The 12 Best Newsletter Examples to Inspire Your Own in 2021

Newsletters play an important role in engaging, converting, and retaining your customers. It acts as a medium to connect with your customers, and if executed well, it also allows customers to connect with your brand. Canada’s Globe and Mail is the perfect example to demonstrate this. The Canadian brand was able to increase their retention rates by 140% by emailing subscribers at risk of churning. In this post, we’ve curated the best newsletters you can take inspiration from to create your own newsletter. Before we jump into that, let’s look into some things you should do first.

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One of the main components to assembling an email marketing newsletter is having a consistent and effective message or template. This is how your audience gets a sense of your brand voice and your purpose of sending them this newsletter. To ensure you're communicating with your consumers on a sufficient basis, we've developed an email marketing calendar template just for you and your team. Get Creative with Your Newsletter—Use Our Free Newsletter Name Generator!

Prerequisites for Creating Your Newsletter

Before you get started on creating your newsletter, here are some guidelines and questions you can ask yourself for inspiration and success.

1. Define the Goal for Your Newsletter

The first step before you create your newsletter is asking yourself why you’re creating a newsletter. Clearly define what your newsletter will help you achieve. Depending on your goal, work towards finalizing your newsletter design, content, frequency, and email platform. If you’re using forms to capture your subscribers, you can automatically add subscribers to your email platform of choice or tag them — based on their email preferences — by using an integration platform, like Automate.io.

2. How Your Subscribers Will Benefit

The next question for you to answer is: what’s in it for your subscribers? People on the internet are becoming more and more cautious about where they submit their personal information. If you’re not giving them a strong enough reason to subscribe to your list, your entire newsletter campaign will fall flat on its face. Here are a few ideas on how your newsletter can stand out and add more value to your subscribers:

• Exclusive content on signing up
• Early access to your resources
• Thought leadership content
• Promotional offers

If the majority of your subscribers read your newsletter on a desktop, you can take it up a notch by having them scan a custom QR Code to access exclusive content. This way, they have it readily available and can experience a seamless process.

3. Segment Your Audience

The one-size-fits-all strategy is a thing of the past. Customers nowadays expect brands to tailor an experience that’s unique to them, and that’s where customer segmentation can help you. Some ways you can segment your audience are their interests, preferences, website, and email behavior. Apart from helping you deliver a more relevant newsletter experience to your subscribers, this will help increase your engagement rates and reduce your unsubscribes. Here are the best newsletter examples to inspire you before you go ahead and create an engaging newsletter for your subscribers.

Practical eCommerce

Industry: eCommerce | Newsletter type: Email digest | Frequency: Daily

Launched in 2005, Practical E-Commerce is one of the most reputed online publications focused on helping veteran and eCommerce businesses through their thought leadership articles and industry expertise. Their daily newsletter acts as an extension of their mission statement. Content relevancy: The newsletter summarises their recently published articles, podcasts, and guides — making it easier for eCommerce merchants to curate their reading list. What we like most about this newsletter: Their “Today’s Great E-Commerce Idea” section gives eCommerce merchants a unique idea on a daily basis, which they can implement to further grow and optimize their business. Pro tip: If you’re looking to send out a summary of your recently published articles, you can make it more engaging by adding the feature image and a personalized CTA alongside each content piece.

Spotify Wrapped

Industry: Music | Newsletter type: Year in review  | Frequency: Annually Spotify is a massively popular audio streaming app, chances are you’re listening to your favorite song on Spotify while reading this article. Spotify Wrapped is the perfect example of how newsletters can help you engage your audience and drive brand awareness. Content relevancy: Spotify Wrapped is generated based on a user’s listening behavior, which ensures every Spotify Wrapped is unique. Spotify Wrapped takes you down the memory lane at the end of the year by giving you a snapshot of your most-streamed music, artists, genres, podcasts, and more. The personal touch also helps them in building customer loyalty — as most users look forward to their newsletter. What we like most about this newsletter:

1. In addition to summarizing a user’s yearly listening behavior, Spotify Wrapped also generates a fresh playlist based on the user’s music preferences. This helps users discover new artists.
2. Its virality factor. By allowing users to easily share some sections of this newsletter on social media, Spotify effectively uses user-generated content to drive brand awareness and new signups.

Pro tip: If you’re in a business that has strong behavioral data on your audience, you can take inspiration from Spotify; add your own spin to it by building a year-in-review newsletter unique to your brand. For example, eCommerce businesses can create a year-in-review email based on their shopping behavior.

Loom

Industry: Software  | Newsletter type: Product updates | Frequency: Monthly Loom, a powerful screen recording app, uses its product update newsletter to keep its customers in the loop and, thereby, increasing customer engagement. Content relevancy: Loom’s newsletter packs all their monthly product updates in a sequential manner with engaging call-to-actions and crisp copy. This makes it perfect for their customers to get up to speed with how the brand is actively working to improve their experience. What we like most about this newsletter:

1. The start, as well as the end of the newsletter, invites customers to interact with the brand — making them feel involved in the brand’s journey.
2. In addition to new updates, it also gives them a sneak peek into their future product roadmap, which acts as a good hook for customers to stick with them.

Pro tip: A product update newsletter can also be used to win back the customers who churned due to a lack of a particular feature. You can capture that information when they unsubscribe and use it to re-engage them later.

Jeffrey Gitomer’s Sales Caffeine

Industry: Sales | Newsletter type: Tips and advice  | Frequency: Weekly

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Sales Caffeine, as the name suggests, is a weekly dose of actionable advice and tips for sales professionals by Jeffrey Gitomer. The newsletter educates salespeople on how they can better sell their product or service. It’s one of the best newsletters out there for sales professionals and it’s only five issues away from hitting 1,000. Content relevancy: Sales Caffeine is delivered every Tuesday and has a mix of content ranging from blogs, videos, and in-depth resources — all focused on helping people sell. The newsletter also contains special guest articles, quizzes, exclusive promotions, and a weekly summary of Jeffrey’s “Sell or Die” podcast. What we like most about this newsletter: The tone of the newsletter motivates you from the get-go, and the insights given by Jeffrey are truly unique and valuable. Pro tip: To incentivize your most engaged subscribers, you can place a link at the end of your email. The subscribers who read to the end and click on the link get early access to your advice/tip.

Ritual

Industry: Healthcare/eCommerce | Newsletter type: Featured product | Frequency: Weekly Ritual is a healthcare brand that develops multi-vitamins for kids, men, and women. Being a healthcare brand, it is essential for them to educate their customers about their product in a way they understand, and that’s exactly what their newsletters do. Content relevancy: Ritual’s newsletter helps their subscribers in product discovery, educating them about different products, and keeping them informed about the latest promotions. What we like most about this newsletter:

1. Ritual’s branding ties directly into their newsletters. The color scheme consistency across different channels develops a sense of trust amongst customers.
2. How they use creatives to explain the benefits of a complex product in layman language to assist their buyers in decision-making.

Pro tip: While this is a single-product email, you can also recommend multiple products based on your product catalog and user behavior with a call-to-action to drive purchases. You can also use this newsletter template next time you want to deconstruct a complex idea for your customers.

The Ken

Industry: Business news | Newsletter type: Featured post | Frequency: Daily The Ken presents stories that decode the most significant shifts happening around business, technology, and startups in India and Southeast Asia. Content relevancy: The Ken is a paid newsletter that gives you access to exclusive news, and their content quality is one of the best we’ve found on the internet. It’s perfect for business leaders, managers, and knowledge professionals who want to deep-dive into what’s happening in SEA and India. They also have a free plan that lets you access 15–20% of their news content. What we like most about this newsletter: The Ken’s newsletter will have you hooked from the very first word of the email, all thanks to their conversational tone and the interesting analogies they draw between fictional and real-life stories. Their stories will change the way you think and approach your problems. Pro tip: The Ken’s conversational, all-text newsletter design is perfect for presenting important stories/announcements to your subscribers. It will also help you land in the primary inbox of your subscribers.

Morning Brew

Industry: Business/Finance | Newsletter type: Roundup | Frequency: Daily   Morning Brew is your perfect coffee companion as it sends you all the essential business news straight to your inbox every morning. It's the only newsletter where you'll see everything from Wall Street to music updates in a single email. Content Relevancy: Morning Brew has been one of our favorites this year. It has this sneaky, low-key simplicity to it, and it throws in plenty of video content that doesn’t feel forced or out of place. It’s one of those rare newsletters that I will go searching for if I miss it in the inbox. What we like most about this newsletter:

1. Morning Brew provides a concise commentary in each of their sections, so you don't need to go clicking through to their main site. They are a newsletter first, rather than all about the clicks.
2. They use interactive elements, like quizzes, to engage their subscribers, which also acts as a good brain fodder to kick-start the day.

Pro tip: For businesses looking to implement this newsletter style, you can further personalize your subscriber’s experience by dynamically including only the news they’re interested in. This way, your subscribers read only about the topics they’re interested in, and it also reduces the time required to skim through the newsletter content.

Zillow

Industry: Real estate | Newsletter type: Personalized suggestions | Frequency: Weekly

Zillow is a leading real-estate marketplace that makes selling, buying, renting, or financing easy for people looking to move into their next home. Zillow uses newsletters to engage, nurture, and convert their subscribers. Content relevancy: The newsletter showcases hand-picked properties with featured images that are ready for move-in based on the user’s preferences. Zillow also includes a “What we love” section below each property that gives the user more information about the neighborhood and property. What we like most about this newsletter: The choice of words and the photography in this newsletter gives a very comforting vibe, which plays to their benefit. It entices users to click-through and learn more about the personalized property suggestions by Zillow. Pro tip: To make the newsletter more informative for prospective buyers, you can include the location and property price in this template.

SaaS Weekly

Industry: Technology | Newsletter type: Curated posts | Frequency: Weekly SaaS Weekly is a newsletter by Hiten Shah, where the founder of Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics, and Quick Sprout curates the best content across the web for people interested in SaaS. Content relevancy: SaaS Weekly newsletter comes to the rescue of people who don’t have enough time to consume all that’s happening in SaaS. SaaS Weekly gives them just what they need by curating the best posts across business, growth, marketing and sales, product, and management. What we like most about this newsletter:

1. SaaS Weekly curates only two posts across different categories, which ensures the subscribers are only reading the best content out there.
2. Hiten Shah’s personal commentary on each of the curated posts, his pick of the week, and tweet of the week make it more valuable for subscribers.

Pro tip: If you’re looking to spice up the design for your round-up, a featured image and an old-fashioned CTA button to read further after the personalized intro should do it.

Moz

Industry: Marketing | Newsletter type: Curated posts | Frequency: Biweekly Founded in 2004 by Rand Fishkin and Gillian Muessig, Moz is a leading marketing analytics tool for SEO. Moz uses its newsletter to capture the importance of SEO. Content relevancy: The Moz Top 10 is an email newsletter that should be subscribed to by marketers who don’t want to miss out on the latest updates in the SEO world. In their newsletter, Moz curates the ten most valuable articles about SEO and online marketing, which makes it highly relevant for their audience. What we like most about this newsletter:

1. The Moz Top 10 newsletter delivers exactly what it promises without any distractions. The newsletter’s checklist-style format compels the reader to go through all the posts.
2. Moz’s pro snippet conveys their future plan and lists their new thought leadership content that subscribers should check out.

Pro tip: You can repurpose this newsletter style to showcase a checklist. For example, breaking-down your app onboarding process, highlighting the step of your customer, and showing next steps.

Meetup

Industry: Events | Newsletter type: Personalized suggestions | Frequency: Weekly

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Meetup is a platform that connects like-minded people and fosters knowledge sharing. Meetup uses its newsletter to suggest new meetups to their subscriber base and increase the platform activation rate. Content relevancy: The newsletter suggests new meetup opportunities on a weekly basis based on subscriber’s previous interactions and interests. The personalized recommendations take the overhead from their users, which results in improved customer activations. What we like most about this newsletter: The newsletter provides the users with all the relevant information to register their interest in a meetup. The icing on the cake is the RSVP information in the email that shows how many people are attending the event. Pro tip: To make the registration process easier for your customers, you can pre-fill event registration form fields from the information you already have about them. KissMetrics improved their landing page conversion by 30% using this technique.

Netflix

Industry: Entertainment | Newsletter type: Content discovery | Frequency: Weekly Netflix uses a variety of newsletters as a part of their customer engagement strategy. These newsletters help in announcing new features, content discovery, re-engaging lost subscribers, and driving conversions. Content relevancy: The newsletter surfaces new content from the Netflix library on a weekly basis to increase customer engagement on the platform. It includes a mix of trending shows, new launches, and adds a touch of personalization by recommending users to watch the content that’s already on their list. What we like most about this newsletter: This newsletter by Netflix is designed for interaction, as it lures the readers by giving all the necessary information about the new shows and movies. Then, it adds the finishing touches by including multiple CTAs with varying intent — Play and Add to list. Pro tip: eCommerce businesses can repurpose this newsletter template to showcase trending products and personalized recommendations with a call-to-action asking them to save it in their list or buy now.

Wrapping Up

That wraps up our curated list of the best newsletters to inspire you in 2021! As we conclude, here’s a summary of the five elements that make a newsletter great:

1. Catered to your audience’s interests
2. Unique and informative content
3. Clear call-to-action
4. Visual appeal
5. Email preference center

What are you waiting for? Define the goal of your newsletter, use the newsletters discussed in the post as your canvas, and create your own unique newsletter to engage your audience.