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Ask HN: Have you ever bought a product from a newsletter ad?

1 points by kuba_dmp ↗ HN
Doing some research on this in the context of dev newsletters/dev products.

If you did buy or started using the product after seeing a newsletter ad, I am wondering if you remember what you liked about that ad. Or if not liked what made you not skip it immediately?

If you are on the founder/marketing side and you ran ads in dev-focused newsletters which ones were more successful?

8 comments

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kstenerud
I just automatically tune them out. If it's not an internal email, I only look to see if it's from someone I know. And even when it's someone I know, at the first whiff of marketing I delete it.
kuba_dmp
Oh, sorry I meant those weekly developer newsletters and an ad in there.
plimko
All newsletters are marked as spam. So, no.
kuba_dmp
Even like a pragmatic programmer, casidoo, and stuff like that?
Yawrehto
I don't even consider ads, generally. I use an adblocker, UBO Lite, and the ones that aren't caught in the filter are just sort of ignored. I don't trust myself to be able to manage deciding on if a product is worth investigating and perhaps buying, being fairly impulsive, and so a blanket policy of 'don't buy what ads offer' and more generally 'don't click on ads' makes the most sense.

Newsletters aren't an exception. The only conceivable exception is when it's like 'Hey, I really enjoyed this newsletter' or affiliated interesting looking newsletters(eg I've looked at the other newsletters Nature has, which are linked to at the bottom of Nature Briefings), but those aren't really ads.

kuba_dmp
I like that approach of "not clicking any ads".

That said it could still land a message/spark interest.

And perhaps if it is worth investing your time in, you'll hear about it again, hopefully from a source you trust.

Yawrehto
>could still land a message/spark interest.

It could. Smithsonian's newsletter often has ads from 1440 in it, and I've been considering looking into them more, but mostly because they say they're free. If it was paid, I'd probably stop looking into it, or look to see if the local library subscribes to it or has it (as I often do with books). So, from the advertiser's perspective, I'm not very helpful - the best you'd get is increased library circulation.

JohnFen
No, I never have. I actually can't remember ever buying anything through an ad at all (but can't say it's never happened). When I need to buy something, I tend to seek it out myself and so I'm not going through an ad. If I don't need to buy something, then ads are irrelevant in the first place.