Delivering With The Big Boys (and Girls 😜)!

It’s not easy these days to hit the inbox. Time and time again I hear from people how they are struggling with their email delivery.

Is this just happening to certain newsletters?

Let’s take a deep dive into some of the largest newsletters and see how the big players are faring.

I will also provide 5 Takeaways of what we learned at the bottom of this email.

Before breaking down the deliverability of each newsletter let’s take a look to see if they are 100% set up based on the new sender requirements outlined by google, yahoo, AOL, and others.

Bulk Sender Requirements

Surprisingly it appears out of all the major newsletters we researched only “The Morning” by The New York Times is not 100% compliant.

Let’s take a look and see if it ends up affecting their deliverability.

Deliverability Stats by Newsletter

NYT’s The Morning

Estimated List Size: 19.1M
Domain Registered: 1/18/1994
Email Service Provider: Sendgrid, SparkPost, Mailchimp

It appears that not having the one-click unsubscribe enabled has affected the deliverability of nytimes.com.

As one of the largest newspapers in the United States paired with a well seasoned and aged domain, I’m sure the major ISP’s will not enforce all the requirements as they would a newer or lesser know domain.

I’d bet that The New York Times is whitelisted by all the major ISP’s to ensure subscribers are always receiving the news.

theSkimm

Estimated List Size: 7M+
Domain Registered: 3/5/2012
Email Service Provider: Sailthru

Carly Zakin and Danielle Weisberg the co-founders of theSkimm are the originator’s of the long-form roundup style email many of us have come accustomed to over the years, with other brands entering the mix like Morning Brew and The Hustle.

With a sending history which dates back to 2012, the ladies of theSkimm have near perfect deliverability.

Only outlook is under 100%, and for a consumer facing brand, outlook subscribers are the minority of their audience we would assume.

Morning Brew

Estimated List Size: 2.7M
Domain Registered: 10/15/1999
Email Service Provider: Sailthru

Launched in 2015 by Alex Lieberman and Austin Reif, the predecessor to theSkimm also has deliverability rates to envy.

With a sender history of almost a decade, there’s plenty of trust for this brand from the major ISP’s.

1440

Estimated List Size: 3.6M
Domain Registered: 5/25/2017
Email Service Provider: Campaign Monitor

Surprisingly… 1440 currently boasts the top deliverability of all the major newsletters we looked at.

At almost a perfect 100%, the team at 1440 is doing everything right.

The 3-2-1 Newsletter by James Clear

Estimated List Size: 2.8M
Domain Registered: 8/22/2009
Email Service Provider: Sendgrid

James Clear’s newsletter is an interesting case study, as he only sends one email per week to his enormous email list.

You would expect some more disparity in deliverability to a large list because of his lower sending frequency, the fact that he does send once a week on Thursday’s, is proof that consistency matters in the email deliverability game.

The Daily Hustle

Estimated List Size: 2.5M+
Domain Registered: 0/29/2014
Email Service Provider: Hubspot

Even though the brand changed hands after it’s acquisition by Hubspot, deliverability is as strong as ever.

Hometalk

Estimated List Size: 3.5M
Domain Registered: 5/13/1998
Email Service Provider: Amazon SES

Starting in 2011, Hometalk has become the leading publisher of online DIY content. Unlike the long form roundup newsletters like theSkimm, Morning Brew, 1440, and The Hustle, HomeTalk is more of a traditional publisher like The New York Times.

Still showing strong deliverability it doesn’t appear that the ISP’s are frowning upon newsletters who’s focus is to drive traffic to their websites.

TLDR

Estimated List Size: 800K
Domain Registered: 7/19/2018
Email Service Provider: Amazon SES

This roundup newsletter focused on tech is on the lower end of the deliverability of the other monsters on this list, but many newsletter operators would be more than happy with a consistent 87.6% inboxing rate.

The Pulse

Estimated List Size: 3M+
Domain Registered: 12/10/2000
Email Service Provider: SparkPost

As probably the largest sports newsletter on the market “The Pulse” by The Athletic comes in strong with it’s deliverability.

Arnold’s Pump Club

Estimated List Size: 462K
Domain Registered: 11/19/1998
Email Service Provider: Sendgrid via Beehiiv

Finally, I included “Arnold’s Pump Club” by Arnold Schwarzenegger to provide deliverability insight from one of the newer newsletter providers in the business… Beehiiv.

As you can see above the newsletter has near perfect delivarbility outside of Outlook which is primarily used by businesses, which again isn’t the target market for this newsletter.

So what do all these stats say, besides these newsletters having superior deliverability?

5 Takeaways From The Big Boys and Girls

1) Your Brand Matters

As you can see from the examples above, all these newsletters have strong brands that have been established with a long history of deliverability. If you build a brand and people enjoy and engage with your content, deliverability should not be an issue.

2) Consitency Matters

Every one of the newsletters listed are consistent whith their frequency and time of sending. Even James Clear who sends only once a week on Thursday’s shows that even with an extremely large list and sending only once a week you can have optimum deliverability in the inbox.

3) Your ESP Should Not Matter

I provided the ESP each of the newsletters above use to deliver their emails. As you can see, their is a variety of platforms, and the newsletters are still able to hit the inbox.

Your specific brand (domain) and enagement metrics are still strongest factor of hitting the inbox.

At times there could be issues if you are on shared IP’s vs Dedicated, but we can discuss that in a future newsletter.

4) Even The Big Boys Struggle With Microsoft

If your worried about delivering to emails that end in outlook.com, hotmail.com, msn.com, or live.com, you might as well stop.

Even the biggest players struggle to hit the inbox all the time with Microsoft emails.

Focus your deliverability on Gmail, Yahoo, and AOL and you will have a successful newsletter.

5) Long Form Is Winning But Traditional Newsletters Are Still Viable (I Think)

Even though the long form emails seem to be the consistent winning format of the biggest newsletter providers out there, their is still life in traditional newsletters.

You can see that Hometalk has a large subscriber base and is still able to hit the inbox at a staggering rate of 95%+.

So, Inboxing isn’t the issue with the traditional format, it’s growing a substantial subscriber base.

It appears that long form may be a stickier format to keep subscribers engaging with your content.

I’ll have to take a deep dive on Long-Form vs Traditional and see what the stats show us in a future email.

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Let’s hit the inbox,
Chris Miquel

Follow me on Twitter: @miqchris