21 of our favorite industry email newsletters for content marketers
Let’s all say this together: it’s easy to find great consumer content on the web, no matter who you are or where you look.
But professional content—B2B content, industry news, or content about your industry—can be a bit more challenging to find. Pre-internet, professionals relied on trade publications for the latest updates, tips, events, and networking for their content (they still do, but the internet democratized content). In the internet age, there’s more information and content than ever for professionals in any field thanks to trade publications moving online and to brands becoming publishers. There’s almost too much content to know what the best places are to find them all.
The best place to start, in our humble opinion? Email newsletters. Curated by professionals for professionals in every field you can think of, email newsletters collect the best content for you to peruse so that you can become a thought leader—or at least well-informed—in your industry. Here’s why every professional and company needs to read and make them, as well as our favorite email newsletters for content marketers.
People really like email
Professionals like email, or at the very least, they use it all the time—even when they aren’t supposed to be working. According to this The Atlantic article, there are two types of people in the world: “those with hundreds of unread messages, and those who can’t relax until their inboxes are cleared out.” Even if you fall into the former category, a study from 2012 reports that 70 percent of work emails are attended to within six seconds of their arrival. It’s become practically a Pavlovian response to reading your emails at work, even if they pile up.
Hopefully, while you’re at work, you are working. Some benefits of subscribing to industry email newsletters as a professional:
- Distraction-free content in one compact place about the current news, best practices tips, industry trends, etc.
- Often a good way to learn what competitors are up to
- Delivered to your inbox every day/week/month so you don’t have to spend time scouring the internet
For professionals, email is an easy way to keep up to date with the industry without losing any time. You avoid the distractions that social media provides while still getting a relevant content fix. And if you find something useful? Curate it for your personal brand or the company. You’ll get a gold star for your next performance review.
Brands, publishers, and individuals should like sending email newsletters
Brands and publishers know there is a need and market for email marketing (particularly B2B email marketing). Email marketing has a long history on the internet, and that’s because they remain a solid outreach tool to measure engagement with your community (as well as the number of subscribers, click-through rates, etc.). They manage to:
- Showcase a mix of curated content and original content marketing
- Stay top of mind with companies, professionals, and individuals within your industry
- Educate and inform your community while connecting to it
- Increase traffic to your site
- Keep incredibly low costs; sites like MailChimp are practically free to use
Many brands and publishers may look at email marketing’s dwindling numbers as a sign that it’s less than relevant in the age of social media. But email marketing still generates traffic, and more importantly, it creates visibility. For brands and publishers, email marketing is an excellent way to display thought leadership in the field, an authority and knowledge about the future, and to remind people of your company and services. While engagement and numbers are important, they are not the be-all and end-all for email marketing.
Now, the question becomes this: what type of newsletter should you produce for your email campaign and how often. Should it be purely curated? Should it be purely promoting your recent blog posts and content? A hybrid of the two? And then how often should the newsletter be—daily, weekly, monthly? All of this depends on your industry, audience, goals, and more.
Below are some of the Quietly staff’s favorite newsletters that revolve around our hybrid industries and interests—tech, publishing, content marketing, work culture, the internet, etc. If you’re in any of these industries we recommend you subscribe to these newsletters so you can see first hand what tricks and devices these brands and publishers use to draw readers in. Plus, newsletters brighten up your inbox. Just us?
21 Email Newsletters for Content Marketers
By Emily E. Steck
Our favorite picks.
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Jason Hirschhorn's REDEF
By Emily E. Steck
The "DJ of the Internet," Jason Hirschhorn curates, remixes and then distributes the best content on the web to your mailbox. Focusing on media, fashion, music, sports, tech & originals, pick and choose which mixes interest you and get your mind moving to the beat of this internet jam.
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Daily Must Reads from Mediashift
By Emily E. Steck
Collecting the best stories across the web on media and technology, PBS Mediashift curates the best trends in media and journalism. It grabs thought-provoking articles and the latest news to your email every day, curated by Julie Keck. It also includes latest articles from their own media site, as well as upcoming events and training for journalists. They also have half a dozen or so other newsletters [here.](http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/)
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Re/code Daily
By Emily E. Steck
Combining a handful of updates of the latest tech news, original reporting and one awesome piece of journalism published elsewhere, Re/code is one of the best tech newsletters around.
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Nieman Journalism Lab
By Emily E. Steck
The Nieman Foundation at Harvard University wants to figure out where journalism and where it's going in the future. With original reporting about the latest trends, startups, tools and news in journalism, the newsletter also features a curated collection of what Nieman's reading, making it a must read for every journalist, technologist and content marketer.
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Digiday
By Emily E. Steck
In addition to some really excellent reporting on brands, agencies, publishers and platforms, Digiday has a pretty stellar newsletter to highlight its media journalism. What's really interested, though, is that the newsletter features Sponsored Posts (which are clearly marked).
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ReadThisThing
By Emily E. Steck
The beauty of ReadThisThing's newsletter is that there is only one link per email of incredible journalism you must read. From shortform to longform journalism spanning every subject imagineable, it's a must for people who like stories. And everyone likes stories.
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Links I would ghat you if we were friends
By Emily E. Steck
Internet culture sure is a doozy. Luckily, Washington Post journalist Caitlin Dewey reads the internet so you don't have to. Reporting on the latest bits cat picture phenonmenon, the newest internet lingo, the latest trends in platforms, -isms in internet culture, longform articles, gifs and our changing internet culture in general, it's a one-two punch of intelligence and wit on a daily work basis.
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Today in Tabs
By Emily E. Steck
Do you leave too many tabs open in your browser? If so, it's time to admit you have a problem and sign up for Rusty Foster's column/newsletter from Fast Company. Riddled with wit and jokes, Foster tackles the day's journalism news and news itself.
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The Ann Friedman Weekly
By Emily E. Steck
If you hate email overload, you may want to go for weekly musings and collections of Ann Friedman. The weekly variety newsletter summarizes the best journalism on the internet in the past week. Bonus: check out the testimonials at the end of her emails for a nice chuckle.
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Real Future by Alexis Madrigal
By Emily E. Steck
A tech and science writer for Fusion, journalist Alexis Madrigal sends you 5 interesting tidbits from the past and future. Stories range from wearable computers, drones, biohacking, geoengineering, machine logic, AI, digital mapping, coercive feedback loops, autonomous everything, representing the Internet in art, and you get the idea.
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Inbound.org
By Emily E. Steck
What's trending in the trendy inbound marketing world? Glad you asked. The community for internet marketers use this upvoting system to send you the best links for inbound marketing every day.
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Smart Brief
By Emily E. Steck
Smart Brief reads the best of the best on the internet for you, sending comprehensive lists of your favorite subject. Choose from over half a dozen daily and weekly emails on subjects related to your industry (marketing & tech, for example) to stop scouring for the latest industry news.
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The Moz Top 10
By Emily E. Steck
The semi-monthly newsletter collects and shares the latest insider tips, inbound marketing and more in a list-friendly structure. Insightful, interesting and inclusive, every marketer needs this in their inbox.
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Hacker Newsletter
By Emily E. Steck
This weekly newsletter rounds up the best articles on the latest tech, startups, programming and more. A favourite among of tech people, it's a great example of curation as adding value to the lives of busy tech workers.
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Sidebar.io
By Emily E. Steck
Sending you 5 of the best design links your way every morning, this newsletter selects its links based on the whims of Sidebar editors who vote on the articles. Collaborative and carefully curated, designers will dig this breezy newsletter.
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99u
By Emily E. Steck
From inception to execution, all work is tricky to pull off. The peeps behind 99U know this, which is why they send emails to the creative and technical world with inspiring articles to get stuff done. With real-world best practices for making ideas happen, it's a great little reminder of why you are doing what you love, in a compact email.
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JavaScript Weekly
By Emily E. Steck
Promising no spam (ever), JavaScript Weekly sends a weekly email round-up to your inbox of JavaScript news and articles. A must-read for technologists.
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MIT Technology Review
By Emily E. Steck
Collecting the day's best stories in tech from around the world (aka it's not exclusive to reporting on Silicon Valley), MIT covers the "nerdy news" beats like energy, biomedicine, computing and business, carving out a niche curating site for itself.
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Web Design Weekly
By Emily E. Steck
The perfect companion to your morning coffee, the once-a-week email offers the best news and articles of the latest trends in the web design trade. In a rapid-moving industry like the web, this nwesletter cuts right to the chase—no spam, no rambling, just "awesome" links.
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Product Hunt
By Emily E. Steck
If you are constantly on the hunt for the best productivity tools, newest startups and innovative software, Product Hunt's summary of the best new products is for you. Bonus points for its own curation of collections of awesome products.
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Quietly
By Emily E. Steck
Quietly's suite of tools for digital publishers features a content management platform and marketplaces to source and monetize content. Our newsletter for brands and publishers is pretty awesome, if I don't say so myself.