Friday 26th April: How Poynter transformed a hands-on workshop into an email course

Good morning! Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Esther.

The Earlybird rate for the Publisher Podcast & Newsletter Summits ends TODAY! Book now ahead of our speaker reveal to secure the best rate - if you have a newsletter and/or podcast that you’re looking to level up, I promise you there’s no other event that will give you such a deep dive into growth and commercial strategies across a day.

Inbox Collective was on FIRE this week so I’m going to take the slightly unusual step of recommending three other pieces here from them - not all from this week - that will be useful if you have anything to do with newsletters*.

• A big list of things you can A/B test. A/B testing is one of the best ways to improve every part of your newsletter strategy. From your sent-from name to pop-ups, here’s a big list of things you can test.

• Three questions everyone should ask in a survey. Every newsletter should incorporate audience feedback into their strategy. Here’s what to ask in a survey to make sure you’re building the right newsletter for your readers.

• Open rates aren’t reliable anymore. Can you still trust your click rates? One ESP says 63% of all clicks they see in emails come from bots. What’s happening — and what does that mean for your email strategy? (Something James Cridland talks a bit about in this week’s podcast).

*Oh, you’re a newsletter person? Come to our Publisher Newsletter Summit!

I don’t know if it’s a sign of how pervasive AI spam is that every platform is struggling to contain it, or if it shows how little they care (as long as it generates ‘engagement’). Either way, social media is sinking into this weird mire of bots engagement-baiting boomers and other bots. LinkedIn isn’t immune either, if you’ve yet to notice the flurry of AI-generated comments appearing on anything and everything. Turn it alllllllll off.

One to balance out the existential dread presented by shrimp Jesus above. At the PPA Festival earlier this week, Bauer’s global head of SEO Stuart Forrest (who has also been on the podcast) shared some words of wisdom: “We’re coming into the era where high-quality brands of the type that I see represented around this room could potentially do very well in a world where Google is doubling down on quality.”

Shocker. Although apparently it’s us Brits causing the delay - or more specifically, ‘heightened regulatory scrutiny’ from the Competition and Markets Authority. Do you reckon third party cookies will go eventually, or will this can keep being kicked down a very long road? We have a community post for that…

More from Media Voices