Still think email newsletters are dead after that webinar last Tuesday

I was on a marketing webinar Tuesday with maybe 40 other people and the speaker was going on about how newsletters are done. He said Gen Z only wants TikTok snippets. But then he literally held up his phone and asked everyone to subscribe to his Substack which he said has 12,000 readers. That contradiction bothered me. I have a client in Austin who started a weekly newsletter 8 months ago and their open rates are 45% with a small list of 800 people. Those folks actually buy products when they send offers. Has anyone else seen newsletters work better than social media for direct sales?

2 comments

2 Comments

riverp371mo agoMost Upvoted

44 open rate is an outlier though.

dylan_patel1mo ago

My buddy runs a small coffee roasting operation in Portland, nothing fancy just like 5 employees. He started a newsletter back in March just to tell people about new roasts and brewing tips, maybe 600 subscribers. Last month he sent out a notice about their holiday blend and sold out 150 bags in under 4 hours, all from that email. Meanwhile his Instagram posts about the same blend got like 80 likes and maybe 3 DMs asking about shipping. He told me the people on his list actually click and buy, unlike social media where everyone just scrolls past.