Essential reading: my top three email newsletters
We all get too much email, but one of its earliest uses has remained popular and effective for decades: the newsletter. Marketers have understood for decades that newsletters, arriving straight into your inbox, can prompt reading and build up much more of a personal relationship than the other feeds competing for our attention.
I’ve been off work for the past few weeks, which has given me the opportunity to explore some different reading. However, I’ve also only had a limited amount of time I can spend keeping up with articles online. I’ve found email newsletters have had a big influence on my reading, in part because they are ‘finishable’, unlike a Twitter timeline.
The three newsletters I’ve kept reading during this time are:
1. Benedict Evans Newsletter
Benedict Evans is a partner at Andreesen Horowitz (‘a16z’), a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley that invests in technology companies. The firm has invested in Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb, Slack, and many tech others, including $57 million in Medium, where you are currently reading this page.
Benedict is a former investment bank equity analyst and mobile industry specialist, whose current role is “trying to work out what’s going on and what will happen next”. His newsletter every Sunday features the stories he found interesting, and explains why they mattered. With around 80,000 subscribers, it’s authoritative, and the one I look forward to the most.
2. Mobile Fix (Addictive Mobile)
Simon Andrews is the founder of addictive! London, an agency/consultancy that helps brands understand how mobile, social and tech are impacting their business. Every Friday morning, Simon’s newsletter covers mobile and social, advertising tech, news and views on GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple) as well as China and BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent).
The newsletter has around 5,000 subscribers from GAFA, venture capitalists, brands and agencies. Deep understanding of mobile, strong opinions about advertising, and great strategic thinking make this unmissable.
3. Exponential View (Azeem Azhar)
The Exponential View newsletter was created by Azeem Azhar to explore how the convergence of a range of exponential technologies brings incredible change to our businesses and society.
Azeem’s premise is that it is impossible to escape technology because as humans we are inextricably linked to it. The objective of his newsletter is to help people understand the issues and become participants rather than spectators.
Exponential View is designed to make you think, and to have challenging conversations. It’s published every Sunday and has around 20,000 readers.
As we come into summer quiet season these will have less content than normal, but you may still want to sign up now for some holiday reading, or with a view to getting back into the swing of things after the holidays.
I’ve got a lot out of each of these and I hope this list helps you discover something new. As Azeem says, have great conversations!
Government newsletters
My top three above naturally reflect my career interest in the internet, mobile and tech in general. Much of this content is also very relevant to my day job in digital government. Of the newsletters that focus more on government topics, my two favourites are:
Ed Vaizey’s weekly newsletter
Ed Vaizey is the UK Member of Parliament for Wantage, and former Minister responsible for the Digital Economy. His team produce a weekly email covering government topics, creative industries, tech and telecoms, as well as a culture slant featuring design, theatre and museums. Despite the very broad agenda this is concisely put together, with a dry sense of humour I appreciate, and occasional references to ‘the UK’s second-most beloved Ed’ (Sheeran). It also includes a section on who has been appointed to new roles.
Strategic Reading weekly summary
My “Best newcomer award” goes to the Strategic Reading weekly summary, which is curated from a UK central government perspective. Topics covered include the future of work, the implications of large-scale automation, and service design. I do find I’ve read most of the articles from my Twitter timeline, because of whom I currently follow. But I still find it useful to subscribe, as the experienced commentary on each piece is insightful and opinionated. The weekly summary is a useful catch-all to make sure I didn’t miss any of the highlights of the week.
