Best Newsletter Service?
Great functions nicely tiered to meet your growing needs.
Newsletters are back in style, and there are almost too many options to try before committing to a service. To efficiently narrow down the field, focus on your business goals, set a time limit on your research, and test top contenders with simple prototypes.
2024 Context
ATTENTION DEFICIT. There's an abundance of media competing for a limited amount of attention, and many established players are struggling. Writers and other creatives who once depended on platforms for steady paychecks are now self-publishing. They can either self-publish from their own domains and handle marketing themselves, or leverage platforms with established writers that offer exposure and algorithmic support. The goal is to create a steady audience of paying subscribers. Leading platforms include Substack, Medium, Ghost, and Beehiiv.
AUTOMATION. There’s also a category of marketing automation platforms that funnel prospects from initial contact to a sales call, ideally leading to a service engagement. These platforms are best for organizations with somewhat productized services and dedicated salespeople. The term is also used for tools like ecommerce reminders for abandoned shopping carts. Examples include ActiveCampaign ($15–$100 per month) and ConvertKit. If you handle regulated customer data (e.g., HIPAA, FINRA), make sure your chosen CRM complies with relevant regulations.
With this context in mind, I'll focus on the simpler tools that cater to small businesses who prioritize face to face client interactions while needing efficient communication methods.
Here’s an efficient process to help you shop the right newsletter service.
I'll use my client, Com-X Network as an example. Their primary business needs were very basic: email contacts, collect RSVPS, and manage contacts.
TIMEBOX YOUR RESEACH
Begin by searching “product name vs” on Google to view autosuggestions of competitors, reviews, and relevant queries. Spend one hour to review comparisons, familiarizing yourself with current features and terminology.
Develop a shortlist of candidates based on essential features. Avoid excessive documention, as most products in this mature space offer similar features, with slight variation in pricing or features.
Consider whether being a service’s target customer matters, and potential recipient perceptions of the platform.
PROTOTYPING
Review documentation for each shortlisted product, spending no more than one hour per product. For promising candidates, take no more than two hours to set up and send out a trial newsletter.
Both Squarespace and Mailchimp allowed the Com-X team to build a trial audience and send out sample newsletters. They followed these guidelines:
BROAD
Include enough participants to cover typical and edge cases that could become issues in the future. People have different devices, privacy settings, and email habits.
FAST
Use good enough placeholder text and images to quickly spot potential dealbreakers within the timebox.
IMPERFECT
Some parts will be too time consuming to prototype. Talk through the ones not covered in the prototype with the participants to ensure buy in.
Squarespace Experience. While the user-friendly interface was appealing, its limitation to capturing only a subscriber's name and email address was a dealbreaker. We needed to gather additional fields like title and company.
Mailchimp Experience. Mailchimp offered greater flexibility in intake fields and integrated seamlessly with Squarespace. The comprehensive documentation anticipated our setup needs, enabling us to build a working newsletter within an hour.
Ultimately, Com-X chose Mailchimp.
Newsletter technology is user-friendly, With enough time, anyone in this group could have built the website and set up the newsletter. So what does a designer contribute besides modeling eccentric eyeware and some fancy jargon?
Working with an experienced designer bypassed the learning curve and improved the process. Team members avoided becoming attached to any one service (avoiding the IKEA effect), allowing for a more objective decision-making process. By participating as testers, everyone experienced multiple services as both senders and recipients. A designer's input insured that the final product was more polished than a first-timer’s work.