The success of your newsletter depends broadly on two things: whether you’re meeting your subscriber’s expectations, and whether you’re meeting your own goals. Setting up multiple newsletters could help with both.

Roughly speaking, newsletter goals can be split into three categories:

Direct monetization This means generating revenue directly from your newsletter through ads, newsletter subscriptions, sponsorships, etc.

Selling This involves convincing your subscribers to part with their cash by alerting them about new products, special offers, running abandoned cart campaigns, etc. This is largely, but not only, the domain of ecommerce.

Building Connections This means maintaining long-term subscribers and building brand loyalty. This leads to subscribers recommending your newsletter to more people, and cultivating enough trust so when there eventually is buyer intent, yours is the company they go to. With this goal, you can’t “ask” too much of your subscribers.

When to Use Multiple Newsletters

Your newsletter goals don’t have to fit into just one of these categories. It’s entirely normal to have multiple goals.

Maybe you want to build a large list of long-term, loyal subscribers and be able to sell your new product line to your list. This is fine.

But trying to meet all of your goals through only one newsletter may be a mistake. Instead, consider setting up multiple newsletters that are optimized for different goals.

I’m not just talking about sending out different types of email campaigns. Most organisations should be doing that anyway. I’m talking about using an entirely different template, newsletter name, sender name, and sender from:address, so these lists are easily differentiated by your subscribers.

For example, you could have one short-form newsletter that sends out quick-fire tips and tricks for your products, and which is also used for selling and upselling your inventory. This would be the list you primarily use to meet your sales goals.

You could also have a long-form newsletter that’s more thoughtful, and carefully curated to intrigue and interest your subscribers. This would be the list you use to achieve your “building connections” goals.

With these different lists, you can run separate A/B tests to help you optimise each newsletter to achieve each goal you’re working toward.

These different lists should still be hosted on the same ESP account. This allows your subscribers to easily opt in or out of the different newsletters you’re offering.

A Few Practical Notes

Keep unsubscribes per newsletter. Readers should be able to leave one newsletter without losing the others. Gmail and Yahoo require one-click unsubscribe for bulk senders, and that one click should remove someone from the newsletter they clicked it in, not everything you send. A simple preference center lets people choose which ones they want.

Think about how they add up. Someone subscribed to three newsletters gets three times the email. Watch unsubscribes and spam complaints across all of them, not just each one in isolation, and avoid sending several on the same morning.

They share a reputation. If all your newsletters send from the same domain, a problem with one (say, a sales list with high complaints) can affect where the others land. Some publishers send different newsletters from different subdomains to keep things a little separate, but good list habits on every newsletter matter far more.

Why It Works

Having different newsletters can ensure you tackle both sides of the equation mentioned at the start of this article.

First, allowing your subscribers to opt in and out of different newsletters makes it more likely that you’re meeting their expectations.

Second, being able to focus each newsletter on a different goal makes it more likely you’ll hit your targets.

This isn’t a solution for everyone, but if you’re finding it difficult to meet multiple goals with your current list, setting up multiple newsletters has a good chance of helping.