7 Stellar Marketing Newsletters That Will Make You a Better Professional

Newsletters are one of the best-kept secrets in professional knowledge building.

Just think about it – when you find the right newsletter, you’re basically using an expert to serve as a knowledge filter. They show you the most important news in the industry. And they send you the most in-depth helpful articles you need to build your skills.

Smart marketers never did buy the whole “email is dead” thing and so marketing newsletters have always been strong. And there are a lot of great marketing newsletters out there. I’ve been subscribed to most of them – as well as to quite a few I wouldn’t recommend.

In this post, I’ll try to be your “filter of filters” – sharing some of the best marketing newsletters out there.

How I define “Best marketing newsletters”?

As I said, there are a lot of marketing newsletters out there. So how do we define the best ones?

I have a few criteria when choosing what newsletters I dedicate my time to:

• Weekly or less frequent publishing cadence – after all, a newsletter’s main benefit is to curate content for you and save you time. But if the newsletter gets published daily, these qualities diminish. Additionally, guilt builds up whenever you amass more than 10 editions to look back to. Which makes you less likely to return to the newsletter in the first place.
• Serves as a curation tool – I still use an RSS reader to follow my favorite blogs. So a newsletter that only has links to recent posts doesn’t bring me any value. I want to see what content did the expert find interesting enough to share with their audience.
• Has a personal touch – a lot of people focus on the “news” part of “newsletter”. But I love to also focus on the “letter” part. A newsletter arrives in your inbox and feels much more personal than a blog or a social media post. And the best newsletters are even more personal, letting us glance into the thoughts of the author.
• Makes use of personalization – most of the newsletters I read are coming from marketers and brands that know well their target audience. But the best ones also tailor each message to the receiver. A couple of the examples here use personalization to give us amazing content.

The top marketing newsletters in my inbox

Without further ado, here are the newsletters I’d recommend every junior or experienced marketer to follow. I’m listing them in alphabetical order as any other sorting will be difficult for me. 

Almost Timely by Christopher S. Penn

This is a great roundup of links worth checking out in marketing, analytics, data science, and AI. You can always expect the best new content from Chris, as well as a personal letter from him on a topic that’s interesting and (almost) timely.

My favorite thing about the newsletter is the unsubscribe button – a huge technicolor GIF. It’s great proof that Chris believes in the value he brings and is willing to let the people who don’t see that value go.

Growth Hackers

You might already know the Growth Hackers online community and if you do, you know how much content passes through it on a weekly basis. This newsletter brings the top 5 posts from the week as voted by members, as well as some special editor’s picks.

Growth Newsletter by Demand Curve

This newsletter is a “filter on steroids” because the insights in it come from the Demand Curve Slack community. Startup experts and founders discuss not just what the news is but also what it means for all of us.

It covers some interesting insights and adds a growth perspective on top.

Marketing Brew

The Morning Brew is a widely successful online curation tool. And recently the same team got behind creating a newsletter, especially for marketers. It is slightly more focused on big creatives, big brand, and agency life than the other examples. This is great because it provides mere mortals like you and me a look at big strategy.

It is also the only newsletter here that is delivered on a more frequent basis – it comes to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. But the content quality is so good, you need to make an exception.

Moz Top 10

As the name suggests, this is a weekly roundup of the top content on SEO, selected for you by the team at Moz. These guys sure know their SEO so seeing the stuff they read and find valuable will surely up your optimization game. It’s one of these newsletters where I end up clicking almost each and every link they include.

Total Annarchy by Ann Handley

The queen of content marketing sure knows how to create engaging newsletters. She sends hers on a fortnightly basis and you’ll thoroughly enjoy every edition. It includes a long letter from Ann – that’s basically a blog post to any other writer but much more personal. And it also packs a few interesting links about writing, content marketing, creativity, and more.

Zest.is

Zest is an online content recommendation platform by marketers for marketers. Once you subscribe to the platform and start interacting with it, Zest knows what types of content work for you. And you will get a weekly recap with just three links – but all of them will be insanely interesting and tailored to you.

Shameless plug: My very own

It feels so strange to put my newsletter on the same list as the rest of the examples I gave you. I’ll be the first to say I’m nowhere near their level. But I’m bringing curated content pieces around marketing, branding, content, productivity, and leading a more balanced life as a digital professional. Hope you like it!

Bonus newsletters for inspiration

Great marketers are great because they draw on more than specific industry skills. They draw inspiration from the broader world around us. So I suggest you make sure you fill your cup with inspiration and new ideas.

Intelligent Tuesday

A newsletter curated by the team behind The Five Minute Journal brings us a list for balanced living, building gratitude and resilience. With the crazy world around us, I think we can all use a little bit of that.

Creative Mornings

The creative community focused around live events has a great newsletter, too. It’s a mix of pieces designed to boost your productivity and help you lead a balanced life as a creative professional.

Product Hunt

The weekly digest of Product Hunt is a great place to learn what’s hot in the tech and software industry. It will help you find new trends and products that are just on the up.

The Non-Obvious Insights Newsletter

My final suggestion will give you a very different perspective on the world right now. Every week, Rohit Bhargava brings you curious new trends that will make you think. The latest edition covered perfumes that smell like your favorite store or brand of shoes. Curious reading!

Spice up your inbox

My favorite time of the week is Sunday morning. I prepare myself a big cup of cappuccino and I sit with the news of the week. Most of the time it’s like I’m getting a coffee with marketing experts I look up to. And that’s the true power of newsletters.

Let me know if you have a favorite newsletter that I missed!