Ask HN: Is it just me, or is the inbox is the worst place for newsletters?

132 points by ahmd ↗ HN
Is it just me, or do you believe your inbox is the worst place for newsletters? Any other medium would be preferable.

110 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 160 ms ] thread
Depends on the type on newsletter I'd say.

I find a lot of newsletters now are just blog posts that yes, would be better served elsewhere (especially those with little or no web archive/presence). A lot of great writing hidden away I feel.

However, curated newsletters with round-ups/link lists, I feel are great in email. I can tag them, stick them in a folder, and peruse at my leisure. However, if you're big on RSS this too may have limited appeal.

myemail+newsletter@example.com

Filter it out so it doesn't get in the way, read them when you want to (still generally dislike newsletters in email, rss is nicer)

I filter mine as well, and use Fastmail’s snooze to only have them show up once a day.

I used to use rss heavily, but it has been many years since I regularly checked a client. At least with email delivery I don’t miss them.

I find that with most newsletters I don't really care about what's new or has changed. It's only when I actually need to use X product or do Y thing that I like to know what's new. This makes RSS nice since I can go weeks and then when I need to work on something using a tool I can check the news for that item.

It depends, of course. Some things I appreciate having it sent daily, others I really don't. There isn't a one size fits all solution and that's not a bad thing.

Thankfully, Substack provides an RSS feed. If there's no RSS, I don't subscribe.

In the future I might try Kill the Newsletter as suggested in another comment.

I switched all my email newsletters to RSS newsletters with https://kill-the-newsletter.com and my life has gotten so much better.

I was inspired by the design of Hey email, whose designers reasoned that newsletters aren't really that important, they should just be something you scroll through and separate from other email which often needs a response.

How do I get notified of a new newsletter?

For me my Inbox is the only place I'm guaranteed to visit regularly. If a notification is on any other platform then I might not ever know about it.

But then - you haven't really explained what you mean. Do you mean in terms of rendering? notifications, sharing?

And it depends on your relationship to email vs other platforms. Tell us more about your reasoning.

> How do I get notified of a new newsletter?

Not OP but I use Inoreader for RSS. It has push notifications in the paid version, although I don't need them, I just open Inoreader when I'm in a newsletter-reading mood.

> Tell us more about your reasoning.

The reason email does not work for me is that my email inbox is overflowing with a variety of types of communication: business emails that require a quick reply, unsolicited sales pitches, notifications from several services, personal emails. I need to go through each email rapidly and either reply immediately, snooze it for later, create an action item in the my to-do list, give a quick read and archive or just straight out archive without reading.

There's no place in this for "take 40 minutes to leisurely read this long-form email". Also the volume of communications is way to big to go through all of them and mark them for later reading. I imagine I could create rules for all the newsletters and send them straight to some folder but then the experience is just lacking compared to a dedicated RSS reader.

OK. (on a side note this is "Inbox bundles" solved elegantly in Google Inbox RIP)

Anyway - I too have an overflowing inbox. I used to aim for Inbox zero but slipped and am living with it.

One discipline I do maintain though is that the Inbox should always be actionable. It's my todo list.

So - how do I handle non-actionable, non-urgent stuff?

1. If it will be urgent and actionable I snooze it. 2. If it's of interest but not urgent and has a web representation then I open a browser tab for later.

Newsletters nearly always fall into category 2. Unless I can just skim them for interesting links and archive them.

And a lot of the time I unsubscribe - as soon as I realise I don't really want to read it. I get most of my news from HN or various subreddits.

I think there's about 3 or 4 regular newsletters I tolerate. And I'm more tolerant of infrequent emails (new features for products I'm interested in etc)

Google Inbox was fantastic, I miss it. Still, not as good UX as Inoreader for reading newsletters.

Also, I find it healthy to keep things I *have* to process (email, to-do lists) separate from things that I scan for interesting stuff when I have a moment to spare (RSS, Twitter, HN, Instapaper).

> I think there's about 3 or 4 regular newsletters I tolerate.

Maybe you'd be willing to tolerate more if you kept them out of your inbox ;)

The problem with newsletters of all sorts is that they end up in some sort of someday (but probably not) category whether they're explicitly filtered or not. Sometimes they end up in a Gmail tab that I mostly glance at infrequently. If I explicitly filter, I mostly stop looking at the filtering filter. I admit I used to use RSS a lot but these days mostly expect to find plenty of stuff through Twitter, HN, etc.
My RSS reader service also provides an email address for email-only subscriptions: https://feedbin.com/blog/2016/02/03/subscribe-to-email-newsl... . I read email newsletters in the same place as RSS. I'm subscribed to a few low-volume Twitter searches too (https://feedbin.com/blog/2018/01/11/feedbin-is-the-best-way-...).
Woah thank you. I was looking for something like this but couldn’t find the right service. This looks great.
I do the same thing with Feedbin. It's delightful.
Same here with Inoreader. Big fan of their service.
+1 for sending newsletters to Feedbin. It’s a great feature.

The only issue I had once was a newsletter provider who required you to reply to an email to confirm you wanted to subscribe (which of course you can’t do as it’s only for incoming emails), but I contacted the newsletter owner and was approved manually.

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HOLY CRAP I have been wanting this exact feature for years. I always thought why aren't Newsletter and RSS reside in the same space. I rarely use email anymore given all the spam and advert.
This is exactly what RSS feeds were for. In fact Outlook and other mail programs support RSS feeds alongside e-mail.

Maybe Google should have integrated Reader into Gmail instead of dropping support for it.

I'm trying to switch my newsletters over to Feedbin but it's a slow process.
I use Kill The Newsletter to sub via RSS to all newsletters I want to read.
I kept missing my newsletters and that annoyed me to an extent where I decided to build my own solution: https://slickinbox.com/, Slick Inbox provides you an email that you can use to subscribe to newsletters, and the app is built for reading newsletters.

There are other services out there like Stoop Inbox, Feedly & Feedbin that also does the same thing, but point being that I think newsletters are fundamentally different from an "email" and thus deserve a special treatment (similar to how Podcasts are just RSS feed underneath, but it's fundamentally a different product)

My inbox a good place for me to learn about the existence of a new issue of something, but a poor place to actually read said issues, to keep track of what I've read, and manage a 'library'. I want e-reader-like features:

    - save my place
    - highlighting
    - annotations
Should these features be added to Gmail? I trow not. Better to have these newsletter issues converted to some appropriate format and sent to my library, along with my ebooks and saved web pages.
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I set up a newsletters email folder with automatic filtering. When I feel like reading newsletters, I go there. Otherwise, I don’t see them. Sort of the same behavior loop of opening up my RSS feed (which, incidentally, is how I’m seeing this post).
I don't mind, although I don't get a lot of email. Maybe like 10 a day, and most of that is just receipts/invoices/confirmations which can be immediately archived.

So in fact my inbox is usually about 90% newsletters that I haven't read yet.

So - you don't use email for communication with actual people?

Do you mind me asking roughly how old you are? I would like to test my theory that email is generational and it's only the over-(insert number here) that still use it as it was originally intended.

I am not the author of the comment, but I am 19 and only communication that I am doing through mail is related with support/feedback/employment. Also after I got a job as intern webdev (I don't even like it), we've been communicating via Slack. Also I saw that friends of mine have Discord/MS Teams/Telegram(!) as main communication service in companies. So, I am also getting a few mails per day, and most of them are invoices, notifications that I don't need to see immediately, newsletters, etc.
> So - you don't use email for communication with actual people?

Nope! I may be cheating somewhat as I'm not counting work communication here, which does involve a decent amount of email, but I only access that inbox through a web browser so I can easily close the tab and be done for the day. I'm also not getting any newsletters to my work inbox.

> Do you mind me asking roughly how old you are? I would like to test my theory that email is generational and it's only the over-(insert number here) that still use it as it was originally intended

I'm 28. All my communication is via messaging apps (iMessage for family as we all have iPhones; WhatsApp for almost everyone else), so I suspect your theory is probably right!

Follow up question.

I find the problem with messaging services is that there's no central inbox and no decent handling of "unread".

If I get an instant message from someone that I can't (or choose not to) respond to immediately, then the chances are very high that I'll forget to respond.

But with email it stays in my inbox and I can easily set it back to "unread" for extra emphasis.

I find I'm terrible at keeping up with messaging unless it's synchronous chatting. Anything asynchronous goes out the window.

I suppose I just find everything else lacking in features that I've come to depend on in email. I just don't understand how everyone else manages.

So I think for me things typically fall into two buckets. Almost all my one-to-one communication is with family members that will just call me if I miss a message they need an answer to.

The rest (and indeed the vast majority) of my communication is via group chats, which I personally find messaging apps to handle much better than email clients. It also doesn’t really matter if you miss something, as there’s generally enough messages going back and forth that you will see something else and then remember to go back and check the thing you missed (if you even need to).

I will concede though, finding a particular instant message is a damned nightmare compared to finding an email.

FWIW, I'm 41 now and don't use my personal email for much p2p comms. Maybe a couple times a year there's a family thread about a gathering. My close friends is all SMS. My non-close friends is just another FB connection. I don't even have most of my friends email addresses. Actually one of my fairly close friends I met about 5-6 years ago just asked me for my email to forward me something logistics related. Most of my comms on over text as banter, check-ins or logistics. Mostly logistics since we meet in person most frequently and that's where we talk.

I get a lot more email though. I think it's more correlated with complexity of your life. Meaning, I started getting more email when I owned a home vs renting, then more again when I got married, then more again when I had a dog, then more again when I had a kid, I'm sure as my kid ages into more activities the email volume will increase further. Also, my "personal business" generates a fair amount of comms. Like hiring contractors, getting bids on things, basically anything I pay for that is not a retail purchase requires some email traffic. But people like my housekeeper, pool guy, and lawn guy I can text them for anything I need to have them look at. It's better that way since they don't work at a desk.

My Gmail plugin is coming from the same pain (I subscribed to a ton of great newsletters, but they clutter everything human): https://www.getbreef.com . It's just my side project, and it's in beta - let me know if you'd like to try it.

It gives desktop Gmail an RSS-esque topic view of your inbox, and lets you infinite scroll through emails like you would Twitter or Insta.

Probably multiple forces affect sending newsletters to email inbox:

- Client-side motivation : some users want to use their email as the "universal inbox". E.g. They may also send TODOs/reminders by sending emails to themselves instead of a separate app for alarms. Newsletters are just another stream of info that should conveniently go into their universal inbox.

- Publisher-side motivation: email addresses are valuable because it's important to "build an audience" outside of centralized platforms like Patreon/Youtube/TikTok. RSS doesn't solve the same problem because that's a "pull" mechanism instead of "push" like email.

If the above factors are unimportant to a particular person, then yes, the email inbox is a suboptimal communications channel for newsletters.

The absolutely most important reason: everyone has an email address. It’s not just the least common denominator, it’s pretty much the only common denominator. RSS practically does not exist outside the tech scene.
The main paradigm in RSS, also, is to make it look like e-mail.

Every feed reading mechanism I've ever tried that was usable looked like a mail client. Feeds look like mail folders, and arriving items look like mail delivery, with UI notifications like "Foo (15)" indicating that feed Foo has 15 unread items.

The advantage over e-mail is that it is pull; you don't have an RSS identity that can be spammed. Kill a feed and it is gone.

Everyone having an email address is a false assumption, or a bad generalization. There are people among us without one, and owning a phone number instead.

I'm not sure along which lines the divide falls though. Younger? Less western? Less businessy? It's still possible that the people who would be interested in a newsletter are the same people who have email addresses.

I used the word "everyone" rhetorically, of course. The point is, to a first (and second) approximation everybody uses email and nobody uses RSS.
If you have a phone number, you probably have an email through a SMS/MMS gateway.
mathematically its true though.

if 0.999... = 1, then 99.999...% also equals 100%

> RSS doesn't solve the same problem because that's a "pull" mechanism instead of "push" like email.

I don't think that matters. Having somebody add your RSS to their reading addresses has basically the same effect as having they give you their email and not add you to their spam list.

Email is not exactly push anymore, it stays on a server waiting for the user to go there look. Any of them can, and usually do, automatically pull data on a schedule and alert the user when there's something new. The biggest difference I can see is that you and the user do not have to deal with the spam-handling problems. If the newsletter is spam, that's a big win for the publisher, but if it's not, it's a loss.

>Having somebody add your RSS to their reading addresses has basically the same effect as having they give you their email and not add you to their spam list.

I mentioned "RSS" under the bullet point of publisher motivations and RSS being "pull" matters from the publisher's perspective because they want the email addresses.

With RSS, the publisher's server logs can see users' ip addresses (when client RSS readers scan the URL) but not users' email address.

Consider a real-life example of a publisher's perspective to make this distinction clear and to understand economic limitations of RSS:

E.g. Tim Ferris has a blog website.

- https://tim.blog/ <-- main url

- https://tim.blog/feed/ <-- RSS url for the blog

- https://tim.blog/comments/feed/ <-- RSS url for blog comments

- https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/ <-- newsletter URL requires email signup

- (no newsletter RSS url) <-- newsletter has no RSS option

... and Tim Ferris will not allow a RSS url for the newsletter because building his email mailing list is the _purpose_ of his newsletter. He's willing to allow RSS readers to access the main blog but not the newsletter. This selective access is not inconsistent and it makes perfect sense if one understands the publishers' motivations.

Luckily for publishers like Tim Ferris, many users prefer their newsletters in their email inbox which aligns with publisher's preference to send them there.

(Yes to be pedantic, some hackers can fake out email newsletters by using Feedbin's email+RSS bridge mentioned in other comments but that's not relevant here because publishers don't care about the small minority doing that.)

I use NetNewsWire (Mac, IOS) to subscribe to substacks RSS feeds. Free posts appear right in the app. You have to click through to read subscriber-only posts in the browser. It has several options for syncing your feeds' state between devices. (iCloud, Feedly, etc)
As others have said, I use an RSS reader for this sort of thing. Many newsletters provide a blog/syndicated version anyways which I can subscribe to, and there are bridges available. That being said, I don't have a bridge so for ones that are only available by email I setup filters and put them into folders unless I want to read them every single week (in which case I do think the inbox it the best place).

If you do decide to go the RSS route, I use https://www.inoreader.com and haven't found a better web-based/has a phone app one yet. The others I tried were all full of nonsense AI that kept bugging me, or weird javascripty fancy UIs that broke, or just didn't let me read inline (you had to click through to pages). Other recommendations welcome though.

Filter by presence of header List-Id takes care of bypassing your inbox for most any list-like email.
It is not you, RSS etc etc like the other comments

Feedly and Unread (iOS app) are my poison of choice. Lovely interface on top of a reliable service.

Unread also does an instapaper-like parse of the article if you subscribe to a feed that does that daft excerpt only thing :)

Newsletters use email because it's much more likely to stay operational for longer into the future than any other random web service.

It's a source of power.

If they don't have your email, then they can't contact you in the future if the platform decides to kick them out.

I'm on the other side of the issue. I have 10000 subscribers with a 0.6% Spam rate. That's technically high, despite me getting all emails voluntarily and not even offering a freebie for signing up.

Anyway, can't use Facebook/IG/Reddit/Twitter because of the algorithm.

Can't email more than 4 times a year due to spam filters. I still pay hundreds of dollars a year to reach people via email octopus and Amazon.... And it still goes to Gmail spam.

This is not the internet I grew up with.

How is it that you're limited to 4x/year whereas many vendors will happily send me marketing email once a week without issue?
If you are bombarded with emails, you either unsubscribe or you let them keep coming. Even if lots of people mark as spam, the number of emails not marked as spam greatly outnumber the spam emails.

It seems you can either email occasionally or email weekly. The current system is not set up for monthly emails.

My content takes weeks to produce.

I'm also a bit skeptical that Gmail treats all domains equal. I imagine HBO/Joann Fabrics/etc... has a deal to spam people, where I do not.

Not enough people are marking those as spam ...
I get emails through to my GSuite inbox from senders that I've marked as spam repeatedly (10+ times). Same from email. Same subject style and format. And they still get through. Makes me really curious about what they're doing to get through.

90% of the spam that escapes my spam folder is web design pitches from email addresses of the format firstnamelastname123@gmail.com - always GMail...

I'm curious: how do you learn your spam rate?
I had trouble with this back then. I used a home-baked email sender, emails looked good in mail tester and several mail clients, and yet, some of my test gmail addresses got the email in the Inbox, and some of them in Spam. I have no idea what was different.
And I doubt there is anybody at Gmail/google that actually knows.

It’s impossible to communicate with their support about it anyway

Regardless of whether I "consented" or not, I'll mark recurring marketing/news/feedback emails as spam in Gmail. This also gives me the option to unsubscribe if Gmail finds a link. Much easier than seeking out the unsub link myself, so I use this even if it's not technically spam.

I do wish Google provided a standalone unsubscribe link. Or maybe companies shouldn't hide it in the fine print and make me fill out a form and survey. The bad apples ruin the bunch.

In my Gmail, most such email has a Google-provided unsubscribe link right next to the source address at the top, e.g.

Spamming Stores <spammingstores@e.spamming.com> Unsubscribe

If you're sending just 4 times a year, people will have forgotten you when you send them a message. That could be at the core of your problem: You send so rarely that people don't even remember signing up for your email list. You've got to build and maintain a strong relationship with your subscribers. Always provide value when emailing. Stick to your promise (the reason they signed up) when emailing. Email often enough that they won't forget you. Once a month, at a minimum, and 2-3 times in the first week after they subscribe.
I've tried this. It didn't work and I got put on probation.
I recently switched to https://www.hey.com/ for email, which provides a dedicated page for reading newsletters.

I didn't like it at first, but after comparing in depth with Gmail and Superhuman I prefer the workflow. Having separate interfaces for communications, feeds, and automated emails has been great.

I use HEY for all my personal email now too. I definitely believe it's a step in the right direction.
I use an email address provided by Inoreader to get all my newsletters along my RSS feeds.

Unfortunately some newsletters are tied to my user account and my main email address for some services, so I had to do an email forward rule in Gmail for those for them to skip my inbox.

Ill take a crowded inbox over the previous system: a crowded post box. At least i can throw spam blockers and other tools at the problem. Setting roadblocks to catch postal trucks is a federal offence.