How the WSJ is revamping its newsletters

Christine Schmidt of Nieman Lab looks at how The Wall Street Journal is overhauling its newsletters.

Schmidt reports, “When Cory Schouten and Annemarie Dooling (formerly of CJR/Indianapolis Business Journal and Vox Media, respectively) joined the Journal’s newsletter team earlier this year, they embarked on the journey of whittling down the paper’s 126 newsletters. Some were automated but didn’t generate many clicks; others had a little more voice, but a pretty dry voice nonetheless.

“That whittling has led to what are now around 40 streamlined, audience-driven emails. They can now feature market information updating in real time (even after a newsletter is sent), and coaxing non-payers toward a subscription is core to their mission and design. (This process began under product designer Cory Etzkorn three years ago and accelerated through a migration to the Campaign Monitor platform since last fall.)

“‘When we walked into it, they’d been added [one by one] over many years,’ Etzkorn said. ‘One year a Life and Arts newsletter would get added, then Sports would get added, but a different team or person would lead the design or strategy. Over a decade, we had a portfolio of close to 50 newsletters that looked totally different. They didn’t all have the Wall Street Journal logo. Some were just autogenerated lists of links, others were more thoughtful. Some were really good. Some weren’t so good.'”

Read more here.