You Should Be Using Newsletters!  ## Metadata - Author: [[Press This WordPress Community Podcast]] - Full Title: You Should Be Using Newsletters! - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/58254361-e478-4ec7-a5e3-6d6d07bfda78 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Leslie's WordPress Origin Story** - Leslie Sim got into WordPress in 2016 when building a site for her craft beer business. - The brewery didn't work out, but it led her deeper into WordPress and eventually to creating Newsletter Glue. Transcript: Speaker 2 Got into WordPress. Hey, doc. Speaker 1 Thanks so much for having me on now. I always love coming on these podcasts and livestreams. My WordPress origin story, well, I think my first exposure with WordPress was in 2016. I was trying to build a site for a craft beer business that I had just added and, you know, even where I am now you can tell that that didn't work out as it turns out. Craft beer breweries are hard to run. So we were looking for a cheap way to build our site. And that's kind of the first time I stumbled upon WordPress. And you know, coffee didn't work out. And I ended up going deeper down the WordPress whole starting a digital agency where I did marketing and built sites for clients. And then just before the pandemic hit, I kind of got sick of that. You know, I've been doing it for a few years at that point and dealing with clients. You know, sometimes it's really fun and fulfilling. And sometimes it can be really frustrating. And I was like, okay, you know, I've given this services thing a good goal. Maybe it's time to try my hand at products. And since I've been working in WordPress for a while now, I was like, okay, maybe I'll try building a WordPress plugin. And that's very, very briefly kind of how I got started and how new set of Google came to be because, you know, the WordPress plugin that after ([Time 0:01:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1c8c954b-5cf6-4a9d-8f9b-c5d688822e75)) - **Newsletters vs. Social Media** - Social media is for discovery, newsletters build deeper audience relationships. - Newsletters allow you to own contact and avoid social media algorithm limits. Transcript: Speaker 2 Wow, that's hard. Speaker 1 I think they're just slightly different marketing channels with social media platforms that tends to be where you go if you don't have your own audience. So you're going on a different platform to try to get found in the first place. But once you've grown an audience for yourself, you really want to bring them into your world, your universe, your Marvel Cinematic Universe. And that's kind of where new set is coming. Because again, when you're on a social media platform and you're trying to get discovered, you're at the mercy of the algorithms. When your subscribers or your loyal customers or loyal followers know about you, they do want to know about your, if you're a donut shop, your Friday, donut special, or if you're a headdresser, Your monthly discounts on recurring, if you come in every month, you get a 20% discount or something like that. And they don't want to be, they don't want to have missed it because the algorithm didn't show it to them. And so that's where new setters come in really handy. So you bring in, let's say, something like 10% of your social media following into your new setters and they're your most avid fans. And you can ensure that whenever you have a promotion or a discount or even just a story or an update to share, those people are going to get it. And that's kind of the best way to build rapport with them, build a deeper relationship in a way that you just can't on social media. And you own those relationships, right? Because people have opted in, they've actively given you your email address they want to hear from you, which is a very different vibe from social media where they kind of are scrolling Randomly, happen upon you and follow you and then forget about you five minutes data. So I would say that it's not an either all kind of thing, like it's not like you either do Instagram or you do new setters. It's more like a funnel where Instagram and TikTok and social media in general is kind of at the top of the funnel where you are going out of your universe into someone else's universe To find subscribers and followers. And then you're drawing them in deeper into your final via the new setters and then at the end of the day to your shop, whether that's online or in person. Speaker 2 I like that. It's not either or. I think that's a good I have been stating things as if they're binary, but like, yeah, Instagram is great for giving flavor to your business and communicating with your customers maybe Having them back and forth and giving them behind the scenes. But if I'm following an artist, I don't want to find out about their Monday night art show on Tuesday morning, you know, because the algorithm mess things up. And similarly, if I'm following an artist and they have a new album coming out, I can't click on a link from Instagram, not super easy, but in an email, totally good. So I like that idea that like, you know, maybe, you know, do both. It's not one or the other. It sounds like newsletters have a little bit more of an actionable kind of like, here's a time dependent thing or here's a link we want you to click. And that may be as their benefits. That sounds good. Yeah. Speaker 1 And I think as you as your marketing operations grow, then obviously you can do more. We've got lots of publications on our using us, which publish multiple daily newsletters. And so, you know, that's something that you can aspire to. So it's not just last minute discounts and stuff like that. Speaker 2 This is another thing too. I'm thinking very specifically about newsletters as a way to communicate to your customers. But there's a whole generation of newsletters, you know, post sub stack, as you mentioned, there's a whole generation of newsletter writers that are turning that maybe into income, Like writing the newsletters isn't a way to drive business. It is the business. Does newsletter glue support features like that? Speaker 1 Not directly. We do work well with a whole bunch of different paywall plugins and software. Leaky Paywall is one of them that we work really closely with. Memberful is another one that lots of our customers use and so on. Speaker 2 What about Patreon integration? Is there any kind of integration there? Speaker 1 Not right now, but that's really interesting. You know, I'll have to look at it. Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm a Patreon user. So I'd love to talk to you about that afterwards. So let's talk about some of the features maybe that somebody can get from newsletter glue that might be missing from other things. Like I'm assuming you have Gutenberg integration in newsletter glue. Yep. Speaker 1 So that's actually one of the big things about us. We use the block editor. So if you're still using the classic editor, you'll find that when you use us, you are faced with something a little bit new, which is the block editor and one of our core features. Is that we have a whole bunch of different blocks ([Time 0:11:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f57f77a8-0732-4cd6-bf9c-281b1bba7202)) - **Save Time with Gutenberg Blocks** - Use Newsletter Glue's Gutenberg blocks to speed up newsletter creation. - Paste URLs to auto-generate article previews instead of manually uploading images and typing content. Transcript: Speaker 2 Things. Like I'm assuming you have Gutenberg integration in newsletter glue. Yep. Speaker 1 So that's actually one of the big things about us. We use the block editor. So if you're still using the classic editor, you'll find that when you use us, you are faced with something a little bit new, which is the block editor and one of our core features. Is that we have a whole bunch of different blocks that really dramatically speed up your workflow. So customers on average say that they save one to two hours per newsletter using us. Or you could also say that we have or we cut your publishing time in half. And that's just because a lot of them when they are writing, when they're building email digests, for example, you know, they're sharing links to their website or to other websites. If they had to do that in an email service provider, they would have had to manually upload the image, type out the heading, type out the X up, turn it into a link and do that, you know, five Times or 10 times depending on how many things they're sharing in their new set up. With us, you just need to paste in the URL or you can set a bunch of features and filters. And it automatically pulls out the articles from your site. And so that takes seconds instead of, you know, 20 minutes or half an hour, depending on what you're trying to achieve. Yeah, so that's kind of one of our main features. And then also once you've got your new set up, it's really easy to hit publish and send the new set out from WordPress instead of having to go into MailChimp to do it. Speaker 2 Is ([Time 0:16:15](https://share.snipd.com/snip/66b8fbf1-3f3e-4e18-b440-03ec3e957f85)) - **Convert Followers to Subscribers** - Use newsletters to bring your social media followers into your owned platform. - Convert about 10% of social followers into newsletter subscribers for best engagement. Transcript: Speaker 1 That really dramatically speed up your workflow. So customers on average say that they save one to two hours per newsletter using us. Or you could also say that we have or we cut your publishing time in half. And that's just because a lot of them when they are writing, when they're building email digests, for example, you know, they're sharing links to their website or to other websites. If they had to do that in an email service provider, they would have had to manually upload the image, type out the heading, type out the X up, turn it into a link and do that, you know, five Times or 10 times depending on how many things they're sharing in their new set up. With us, you just need to paste in the URL or you can set a bunch of features and filters. And it automatically pulls out the articles from your site. And so that takes seconds instead of, you know, 20 minutes or half an hour, depending on what you're trying to achieve. Yeah, so that's kind of one of our main features. And then also once you've got your new set up, it's really easy to hit publish and send the new set out from WordPress instead of having to go into MailChimp to do it. Speaker 2 Is that how you also manage your subscribers and things to is through the WordPress dashboard? Or is that something you'd be using the MailChimp side of things to do? Speaker 1 That would be on the MailChimp side of things. So we focus really heavily on the building part, like that, kind of the daily work that you have to do to send out the new set up. So we've also got really powerful automation features. So it's kind of like RSS emails, which if people aren't familiar with, basically you can set an RSS feed to send out as email notifications every time, you know, based on a timing or based On when a new article was published. While that feature has existed for a long time, it's kind of always given me anxiety because you never know, you don't have any control over what that final new setter looks like. And so we built email automation feature where while you can also send it out automatically based on a certain time that you've set, you can also set it to just save as a draft. And so this that's you automate 90% of the work or 99% of the work and then go in that 1% check that draft, send yourself a test email, update the subject line, and if you're happy with it, Then send it out. ([Time 0:16:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/dedbb128-3540-4796-bcc3-ff66ab26ac1c)) - **Newsletter Glue Integration Insight** - Newsletter Glue integrates an email service provider with WordPress to streamline newsletter creation. - This improves workflow by keeping writing and publishing inside WordPress familiar to writers. Transcript: Speaker 2 Podcast. I'm your host and email newsletter addict Doc Pop. I am talking to Leslie Sim, the co-founder of newsletter glue. And I think one of the things I want to talk about kind of like changing gears a little bit. We talked about social media and websites, SEO, email newsletters. We haven't talked about podcasting, which is a thing that Leslie, I don't know if you know, I'm into and you have just started a new podcast called sticky. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah. Speaker 1 So when we recently moved to focus on media companies and newsrooms, like I mentioned earlier, before that we were kind of targeting anyone with the newsletter, which is kind of a classic Business mistake. And so once we moved to focus on media companies and newsrooms, I quickly realized, oh, we need a new way of marketing to them. And I wanted to provide really high quality content that would help people who are already professionals in the business and not just kind of, you know, me, for example, in my room, setting My own newsletter for the first time, which, you know, is as like, if I was like an amateur newsletter writer, I would need very different content from someone who has been writing a new Set of 10 years for a large publication, for example. And so I quickly realized, okay, you know, I can't interview myself or we can't rely on really basic when should we publish a new set of type articles anymore. And that was when the idea for the podcast came about because I realized that the best people to interview to get really high quality expert level content were, you know, expert industry Operators. And so I, I've been lucky enough to have a whole bunch of customers and friends who have been in the industry for a while. And I got in touch with them and set up a whole bunch of different interviews. And yeah, the, the podcast is not, well, the podcast launched this week. The first episode drops next week. And I'm really excited. The quality is really high. And I feel like even if you've been in the new set of publishing business for the past 10 to 15 years, you're still gonna learn valuable insight and advice from the episodes. So I'm really excited about it. Speaker 2 Who's your first guess? Speaker 1 My first guess is Alyssa Doolin. She's, she used to be head of deliver, deliverability at ConvertKit. I think now she's head of audience growth still at ConvertKit. Um, and yeah, she's been working in deliverability for many years now and has dug into some gnarly deliverability issues. And so we kind of covered that in the podcast and I, like, tried to keep it really, really actionable. So you really hear kind of what should you do in this case? What should you do in that case? And I think I've already shared it with some people who are in the news industry and they've already ([Time 0:20:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ce03392d-2b5a-4719-aafb-4b40a19e0d98)) - **Leslie's Sticky Podcast Launch** - Leslie launched the Sticky podcast to provide high-level advice to professional newsletter writers. - The show interviews industry experts to share actionable insights on newsletter marketing. Transcript: Speaker 2 About social media and websites, SEO, email newsletters. We haven't talked about podcasting, which is a thing that Leslie, I don't know if you know, I'm into and you have just started a new podcast called sticky. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah. Speaker 1 So when we recently moved to focus on media companies and newsrooms, like I mentioned earlier, before that we were kind of targeting anyone with the newsletter, which is kind of a classic Business mistake. And so once we moved to focus on media companies and newsrooms, I quickly realized, oh, we need a new way of marketing to them. And I wanted to provide really high quality content that would help people who are already professionals in the business and not just kind of, you know, me, for example, in my room, setting My own newsletter for the first time, which, you know, is as like, if I was like an amateur newsletter writer, I would need very different content from someone who has been writing a new Set of 10 years for a large publication, for example. And so I quickly realized, okay, you know, I can't interview myself or we can't rely on really basic when should we publish a new set of type articles anymore. And that was when the idea for the podcast came about because I realized that the best people to interview to get really high quality expert level content were, you know, expert industry Operators. And so I, I've been lucky enough to have a whole bunch of customers and friends who have been in the industry for a while. And I got in touch with them and set up a whole bunch of different interviews. And yeah, the, the podcast is not, well, the podcast launched this week. The first episode drops next week. And I'm really excited. The quality is really high. And I feel like even if you've been in the new set of publishing business for the past 10 to 15 years, you're still gonna learn valuable insight and advice from the episodes. So I'm really excited about it. Speaker 2 Who's your first guess? ([Time 0:20:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/03218ecc-73f9-4ca8-b100-8b4ea0300a5c))