13 Helpful Newsletter Examples for Content Creators 2023
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Over 50 million people around the world call themselves content creators, making the market super competitive. If you are one of them and want to set yourself apart, you need to bring to life creative ideas that solve your audience's problems.
More importantly, you should establish a connection with your content that doesn’t depend on the whims of social media algorithms or SEO rules. That’s where newsletters come in as one of the least expensive forms of content.
Creating content can be tough, especially when you’ve already applied all your best ideas and are thirsty for inspiration. That’s when being subscribed to other creators’ newsletters gives you an ace up your sleeve.
This is the exact purpose of this article: bringing you a list of creative newsletters to make sure you never lose inspiration when creating your own.
Benefits of Using Newsletters in Your Email Marketing
There are a number of reasons why newsletters still work and will be one of the hottest trends to connect with your fans. As the name suggests, newsletters keep your readers updated on your content, just like a good friend who checks on you occasionally. They’re a crucial element of an effective email marketing strategy. Other common reasons include:
- Simple setup. Setting up a newsletter and sending regular emails doesn’t require a complex setup. You can deliver newsletters and manage your multiple inboxes by using email clients such as Gmail, Mailbird, Thunderbird and avoid the need for fancy integrations or SEO optimization.
- Help building credibility. Not everyone can send newsletters regularly. It takes serious work to write, design and be consistent with it. When people discover that you’ve put in the effort to run a newsletter, also known as a digital newspaper, it means you’re a serious and trustworthy creator. Sending regular newsletters compels them over the value you propose and offers you provide.
- Attracting the right audience. People might subscribe to your email list, but this doesn’t qualify them as potential clients. However, a newsletter will filter only those who find your content valuable, leading the rest towards unsubscribing.
- Opening channels of communication. Newsletters function as an encouragement for subscribers to initiate a conversation with you as a creator. Sending newsletters provides them with material to discuss and raises questions you can answer to establish your status as an expert in the field.
- Improving brand recognition. Without a newsletter, it’s difficult to establish a strong brand over your email list. They increase awareness and help you keep customers updated on your brand’s changes and accomplishments.
- Strengthening customer retention. One of the most useful digital marketing facts about emails is that they’re used for increasing customer retention. Newsletters keep customers entertained and connected to the brand, nurturing a solid relationship. Moreover, producing a newsletter costs less than the lost revenue from lost customers.
Whether you’ve already started a newsletter or are considering running one, these reasons should compel you to do so. But what’s next? Inspiration. Being subscribed to these creators will give you plenty of ideas on how to write, structure, and design your newsletters. Let’s take a look at these email newsletter samples!
Read more: What Designers Must Know About Email Marketing - 7 Tips and Tricks
13 Inspiring Newsletters Every Creator Should Subscribe to
Good content is hard to find, so we had to look for active creators who matched the purpose of this listicle. Some are writers and entrepreneurs, and some are filmmakers or designers, but all of them have something in common: creativity. They ship specific newsletters to inform and educate you on the newest trends, and we’ve brought you thirteen of them.
1. Austin Kleon’s Newsletter
screenshot from mailpoet
For nearly a decade (since 2013), writer and artist Austin Kleon has weekly shared a newsletter ripe with cherry-picked internet content combined with personal events, sparking joy and creativity in his readers. His email list has surpassed 100k readers who prefer advice and suggestions on a myriad of topics from productivity to writing, art, and even homeschooling.
The best-selling author of Steal Like an Artist values work made with love and purpose. His newsletters are powerful and thought-provoking as well as beautifully designed by the author himself. Stay in the know of what inspires him and steal some ideas like an artist.
2. Better Marketing
Screenshot from medium
Whether you’re a writer, a marketer, or simply a content creator in another field, you’ll receive valuable tips and the best-performing articles on Medium. Since this is a Medium publication, diverse content creators actively publish and share their experiences there.
The publication curates content that helps creators build an audience, market their work, and earn from it. All articles are recent and share practical advice that most writers have applied themselves, along with proof of results, which makes them inspiring.
3. Monday Musings
Screenshot from convertkit
David Perell is a writer, podcaster, and teacher who runs several newsletters, like Write of Passage Weekly, Friday Finds, and Monday Musings. With hundreds of articles published on his site, he is curious by nature and shares his learnings on Monday Musings. The main topics covered in this newsletter range from entrepreneurship and culture to creativity and writing.
Read by over 72k people, David doesn’t hold back his personal stories and opinions, which makes the newsletter a bit extra but worth reading. This is our only warning, but as for the content, it’s intriguing and inspiring, as David’s curiosity is quite diverse.
4. Startup Resources
Screenshot from startupresources.io
The name speaks for the content of the newsletter itself. Startup Resources weekly sends its subscribers a compilation of the best tools for online marketing and featured articles from successful entrepreneurs and content creators.
The newsletter has accumulated an audience of 2,000 readers so far, and it’s mostly geared towards tech-based startups, although the content is helpful to all types of creators. If a new tool enhances your SEO or increases your rankings, being subscribed to this newsletter means you’ll be one of the first to learn about it.
5. Storythings
Screenshot from storythings
Storythings specializes in content strategies and storytelling, and each week it comes with a newsletter that sums up and links to ten powerful stories that tap the areas of marketing, creativity, and storytelling. Considering that they walk the walk and are not a news media company that prioritizes suggestions based on recency, they share what inspires their staff of multidisciplinary creators.
Those ten handpicked stories vary from a wide array of creators in the communication, media, and marketing fields. It’s pleasing to read and always nicely formatted since the structure is one of their fortes.
6. Check Your Pulse
Screenshot from signum.ai
Sari Azout is a product strategist, design thinker, and venture capitalist dedicated to inventing solutions that make technology more empathic and human. She recently founded a company called Startupy with the intention of gathering links to the most informative parts of the internet.
Before this, she started a newsletter she still runs, Check Your Pulse. It’s dedicated to tech passionates and startups under the slogan “a tech and startups newsletter designed to make you feel human.” It’s short and contains experiences and collections of quotes or fragments from creators and founders who are revolutionizing the industry.
7. Creative Mornings
Screenshot from ezgif
Creative Mornings claims to be one of the largest communities in the world where creative people gather to discuss and share ideas. Present physically in 67 countries and 224 cities, they organize monthly meetings. With so much talent and talk about creativity, a small portion is shipped through their weekly newsletter.
As you can expect from the name, the newsletters revolve around creativity as a process, design, and more. Furthermore, you’ll get links to videos, articles, job openings, and an inspiring quote to top it off. Also, you’ll be in the know of their events so you can physically attend and expand your network with fellow creatives in your area.
8. Filmmaker Freedom
Screenshot from filmmakerfreedom
When it comes to filmmaking, that’s another breed not just any content creator can jump into. In this newsletter, Rob Hardy, a successful filmpreneur, gives his advice and plenty of useful stories for a serious filmmaking career.
Even though the weekly newsletter is focused mainly on filmmakers, almost any content creator can get a practical lesson out of it. Filmmaking is an art that resembles other disciplines of content creation, and Rob explains how everyone should develop their unique voices by sharing what works and what doesn’t across the industry.
9. Marketing Examples
Screenshot from marketingexamples
Marketing is best learned with successful, real-life examples, and Harry helps over 107k marketers around the world improve their game by delivering three short marketing examples, one impressive tweet, and two copywriting tips each Monday. For all of those who want to learn by example, this is undeniably a newsletter worth receiving in your inbox. Most articles and newsletters created by Harry won’t take you more than three minutes to read.
The newsletter was ranked first on the Ahrefs list of best newsletters. This was not accidental, as Harry dissects examples of great marketing from all fields, from business to advertising and even sports or politics.
10. Total Annarchy
Screenshot from campaignmonitor
A digital marketer and WSJ best-selling author, Ann Handley creates fascinating content about business and marketing, including a bi-weekly newsletter where she shares her latest happenings. You can expect the free newsletter to hit your inbox on Sunday morning, packed with advice to market and write better.
After you’ve digested all the advice, you’re given a “shenanigan” at the end of it, which is a funny and engaging nugget guaranteed to make you laugh. Packed with realizations and honest suggestions from her professional life as an author, her newsletter contains blueprints to become a better writer and thinker.
11. Wes Kao’s Newsletter
Screenshot from are.na
Having received many awards, like the Purple Cow Award by Seth Godin, and scaling her cohort-based courses platform, Maven, Wes has plenty of things worth sharing. Her newsletter is presented under the slogan “to make your marketing future proof,” and it revolves around her experiences, learnings, and takeaways from collaborating with brands and thought leaders to build and launch new products.
She also shares her experience working as a consultant and mentor for major brands like Mailchimp and Outlier.org. As a speaker and workshop-building expert, she knows how to captivate an audience.
12. The Writing Rundown
Screenshot from craftyourcontent
As the name suggests, this newsletter is focused solely on writing and helping both aspiring and established writers earn more with their words. As the internet gets cluttered with content and advice, listening to what the true experts say will help you stay apart from the rest. The newsletter brings advice to make engagement easier through your writing and land profitable gigs.
Brought to you by Elisa Doucette, a writer, editor, and founder of Craft Your Content, it’s guaranteed to help you create better-written content and earn from it. She has been featured in well-known magazines like Forbes and the New York Times during her over-two-decades-old career.
13. WePresent
Screenshot from behance
As a content creator, you've probably shared your creations with clients or friends using tools like WeTransfer. The tool is well-known among the creator community for its simple feature to share files instantly. The company regularly sends a monthly newsletter under the name of WePresent (WeTransfer’s editorial platform) to its subscribers that contains mostly images.
That’s because the majority of its audience are designers, photographers, and creators. These images are guaranteed to spark some creativity, regardless of the type of creator you are. Your eyes don’t get tired of scanning long text-based content, and it brings something entirely different that you can consume in less than a minute.
Conclusion
Millions of newsletters are sent each week around the world. The creators who combine them with the best email software and the juiciest ideas hit their monthly goals faster. This is because email isn’t going away anytime soon, and newsletters are the most efficient way to build solid relationships with your audience. They create an intimate space between you and the reader, which allows for more regular consumption of your content.
Subscribing to the newsletters we’ve suggested will spark new ideas and keep you motivated to create solid content. However, this doesn’t mean you should replicate their ideas. Readers want to read content that belongs to your voice, so these newsletters should serve as food to enact your own perspective and views on the hottest stories of the moment.