Morning Brew has gained a large and loyal following for their daily newsletter outside of just the business world. While their formula is quite simple, it’s not easy to execute. They have a clear and consistent brand voice and they cover content their readers find interesting.
The Morning Brew newsletter presents information in a way that is easy to digest. They also provide convenient links to dive deeper into the material they are curating from.
By sticking to this simple formula, they have gained nearly two million subscribers for their daily newsletter and have an impressive open rate in excess of 40%.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could have engagement like this with an audience of interested readers for your own company newsletter?
One thing to note is that Morning Brew is a type of media company, not a brand that sells products or services to their readers. Although your company may not fall into this category, you can still take some of these great ideas from the success of Morning Brew.
4 Great Ideas from Morning Brew
1 – Be authentic.
Stick to your brand voice. The Morning Brew newsletter doesn’t try to be The Wall Street Journal or The Economist. They are who they are and they appeal to a segment of the population who like their style of sharing business news.
When you write original content or pieces that pull from other sources, keep the style aligned with your brand.
Don’t jump all over the place.
2 – Be relevant.
Morning Brew focuses on the topics their readers want to read. This is a tough one for brands as opposed to media companies.
Brands want to talk about their products, their services (or at least their content) but consumers may not be that interested. They have some level of interest in the brand or they wouldn’t be a subscriber to begin with; however, that doesn’t mean they want to repeatedly hear just about that brand.
3 – Be fun.
Morning Brew has a tone that makes it easy to read, fun and engaging.
A consumer-facing brand doing this well and mixing their own content with outside resources is Huckberry. As a regular reader, you know that you’ll always find some interesting content that isn’t about them. However, it aligns with the ideas the brand stands for in every issue. By reading their content and links to outside content, they deliver value to the reader and ultimately builds trust in the relationship, and that’s pretty darn cool.
4 – Be consistent.
Morning Brew sends a newsletter out six days a week. Most brands that attempt to publish a newsletter struggle to get one out every month or even every quarter.
If you’re going to have a newsletter of any type, it is important to be with your readers frequently, otherwise, you’re quickly out of sight and out of mind. Weekly is usually a good default, but depending on the industry, you can get away with bi-weekly. However, many newsletters that perform the best go out multiple times per week.
One key for brands – your newsletters don’t have to be super long. Instead of one newsletter per month with 6-8 pieces of content, you could have a weekly newsletter with 2 pieces for that week or bi-weekly with 3-4.
Conclusion
Alex Lieberman started Morning Brew as a college student attending University of Michigan. But the Morning Brew story shows that it is possible for anyone to build a loyal following with your business newsletter. And if you have an audience ready and willing to read what you have for them, there are quite a few ways that this content medium can be effective for your company or brand.
