breaking down NYT's “The Morning” (17M email subs)
good morning media folks ??
纽约时报 has one of the most robust newsletter strategies out there. They’ve built a portfolio of over 100 newsletters that span a ton of different categories, from health and wellness to business.
But there’s one that stands strong from them all, and that’s “The Morning.” It boasts 17M subscribers. And the strategies they’ve put in place to get it here are foolproof.
So today we’re going to talk through what makes “The Morning” such a bonafide newsletter business. We’ll discuss content strategy, email marketing, design, audience engagement, how it adapts, and monetization.
content strategy
First off, “The Morning” isn’t very niche. It covers daily news and complex ideas that match up with current events. But it’s about who they put in charge to establish its voice that makes the biggest impact.
David Leonhardt is the deputy editor. And he’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. His experience spans across the Times since 1999... while also serving as a Washington bureau chief and a founding editor of many of the Times publications. Instead of focusing on reporting the latest news, he tries to provide more context and analysis.
The goal is to make complex issues digestible and serve a wide audience. That means it can’t be complicated and has to avoid jargon to make it accessible. Think of speaking on a 1:1 level. Like having a conversation. That’s how they approach the editorial voice.
But he isn’t the only one speaking to the audience. What they’re great at doing is switching up perspectives and voices. And that can be powerful to keep audiences engaged because readers can have a variety in a similar setting. It almost functions as a small newsroom. And they are very meticulous about how they improve the newsletter, holding postmortems after every issue to continue to improve reader experiences. And they keep news fatigue in mind. That’s because they balance hard news with lighter topics like culture and lifestyle.
email marketing
This is arguably what they are the best at. Incorporating high-class email marketing strategies with their reader’s experience in mind. It works in 3 buckets:
While this establishes their email marketing structure, they’re also hyper-focused in other places. For example, their subject lines are no more than four words. Which holds back enough details but encourages opening at a higher clip. The next thing is data visualization. The Times has award-winning photojournalists and designers. So they leverage them to roll into the main pillar: make content digestible with analysis to make complex ideas easier to understand.
And the last point to make here is that “The Morning” is top of funnel. One of the main goals is to use it to boost paid subscriptions. Which we will dig into more when we discuss monetization.
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design and structure
One thing about design and structure is that you can easily fall into two traps. Over-designing and under-designing. Many publishers struggle with this. The most important thing to remember is that you need to make content easily readable. Design systems need to be in place.
“The Morning” has a very clean layout that’s on brand. It’s designed to mimic the newspaper. Which makes it very familiar to readers, but modernized for digital. Their ethos is mobile-first, and the newsletter is built that way. They know who their audience is, and they know they are busy professionals. So their structure is clean, with descriptive headers and dividing lines. But it isn’t overused, and that’s the goal. The reading experience needs to flow and be smooth.
audience engagement
One of the most important levers you can pull is audience retention. And “The Morning” approaches this in a few different ways:
All of these are put together significantly impact how engaged an audience is. But the piece that publishers struggle the most with is audience participation. “The Morning” is very direct in its approach. They ask pointed questions, specific surveys, and create forwarding prompts.
You’ll read newsletters that say the generic “Like this email, forward this to a friend!” And that doesn’t work. “The Morning” has specific prompts that get people to forward based on the newsletter content:
“Do you have a friend who works in Minnesota Politics and would like to learn more about what's impacting local climate change? Then forward this to them, because they’ll probably want to understand what’s happening on the ground level.”
How much better does that sound?
The last point here is having a unified voice that people look to. Because the newsletter is hosted by Leonhardt, the readers have a relationship with him even though it’s behind a computer. Hiring like-minded staffers can give a variation of the same perspective which boosts audience engagement.
constantly evolving
Don’t be afraid to make changes. But you have to do it strategically. And in 2020, “The Morning” made a smart move and did a full design rebrand because of the exponential growth of the newsletter. They understood that there would be new competition because of the newsletter boom, and needed to stand out but also keep a familiar structure.
What works for a smaller audience, may not work as it scales. So “The Morning” is hyper-focused on reader feedback to continue to build and adapt around their audience. In other words, they take reader feedback very seriously. As a bonus, this boosts overall engagement because readers feel like they are making a real impact on their relationship with “The Morning.”
As it grows, they need to give its audience fresh perspectives, which is why they continue to beef up their content strategy using data to better understand what its readers are looking for. And not only that, as I mentioned before, they are committed to improving. And not slowly either. They improve daily which makes an impact long term.
monetization
When you have 17M subscribers, you may think it’s easy to monetize but keep in mind... it’s not a cheap audience to spend money on. A typical reader of the Times is someone who is highly educated, and much more attentive than typical readers.
So it can be complex.
They monetize through some of the channels you’re familiar with: LiveIntent, direct ad sales, and paid subscriptions. Some strategies I disagree with, but it works for them and they do a massive amount of revenue from these channels. The point here is diversification is your best friend.
direct ad sales
They have a sales team that sells single-day sponsorships in “The Morning.” Based on the audience size, and my experience, they probably aren’t cheap and go for upwards of $40k - 60k for each slot. But because of the robust strategy that they’ve built around their newsletter, their ads perform well:
The moral of the story here is their voice. Their voice is strong, and there’s a real relationship between the writers and the readers, which makes native advertising interesting and performs well for advertisers.
Liveintent
Now, Liveintent is a blessing and a curse. If you have a larger audience it can be very lucrative. But the creativity behind it is terrible. It provides a bad reader experience, and the plug-and-play method doesn’t result in strong performance for advertisers. Your goal with advertising is to provide as much value as you can for your readers, while also providing strong performance for your advertisers. And Liveintent can’t do both.
I never recommend this strategy, but sometimes teams are limited, and with the audience size of “The Morning” and how high-priced native ads are, it makes sense why they leverage this to backfill and not lose out on revenue opportunities.
paid subscriptions and cross-promotion
Remember, “The Morning” is top of funnel. It’s free, and it’s the gateway to other newsletters that The Times has to offer. But the way they approach this is very direct. The Times has paid games and cooking as other subscription offers, and they point to those products to drive revenue from the flagship newsletter.
But what they understand is their audience. Because their content strategy also focuses on culture and lifestyle, they know what paid products they would be interested in. Offering a variety of paid products gives them an advantage because they can switch out their offerings that combat paid subscription fatigue.
To be honest, no one cares about your paid subscription that gives you access to another newsletter issue. You need to be smart about your digital products. Another paid newsletter clogging up an email inbox isn’t sexy.... but selling paid games is.
The point here is that your digital products need to be smart, not boring. And you need to understand your audience to be able to sell these products. The Times and “The Morning” are very good at this.
To build a successful media business, you’ve got to think about your approaches at every level. Yes, the NYT has a bigger trampoline to jump off of, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t evolve at every step.
Let this be a lesson that you should always be thinking about your reader’s experiences and how you can make them better. This is a science as much as it is an art.
see you next week,
shaan
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