How the Wall Street Journal renewed its newsletter strategy
The Wall Street Journal, an “old” media that masters the power of the newsletter very well.
A person’s email address remains a valuable asset to any content marketer.
Still in 2018, it is essential to maintain growth objectives in your email address base and to have initiatives that leverage it. Your mailing list is an asset that belongs to you.
Unlike the subscribers you have on the various social networks, your list belongs to you and you have complete control of it, on the sole condition that you respect the laws in place and that you regularly make a copy of it on your own servers (please make sure that Mailchimp is not the only place where your list exists).
But once you have a list, what do you do with all these people who have agreed to receive emails from you?
How to segment these thousands of addresses, send them the right content, at the right time?
The Wall Street Journal had, until recently, about 50 different newsletters, with equally different looks. Recent appointments to their newsletter team have resulted in a major cleanup and many tactics have been put in place.
For instance:
- The use of real-time content directly in newsletters.
- The creation of a column that creates a real dialogue between the WSJ and its subscribers.
- The setting up of nudges dedicated specifically to specific series of articles.
This article by Christine Schmidt from the Nieman Journalism Lab offers a lot of details on the various initiatives implemented and gives a very interesting overall picture of how a large media organization manages its thousands of e-mail subscribers.