This Week’s Fix: Build an Archive
Posting your past newsletters online has several advantages:
It’s a trust-building fast-track: Your past newsletters are your “receipts” that demonstrate to readers your expertise and commitment to solving their problems.
It converts casual readers into superfans: People who love a specific edition often want to jump right into another one. And then another one. When people can lose themselves in a content rabbit hole, they have a tendency to re-emerge as passionate followers.
It gives past newsletters a longer shelf life: When previous editions exist somewhere online, they outlive the initial drafting and delivery process. That means you get more return for your content investment.
It can drive AEO/SEO juice for your domain: If you post your newsletters on your primary domain or on a subdomain, they can pull in web traffic through search results.
How You Can Apply This Today
If you use an email service platform (ESP) that makes publishing an archive easy, take full advantage (see ours on Beehiiv here).
Don’t overthink the design at first. Focus on making sure readers can browse newsletters by titles and/or subtitles and click into editions that interest them.
When appropriate, link between newsletters to make it easy for readers to jump from one edition to a related topic in another.
If your email platform doesn’t make it easy to publish an archive, you’re not out of luck. It’s just a bit more work, typically an additional copy-and-paste step from your ESP to your web platform or content management system.
Who Does This Well?
Check out Half Baked. More than 700 editions and counting. Readers can spend hours on the site—learning, laughing, engaging, transforming into forever-followers one post at a time.
If you have a great example, reply and let me know. I’m always on the lookout for excellent newsletters, and I’ll send the first person who replies the following postcard (in the mail, of course).
This Week’s Postcard
Gothic gargoyles and chimeras perched on a stone balustrade
Something from IRL
A few weeks ago, I took this screenshot on my phone. My alma mater (Vanderbilt), down by three points…without the ball…with one second left in the game.
If you don’t know what happened next, go read about the Music City Miracle here, one of the best moments of my Vandy sports-watching career.
See You Next Week
That’s it for this edition of Priority Mail. Next up, one simple fix under the Performance & Growth category.
Until then, if you’re struggling to send a consistent, high-quality newsletter that keeps you top of mind with clients, I’d love to help.
Book time with me here.
We can take a look at your ESP setup, review a recent newsletter, or talk through your biggest pain points; whatever is most helpful.
Chris
GM at Future Forest
