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Lesson 2 of 6
Increase traffic with newsletters
Increase site traffic
Increase traffic with Google's search products
Increase traffic with social sharing
Increase traffic with web notifications
Increase site traffic with Google Ads (8:11)
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Increase traffic with newsletters

news-paper-data

Build your relationship with your best audiences

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Understand your newsletter traffic with News Consumer Insights

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Newsletter subscribers:

  • Are 10X more likely to become subscribers
  • Open 22% of newsletters
  • Visit twice as many pages as non-subscribers

News Consumer Insights analyses your Google Analytics data to help you understand how much traffic your newsletters bring in and how to grow newsletter subscribers.

newsletter

See how your newsletters are doing in three steps

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STEP 1

In News Consumer Insights, navigate to Reader engagement and scroll down to Traffic Sources.

STEP 2

Hover over the blue bubble that says Newsletters to see how many readers are coming from your newsletters.

If you don’t have newsletters, or <1% of your traffic comes from newsletters, a blue bubble will not display.

STEP 3

Click View recommendation to see if you should focus on newsletter traffic.

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Keep newsletter subscribers longer by being transparent

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The Google News Initiative Subscriptions lab found that newsletter subscribers were 10X more likely to become paid subscribers.

This means that you’re more likely to have a longer relationship with a newsletter subscriber than with an average reader.

Start your relationship on the right foot by being transparent about what newsletter subscribers can expect from you.

💡 Best practices

  • Communicate the newsletter’s topic and frequency
  • Offer subscriber or donor-only newsletters
  • Confirm email addresses
  • Write personal intros
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Make sign-up easy with buttons

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Buttons let you take actions with a single tap, like helping your reader sign up for a newsletter. Click-through rates for buttons with calls to action average 5%, but the highest performing buttons can reach 70%.

Placing sign-up buttons throughout your site increases the chances that they’ll sign up, especially when it’s next to your best content.

💡 Best practices

  • Enable auto-fill
  • Ask for email address only
  • Use a contrasting colour for sign-up boxes
  • Use three words or fewer, such as 'Sign up'
  • Use a warm colour in your button, like red, orange or yellow
  • Place buttons halfway through articles
  • Place a floating action button
  • Place a newsletter sign-up box on your homepage
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Get higher open rates with shorter subject lines, images and more

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For news publishers, the average newsletter open rate is 22%.

💡 Best practices

  • Highlight one story in the subject line
  • Show up better on mobile by using subject lines that are 38 characters or fewer
  • Add your mission or slogan in the header
  • Add an image after the headline
  • Use a button to link to articles, other newsletters or subscriptions at the end of the newsletter
draft email 01
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