Email for you: the great potential of newsletters

Tim, I thought newsletters were pretty old school. Everyone's into TikTok and Messenger these days - aren't they?

Tim Bartholomäus: I hear that a lot! But newsletters are actually needed. Yes, the newsletter was one of the first direct digital communication tools and, compared to TikTok and messengers, it has been a building block in the communication mix for a very long time. But that's not a bad thing, the more experience there is with newsletters!
Ten years ago, I also thought: "Newsletter? No-one reads them any more, they end up in spam anyway, they're irrelevant, at most something for discount campaigns." And yes, many people still use them purely as a marketing tool. I now disagree: newsletters have much more potential!

Potential beyond marketing?

Newsletters are an excellent tool for presenting yourself as a brand, company or institution and providing information about your work. With a newsletter, I bring people into my world because I have much more freedom than the guidelines of channels such as Instagram allow me: I can determine text forms and length, structure and design myself and convey my self-image.

Before someone receives a newsletter, he or she must have consciously signed up - in other words, people really want to receive the information. This is very different from social media, where content is flushed into the feed without being asked: The level of attention is much higher with newsletters. What's more, a good newsletter works as an independent product.

What exactly do you mean by "independent product"?

Newsletters can be designed like editorials, essays or reflections. They should function on their own: Many people use newsletters as a news pool or overview. There is a journalistic service in it, much more than just a collection of links. When I read a newsletter on my mobile phone, I should understand the basic ideas immediately, even without clicking on links - it has to be self-explanatory.

That sounds like a high standard - what do I have to pay attention to if I want to send such a "good" newsletter?

Yes, the standards have definitely changed! Today there are even newsletters that people pay for - that shows how the value has increased. A newsletter is much more than just an information product.

It is important: Don't overload it with images, videos and content. The newsletter must be quick and easy to skim, even on a mobile phone in the underground.
Recognisability is also important, and you can actively make use of the little leeway in the design. At the beginning there is often black text on a white background, very plain. From there I can develop in a focussed way - not like with social media, where it's all about images and moving images.

But isn't real-time news much more informative?

What I particularly appreciate about newsletters: I read them at most once a day, I'm up to date - no news ticker that pops up all the time. This is classic and ritualised consumption. For example, I receive the newsletter of a major international daily newspaper once a day and it contains everything I want to know.

Speaking of which: how often should you send out a newsletter?

That depends entirely on the institution and the content. If I have something to say, then I send out a newsletter - that's exactly what determines the frequency.
The important thing is that it happens regularly and reliably.

It sounds like the use of newsletters has changed over the years ...

Absolutely. Thanks to the GDPR and double opt-in, I make a conscious decision to receive them and then I receive them reliably. Unlike the social media algorithm, which simply no longer shows me posts if they are supposedly not relevant.

It is often said that messenger messages have now replaced newsletters. Or is it a question of different target groups?

Yes, definitely. Many people use Messenger messages to push the latest news, while newsletters are more for background, overview and categorisation. The target groups overlap, but the usage is different.

Who would you recommend newsletters to as a means of communication?

Despite the potential of newsletters, every company or institution should ask itself: what resources do I have and what do I want to use them for? Not everyone needs one. Better no newsletter than a bad one!

However, especially in view of the discussion about AI agents and whether websites are still necessary at all, newsletters offer a good opportunity to communicate directly with people - regardless of what the AI says. Anyone who subscribes bypasses the filters of the AI agents.

The small problem remains that people have to sign up - how do I attract more recipients to my newsletter?

Clearly, by making it transparent what people can expect. Instead of simply putting a button with: "Subscribe to the newsletter here", it is much better to describe the added value. For larger institutions, segmentation according to interests and target groups is important - split up and deliver to specific groups! There is huge potential here because you can cater to needs precisely.

To come back to the point: Tim, you're a big fan of newsletters - although at first glance they seem a bit out of date ...

(laughs) Yes, newsletters are real dinosaurs, but they have survived. They fulfil a need like letter post - something that people really want. What I also like about newsletters is that there's no big company behind them that determines the platform, like Meta and the like. I can make it myself, as big or small as I want, even if I only have 20 corporate customers. And I can also make life easier for myself, for example with the 3pc newsletter tool e-publisher:mail, which many of our customers like to use successfully.

Even when I was at school, friends who were abroad for a year would write newsletters to family and friends to keep them up to date. The principle has remained the same: Keeping people up to date, showing who I am, what's happening or what's on my mind - whether as a person, institution, company or brand.