Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so much?

Re:Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so... by squeaky-clean on Monday August 01, 2022 @01:07PM (#32309074)

Yep, you need to track your open rates too. If you have a 20% open rate, run a daily spam trial, and find you had a 0.3% unsub rate but your open rate is now 10%... You actually had a 50% unsub rate, your customers just aren't letting you know they've unsubscribed

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Re:Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so... by hedora on Monday August 01, 2022 @02:41PM (#32310389)

Isn’t open rate obfuscated / blocked by most clients now? How do you measure it?

(I’ve been blocking them for 25+ years; might be out of touch…)

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Re:Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so... by squeaky-clean on Friday August 12, 2022 @05:43PM (#32444272)

Saw this comment late, like tl_donson says, yes but it's fairly consistent. So if your open rate drops 20% to 10% in one month, it's probably your fault and not the mail client hiding it.

In my experience most people do not block images in emails, and that's the easiest way to tell if someone opened your mail. Even most people who use an adblocker do not block email images.

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Re:Ask HN: Do newsletters work? Why do websites push them so... by tl_donson on Monday August 01, 2022 @10:19PM (#32314477)

open rates are inaccurate but still somewhat useful because they’re generally consistently inaccurate month to month unless there’s been a change that would affect a lot of subscribers (eg iOS recently).

click rates are probably a better proxy for this.

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