More news about email newsletter
We’ve been sending out the beta version of our email newsletter, Madera News Roundup, for about four weeks now, and we really appreciate those of you who have signed up to receive it.
We hope it provides you with the news you need in a form that’s easy to access. As usual, we encourage you to email or phone us to offer suggestions.
I have been learning new terms to go with the new product.
One of those is “curating” or “curation.” When I first heard them, I thought they were talking about what you do to bacon and hams, but that isn’t the case.
Think curator, as in a museum. You will notice on our newsletter that you have a menu of 30 or more stories from all sorts of sources. The process of curating is to go through all those stories and select those that are likely to be of interest to our readers.
We use stories from our own staff, of course, and also from The Associated Press, of which we are a member.
Our digital editor, or curator, John Rieping, begins his day by searching the digital universe for local and regional stories and videos that he hopes you will find interesting. Then, he places them into the newsletter in such a way that all you have to do is click on a title in blue and it quickly opens up the story, photo and/or video for you.
This system seems to work. We are told the service provider that sends out our email that our “open rate” and “click rate” are very good for an email product.
The open rate measures the percentage of recipients who open the email. The click rate measures the percentage of recipients who click on a link within the email.
Among the all-stars of the email industry, we are told, 24 percent is an average open rate yet our open rate is 39.4 percent. The average click rate is 12 percent, but ours is 37.4 percent.
We have learned that Facebook is going after the click-baiters that use the Facebook facility. Clickbait is a headline that purports to have certain information, but doesn’t deliver it when the headline is clicked upon and its link opened.
Another thing that’s going on is that people are installing so-called ad blockers in their devices to block advertisements that pop up or creep up and block your view of something you might be reading on a website.
You don’t need to worry about click baiting on our email newsletter or pop-up ads. Our headlines are honest. Our ads are there for you to read if you want to. We are trying to make the email experience as close to the printed newspaper experience as we can.
If you don’t get the email newsletter, just email me and say: Sign Me Up. Or you can sign up on this website, by clicking here
