Why Quartz is producing newsletters for big events

Max Willens of Digiday writes about how financial news site Quartz is producing email newsletters for events such as the Consumer Electronics Show and the World Economic Forum.

Willens writes, “After doubling the size of its newsletter subscriber base in 2017 to 700,000, the business news publisher is putting a bigger focus on short-run newsletters this year tied to major events. Through the first half of 2018, it plans to publish five of them, up from two last year, for Davos, CES, Mobile World Congress, SXSW and the Cannes Lions, all sponsored by Accenture. It’s also putting more editorial staff behind them; five staffers will attend Davos this year, up from three in 2017, to broaden that newsletter’s coverage.

“Overall, these event emails, with a mix of news and color from on-site social functions, had an average open rate of 50 percent last year, according to a Quartz spokesperson. Last year’s Davos newsletter had an open rate of 63 percent.

“Those rates are higher than the 40 percent open rate for the Quartz Daily Brief, the company’s flagship newsletter, and the 22 percent benchmark for media newsletters, according to MailChimp, in part because they are topic-specific and delivered during a short window, often less than a week.”

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