How Quartz has success with its email newsletters

Lucinda Southern of Digiday examines the success of Quartz’s email newsletters.

Southern writes, “While the Quartz Daily Brief morning newsletter aims to bring the publisher’s business-focused audience around 20 important stories from around the web to set them up for the day, the afternoon Obsession newsletter gives people more time to go deep on a particular niche area, according to Jessanne Collins, editor of Quartz Obsession.

“‘There’s a sense of news-cycle fatigue, which can offer an important gap for media products to fill,’ she said. ‘There’s a hunger for smart, relevant, interesting coverage that’s not regurgitated and not the same news day to day.’

“Quartz doubled the number of subscribers to its newsletters, which include its Daily Brief and pop-up newsletters tied to global business events, last year to over 700,000. The publisher wouldn’t share how many people subscribe to Obsession, but it said the open rate is over 78 percent, much higher than the average open rate for media newsletters, which is about 22 percent, according to MailChimp.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.