in one feed. They have
also taken this user experience to email,
curating these top trending stories and
delivering them straight to a subscriber’s
inbox. Crafted in a simple design, Twitter
users can easily engage with the stories
they choose and share their favorite
topics with their followers seamlessly.
Twitter
The Best of the Best: Design

25. With all these examples on
best-in-class email newsletters,
you may be tempted to hit the
ground running on all new emails.
But you cannot forget a
critical element to your email
strategy: TESTING!

26. Before you roll out big optimizations
or redesign your templates, you
should create a testing plan. Test
newsletter elements tactic by tactic
to learn what truly resonates with
your subscribers — if you implement
changes all at once, it won’t be
clear what’s affecting success.
Let us know what you plan to
test first — tweet to us @Sailthru!

27. Business Insider, the fastest growing business news publisher in the
world, leverages Sailthru’s email personalization technology and
have increased email revenue through our approach to behavioral
email, predictive segmentation and 1:1 personalization.
CHECK OUT CASE STUDY NOW
@Sailthru