Why Quartz has had success with its email newsletters

How do you segment subscribers for these emails?

Segmentation of our subscriber lists are based on a reader’s region [and time zone]. If you live in Hong Kong you’ll be getting the email at a different time than someone living in London. — Eva Scazzero, associate product manager, Quartz

What has been your most engaged or most successful email? How do you measure success? What made this email work?

The most important key performance indicator is the total number of active subscribers we have per newsletter. We measure engagement based on a user’s open rate. We consider those who are consistently engaged with our emails, “active”. This metric comes from a belief that our content is worthy of being opened, and if it’s not we force ourselves to think about how we might improve. — Eva Scazzero, associate product manager, Quartz

Some of the recent Obsessions with high open rates include AIM, Pantone, The nostalgia economy, FICO, Jellyfish, and Concrete. Besides open rates, we look at the qualitative feedback we get from users who are replying to the email, or interacting on Twitter. Some topics provoke more conversation than others (dowsing actually proved a bit contentious) but if I get even one response that says “I didn’t think I was going to be interested in this topic, but I learned some fascinating things” I count that as a successful email. — jessanne collins, Obsession email editor

Read more here.