RUBENERD: ADVICE FOR TECHNICAL NEWSLETTER WRITERS

I read a _lot_ of technical newsletters, product announcements,
feature update notices, and related messages as part of my job. I
guard my personal email like a hawk, to the point where I have a
filter that matches on the word unsubscribe. At work, I have to keep
tabs on our suppliers, customers, partners, leads, and other parties I
can include in a list of things on a blog that I keep tabs on.

Receiving these messages, and even helping work write ours, gives me
insight into what makes a good newsletter, and a bad one.

Here are some examples of what _not_ to do:

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Avoid massive banner images, or banner images at all if you can avoid
them. Email clients all block images by default now, so we just get a
massive blank space before your text starts.

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Don’t venture into spam territory. I don’t need to hear from your
business almost every day.

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Don’t use clickbait language. I know your marketing team is telling
you to, but respect your readers instead.

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Don’t send cutesy messages shortly after a massive outage or
customer-impacting event. Like a fine cheese, it grates.

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Don’t abuse your contact lists by subscribing us to your new
newsletter we didn’t ask for. This is poor form.

And what you _should_ do:

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Have a useful subject line. Don’t say _$FOOBAR Newsletter_, say
_$FOOBAR Newsletter: Feature X, Update Y_.

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Be brief. Respect the time of your readers. They can click through for
more information.

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Remind us what you do, or what you device or service does, even if
just briefly. Don’t say _$GLAVEN_, say _$GLAVEN, the cloud
orchestration tool_. It may be obvious to you, but it’s best to
assume people receiving your newsletter are doing so for the first
time, or forgot who you are.

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Use appropriate alt text for images. As mentioned above, nobody’s
email client downloads images automatically now, so we see that alt
text first. The number of times that’s just a filename, a string of
jibberish, a UUID, or an internal note that probably shouldn’t have
gone out is surprising.

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If you include a copyright date, make sure it’s the right year. I
still get emails from a US-based telco that says “2021” in the
footer.

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Give us a clear, unambiguous unsubscribe link. I trust people who make
this easier, unlike certain Redmond-based newsletters that I’ve
since trained my spam filters against.