E-mail is making a come-back apparently. Inside, claims that their e-mail newsletter network is growing at a break-neck rate. With open-rates just above 40%, and click-through-rates at 10% — it's something to ponder.
There will be 4.1 billion e-mail users by 2020. For scale, compare that to Facebook's active users count: 2 billion.
I believe newsletter networks will see huge growth in the coming years. It's going to be the next big thing. This is potential huge signal for other companies to bootstrap together a newsletter product.
We've already seen companies trying to get some skin in the news aggregation game. Two notable players are Twitter and Google. They already have your e-mail. They know what you read. Why not deliver a curated newsletter of news/moments you may have missed?
Thought Experiment #1:
If I'm a non-Twitter user and visit Twitter Moments….
- Instead of convincing me to be a user here, offer a newsletter to follow Moments
- Show me news I may have missed
- E-mail is forward-able, and thus shareable
- Try to convert me into a Twitter user later
Thought Experiment #2:
If I'm a Yahoo! e-mail user, and visit Google News…
- Instead of convincing me to be a user here, offer a newsletter to follow Google News headlines
- Show me news I may have missed
- E-mail is forward-able, and thus shareable
- Try to convince me into a Google user later
Thought Experiment #3:
If I'm already a user at *Twitter or Google*…
- Send me newsletters to catch news I may have missed today
- Periodically send me posts from users I follow
- Recommend me to engage on a story my followers engaged with
- Remind me to check in on Moments or Google News as breaking news comes in
Newsletters are very powerful tools plainly because they're a direct line between me and a service I chose to join. I wish Twitter would take advantage of e-mail more. It's highly underutilized, and it's one strategy Twitter has never taken. If they ever did, it could grow their user base and could be very rewarding long-term with user-growth.