How long should my newsletter be?

👉 It depends on this...

Another very common question about emails and newsletters is “how long should my newsletter be?”

And, of course, it depends, but I’m going to share some rules of thumb which should help you.

The first thing to bear in mind is that there are different types of newsletter, each with their own style and typical length:

1. The in-depth article. Detailed treatment of a topic, usually with examples and data. This can run to thousands of words.

2. The digest. A quick summary of topics the writer found interesting that week. Sometimes from the news or industry developments. Sometimes other articles or newsletters they’ve read. Usually with links to the original sources. Medium length.

3. Snackable tips. These are short tips designed to be read in just a few minutes. James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter is one of the originals in this format with 3 ideas from James, 2 quotes from others and 1 question to ponder. These are short by nature.

4. Conversational emails. With this style of newsletter, the tips and ideas are shared in more of a conversational style using personal stories, anecdotes or analogies (rather than the facts and figures driven approach of the in-depth article). The length can vary considerably but is typically short (a few hundred words) to medium.

And, of course, there are many hybrids that combine formats. Scott Galloway’s No Mercy/No Malice manages to include data-rich in-depth articles and conversational storytelling at the same time, along with a mini digest of things that have caught his eye. By it’s nature, it’s quite long.

The type of newsletter you write is going to be the main determinant of how long it is. It’s difficult to do an in-depth treatment of a topic in a few hundreds words. And a huge long list of topics isn’t going to be very “snackable”.

But within those boundaries you have plenty of scope to vary the length of your emails. A few guidelines to bear in mind:

1. No market is completely homogeneous. There will be people who prefer longer, more in-depth content and people who prefer shorter, quicker to read emails. Once you’ve established a pattern to your emails, you’ll tend to keep the subscribers who appreciate the length you write at and lose the ones who hate it. You can vary by email, but I would try to keep to your established pattern most of the time to suite the audience you’ve evolved.

2. Most people find it easier to find a few minutes to read a short email multiple times a month rather than find 25 or more minutes to read a huge one.

3. Different types of email build different types of relationship. In-depth articles do well to build authority. Conversational emails with personal anecdotes build relationships and establish your practical experience (if you pick the right anecdotes, of course). Digests and stackable tips tend to position you as knowing about a broad range of topics in your field. If you have a clear picture of the sort of relationship you want to build it will guide you to the type and length you need.

4. An email can look difficult to read if it’s very long. Formatting with lots of whitespace and short paragraphs can help overcome this, but there’s always a risk your audience will see a huge email and think “maybe another day when I have more time”. And of course, that day rarely comes.

One option you have it to include some content in your email - usually the “hook” in my terminology that convinces readers to read the full email - and then have a link to a website where they can read more.

This has pros and cons. These days, email open rates are very unreliable stats - but tracking clicks to a website is highly accurate. So by having the bulk of the content on a website you increase the accuracy of your tracking - important for managing engagement and improving deliverability.

On the other hand, many people prefer “zero click” emails. They don’t want to click through to read the content and it can feel to them like you’re pushing them to do something they don’t want. It also means that if you do have a call to action where you want them to click you’re asking them to click twice - once to get to the content and once for the call to action. For some reason that first click often makes people feel like they’ve “done their duty” and it reduces the number of clicks you get on the call to action.

Overall though, my advice is simple: choose the style of newsletter you enjoy writing and the length of content where you feel proud of what you’ve written.

- Ian