In late 2022, I decided to start a daily newsletter. I was inspired by Seth Godin's daily emails and Daily Stoic. I even stole the name. (Nobody dies an original, I guess.)
The idea was simple. Email a short marketing tip daily. Grow an email audience. Share lessons and promote useful things.
After doing this on an irregular basis for 2 years, it's time to stop the daily newsletter and switch to a weekly one.
Because honestly, daily newsletters provide little value.
Quantity kills quality.
How many social media videos have you consumed over the past 2 days? 10, 100, or 1,000 videos?
How many of those have given you ideas that you have acted upon? Let me guess. None? Daily newsletters are becoming like that.
It takes time to write a daily newsletter. We don't use ChatGPT for them. Yes, we batch them out days in advance. But if I'm honest, many times I became overwhelmed with work and life and as a result, missed newsletters.
The idea of writing and publishing daily came from Seth Godin:
It made sense. If you want to get good at something, do it every day. You don't learn to ride a bicycle by reading a book about it. You get on a bicycle and pedal like mad. Taking massive action gets you further than planning and studying.
But, while writing and publishing daily built a good habit, it has worn me down. More importantly, I've started to dilute the quality of the newsletters. We've written and sent newsletters just for the sake of sending them out.
Long-form content should be your bread and butter for content. It could be anything – books, documentaries, articles, courses. The key is that it takes a long time. It's deeper, more researched, and more nuanced. Most people can sound smart with a 280-character tweet. But it's not so easy with a 10,000-word or 20-minute video.
So, what made us think our audience wants a short piece of thin writing, every day? Or would they prefer content with better research and tests? It should include case studies and examples that will help them.
The need for anticipation.
The reason we look forward to Christmas is because it only happens once a year. There's anticipation. If Christmas happened every day, we would become desensitized. It wouldn't be special anymore.
When something is repetitive, it becomes boring.
That's why marketers focus on pattern interrupts." You create a pattern interrupt by zagging when everyone else is zigging. We've become so used to seeing ads on social media, developing ad blindness. Marketers know this. So they create weird and surprising ads to catch us off guard.
SEO company, Ahrefs, published a children's book – something no one else in the SEO industry did.
Si Quan Ong
How often do we pick up a daily newspaper excitedly? Not really, no. Print newspapers are in fact, dying. People these days consume on demand, and see what they want to see.
To get people to value and be excited about your newsletter or marketing, you must build anticipation.
People value what's scarce and limited in supply. For newsletters to work (and bring value), it has to give readers something to anticipate.
What people want
Ever since I started Daily CMO, I have obsessed with being a "person of value." Is what we're doing valuable for others, or for us?
So what does the perfect newsletter do?
It'll do one of these things:
- Inspire the reader.
- Entertain the reader.
- Educate the reader.
- Change the reader.
Give them something that will help them in their journey to reach their goal.
A daily newsletter if anything doesn't. While it started useful, even the best minds in the world were not naive enough to think they had ideas to share every day. Even the best ideas by the best minds will become diluted and lose their meaning over time.
In conclusion, prioritize quality. Create anticipation. Give readers something worth reading. Leave them better than when you found them.
Moving forward, Daily CMO will post daily on Instagram. The newsletter will become a weekly newsletter, with more nuanced, researched, and meaningful content.
Thanks for being a subscriber. We're excited about the change.
Don't overpay for email marketing
You'll end up paying for features you don't use on most email platforms. Suddenly an email platform decided to become a website builder, AI content creator, and all-in-one CRM. Whatt?
That's why we love Mailerlite. True to its "lite" in its name, Mailerlite focuses on a clean, usable UX and not overcharging you.
