Newsletter

Sign up #

You can subscribe to my newsletter to keep up with my content. I'll notify you when new blog posts or pages come out.

I can relate if you feel a bit wary about newsletters. If you scroll down, you can check out the last emails I sent and my newsletter philosophy to get a concrete idea of what you'd be getting yourself into before making any commitment.

Content Sample & Archive #

Here's the content of the last three emails I sent with Mailerlite as an example. You can also see everything I've sent since then on my Buttondown archive.

My newsletter philosophy #

Keep it short #

We're already bombarded by emails from all sides. Getting to inbox zero is an everyday, grueling struggle to register and organize a never-ending stream of trivial bullshit.

On top of this baseline attention parasitism, even the best email reader web platforms and apps make for a shit long-form reading experience.

Aside from rare and justified exceptions, you should be able to read my emails over in 1 to 3 minutes tops.

No flood #

As stated, we don't need any help cluttering our inboxes with rubbish.

In my opinion, a weekly email is already bordering on excess, especially if it takes time to process.

So, if I start publishing more consistently and frequently, I'll just compress my updates into a monthly digest. I think the burden of curation and conciseness should lie on the author.

No FOMO bait "exclusive" content #

This ties back to the "keep it short" point. I think the email format is much better suited for convenient and concise recaps and reminders rather than so-called "exclusive content."

Too many people have been successfully hoodwinked by the average marketing guru who's endlessly harping about "delivering value" so you won't fade into irrelevancy and build up enough goodwill to squeeze profits from. Ironic, considering most of them wouldn't be able to tell value if it bit them in the ass. They should follow their advice, stay on brand, and focus on their own vernacular. Just speak about "filling in the gaps in the market demand." Leave "value" and "quality" alone. Poor Robert Pirsig must be rolling over in his grave.

The real perk of "exclusive content" is to coax people into subscribing because they're fearful that they'll miss out on your pristine mass-manufactured newsletter "value." And once you've got them in your clutches, you can eventually sell them your stuff at the end of a long-winded sales funnel laced with "value." Thankfully, and conveniently, the latter helps rationalize any qualms away.

So, here too, everyone suffers from the ails of the vacuous "content" creation treadmill. "Content"-spewers get burned out by this infernal pace, while audiences drown in the seepage of Sturgeon's law.

The thing is that writing a long new piece of "exclusive content" every single week is draining and stressful for the author. Especially if they don't recycle their content for exclusivity's sake. It also makes for frequent, excessively long articles that are slow and annoying to read in email format. That's right, the audience also has to put in their share of labor to get to bask in their promised "value."

I believe in keeping content as open and accessible as possible. If I have some insight to share, might as well do it in an appropriate format that everybody can engage with, like a public blog post or a video. If there are some traces of actual "value" in my message, why would I want to artificially gate keep it?

Plus, it's a pain to share, quote, and refer back to insightful content hidden in some random long-ass email buried at the bottom of your sedimentated inbox archive.

I'm not ruling out the possibility of some newsletter-specific discounts if I've got stuff to sell at some point. I might also include some tiny bits of "exclusive content" like random quotes I like or some concise best practices if the audience is interested. Although, I think social media posts are probably a better format for such things.

That's as far as it should go. Anyone can access all my emails through my archive without even subscribing anyway. So, no pressure and no worries.

Plain text(-ish) #

Plain text, or at least minimal, unstyled HTMLEmbedding links is a nice quality-of-life feature. It beats "naked" URLs littering the text, although you could make the case that it also helps obfuscate dodgy links and simplifies phishing., is my favorite email format, both on the sending and receiving end. It is respectful of your usual and favorite reading settings like font type and size, dark vs light mode, etc. It's a cozy known quantity.

It skips the hassle of loading images and styling that doesn't work for one-third of the audience's email readers. There's also no need to fuss with some supposedly simple but actually cumbersome and counterintuitive no-code editor or write complicated HTML & CSS on the sender's side.

I don't see the point in putting lipstick on a pig. The content should speak for itself. Plus, there's no need for fancy visuals if the text is short and snappy.

No social engineering #

No lead magnet #

I'd rather avoid rationalized sleight of hand, or "ethical bribing," if I can. I considered creating a lead magnet initially. This strategy is so ubiquitously promoted, that I almost let myself be gaslit into drinking the Kool-Aid. Fortunately, after reading George Kao's take on the matter, I was happy and relieved to let go of this project.

It's better to build an audience that's genuinely interested in the newsletter in itself rather than adding extra hoops to jump for people who just wanted the free "bribe." It would only serve to artificially inflate my list and lower my open rates.

I'll still probably create the PDF resource I had in mind at some point, but I'll either sell it for a cheap price or give it away without any strings attached.

No placeholder name customization #

For the moment, my philosophy is to keep the process of signing up very streamlined. You only have to give your email address and click the opt-in link in the confirmation message.

Asking for your name, just so I can add a Hi {name}, placeholder at the top of my emails, feels icky to me. Most of the time, I don't even do it when I send personal emails. I'm well aware that, as Dale Carnegie put it, "a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language." That's precisely what feels manipulative about it.

Conventional greetings and sign-offs have always felt forced and unnatural to me. It's not about their actual content, but the social expectation that you're supposed to use one to be polite, even if you don't mean it in the least.

A quintessential example is the perfunctory "How do you do?". Most people uttering it on a daily basis give absolutely zero shits and are internally praying that you won't answer anything else than "I'm doing well, thanks! What about you?" which might force them to engage in a conversation where you can't follow the safeguard rails of social scripts.

I'm not writing an individualized, intimate love letter to {name}. I'm speaking to my entire newsletter audienceGranted, seeing how many subscribers I have currently, it's still a pretty intimate context (ᵕ—ᴗ—).. So I write what I'd probably naturally say if this was a real-life gathering with a bunch of friendly acquaintances, i.e. "Hey guys."

I'm not a big fan of customized catchphrases that people use in intros or outros for branding. They feel a bit too gimmicky. So for the sign-off, I just picked something that I could write genuinely, and that was warm but not too eccentric either, i.e. "Take care."

(Yes, I really neurotically overthink greetings and sign-offs. It's a recurrent source of bureaucratic anxiety in my life.)

No sales funnel #

For both the audience's and my sake, I'll avoid convoluted, automated sales funnels with a quintillion variables. I'm too lazy for that, and it feels pretty disingenuous.

That being said, I will most likely promote some offers at some point. At that time, I might split the newsletter into two categories, content updates and offers, then ask if you'd like to sign up for the second. In any case, I intend to roughly follow George Kao's gentle launch workflow, so if and when I do promote offers, I'll be straightforward about it, and it won't be spammy.

Credit & inspirations #

As I already mentioned, George Kao inspired me to strengthen my resolve regarding some of my natural sentiments rather than follow popular trends when it comes to newsletters. You should definitely check out his content if you care about authenticity in marketing and business.

Here are two additional videos of his that you might be interested in on this topic:

• Email marketing strategy that's more authentic & effective... and doesn't use lead magnets.
• Your email newsletters: don't create exclusive content... simply link to existing posts!

I'm also grateful to Buttondown for providing a simple and robust tool. It enables me to handle my newsletter without unnecessary fuss or trying to coax me into standard shady marketing tactics.