Increase traffic with newsletters
Build your relationship with your best audiences
Understand your newsletter traffic with News Consumer Insights
Newsletter subscribers:
- Are 10X more likely to become subscribers
- Open 22% of newsletters
- Visit twice as many pages as non-subscribers
News Consumer Insights analyzes your Google Analytics data to help you understand how much traffic your newsletters bring in and how to grow newsletter subscribers.
See how your newsletters are doing in three steps
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.
Keep newsletter subscribers longer by being transparent
The Google News Initiative Subscriptions Lab found that newsletter subscribers were 10X more likely to become paid subscribers.
This means 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
Make sign-up easy with buttons
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 they’ll sign up, especially when it’s next to your best content.
💡 Best practices
- Enable autofill
- Ask for email address only
- Use a contrasting color for sign-up boxes
- Use three words or fewer, such as “Sign Up”
- Use a warm color 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
Get higher open rates with shorter subject lines, images, and more
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
