Newsletters are these pockets of information that slide into your inbox daily or weekly and provide you valuable information practically for free! Sometimes experts share a valuable piece of advice or links to the articles they are reading. Sometimes brands educate you about regular, daily things such as coffee or plants.
But there are so many newsletters out there… that it's impossible to figure out which ones to skip and which ones to sign up for. My advice is to get a preview into each one and then decide. Look at their archives, reviews or description.
To help you, we have collected 16 newsletters here that help you become smarter.
Check these out to get a daily dose of important news or for weekend reading or just for inspiration to create your own if you want.
Table of Contents
1. Morning Brew
Morning brew is a free, daily email newsletter focusing on the financial advice business news & tech news. It's language is simple to understand and was started with a focus on millennials.
It is delivered every morning, all days of the week. Each email starts with a top section of stock market recap, then a few short sections on the most important business news of the day and finally ends with a small section on lifestyle content.
Fun fact, it was founded by Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief in 2015 when they were students at the University of Michigan.
2. The Hustle
Just like Morning brew, The Hustle also focuses on business and tech news. It just doesn't focus on the stock market but on anything that is informative and newsworthy.
Every newsletter edition, delivered each morning has 4-5 news stories. There is no filler content or words to waste your time. It's crisp, to the point and made for busy professionals. Sometimes, you will find in-depth coverage of a tech news or a tech company. It will be targeted towards professionals rather than millennials.
Fun fact, The Hustle was born because Sam Parr (the founder) wanted to generate sponsorship and referrals for his conference called the Hustle Con.
3. The Skimm
The Skimm is a daily news digest newsletter that caters to female millennials.
The startup founder's aim to start the newsletter was to help people without any expertise in business, tech, or other current events to know more about the topics so they could talk confidently about those topics.
Every email starts with a quote. We like that.
Fun fact, they raised their first round of funding of $60K after being mentioned on The Today Show. Earlier, they had no luck securing any funds.
4. CB insights
CB Insights newsletter is a daily B2B newsletter by the company of the same name (CB Insights). It's moat lies in providing data-driven insights in fun, easy-to-consume formats. The focus is on marketing intelligence, startup ideas, upcoming trends.
The language is edgy and fun. The entertaining tone shows braveness with subject lines like 'Peter Thiel loves millennial blood'. It has turned around the notion that B2B is boring.
Fun fact,CB in CB Insights stand for ChubbyBrain ;p .
5. Brainpickings
Brainpickings is a newsletter run by Maria Popova that features her writing on books, and ideas from the arts, philosophy, culture, and other subjects
It is like a discovery engine for interesting, thought provoking things to read. Worth a read for anyone looking for some stimulation of the heart and mind.
Fun fact, It started as a weekly email to seven friends, before becoming a public newsletter and is now included in the Library of Congress permanent web archive
6. DM Insider
It is a free newsletter that focuses on marketing knowledge. Created by the folks as DigitalMarketer, it is sent weekly on every Monday. Each email has at least 5 tactical marketing ideas such as a template to sort out your content calendar, how to create customer persona guides etc.
They claim that you can read it in less than 7 minutes or less.
Fun fact, when you sign up for the newsletter you get a ton of free marketing guides, reports, scorecards, and audits.
7. SendX
SendX newsletter is all about email marketing. Every email focuses on one theme - engagement, growing the email list, keeping your emails out of spam folders etc. The information is delivered in simple language through short write ups, links to articles or relevant tweets.
SendX is an email marketing platform so they know the trades and secrets of efficiently using email marketing. Hence receiving email marketing directly from them is helpful. It is sent every Tuesday.
Fun fact, Rohan, bearded marketer at SendX, who writes the newsletters never has a subject line ready till the last hour before the newsletter has to go out and then he suddenly comes up with a catchy one. Good job, Rohan.
8. Marketing Examples
Marketing examples is an email newsletter that sends real world marketing examples from successful companies. It has no fixed schedule and is sent sporadically throughout the month. This shows that the author doesn't believe in sending something just for the sake of it or unless there is something really important to say.
Fun fact, Harry Dry, the author studied economics at the university before deciding to learn coding and then get into marketing.
9. Austin Kleon's Weekly Newsletter
Austin Kleon's Weekly Newsletter a newsletter is by the author of the same name - Austin Kleon. As suggested by the name, it is sent weekly and on a Friday. It is a curated newsletter, meaning that there is less original writing but links to posts from other websites. Austin sends a list of 10 things that he thinks are worth sharing — new art, writing, and interesting links etc.
Fun fact, Austin has had varied jobs from working as a librarian, to a web designer, and an advertising copywriter. And he lives in Austin, Texas.
10. 5-Bullet Friday
This is a popular newsletter by Tim Ferris. It is sent every Friday and has 5 links to things that Tim Ferris is loving, using or reading that week. It generally includes books, gadgets, albums, articles, new hacks/tricks.
It also includes snippets about his podcast the Tim Ferriss Podcasts or some advertisements but these don't come in the way of enjoying the newsletter.
Fun fact, there are no archives or blogs of these newsletters. So the only way to get these is to signup.
11. David Perell's Friday Finds
David Perell calls himself “The Writing Guy” & sends three newsletters a week but we like Friday Finds the most out of all three. It is also a curated newsletter, just like 5-bullet friday. It's a good break from the news-obsessed Internet.
He covers a wide-ranging topics to include everything from business writing to architecture to spiritual enlightenment to space travels. It basically helps you become the most interesting person on the dinner table.
Fun fact, a subscriber once described his newsletter as 'an intellectual candy store'.
12. Bottomless
Bottomless is a smart coffee subscription product where you get your next coffee shipment based on the usage and not on any fixed date.
They send an email newsletter once a week that contains information around coffee and brewing such as a guide to coffee jargon, a story about the first cup of coffee, coffee for summers etc.It is a DTC brand so yes,they plug their own products in the newsletter but it also provides value if you are a coffee enthusiast.
13. Mindvalley
Mindvalley sends daily emails but their weekly digest emails are more interesting. Their emails are focused around human optimization.
Weekly digest contains a free masterclass you can watch, a blog focusing on how to be more healthy, wealthy or productive. At the end there is a note from the founder, Vishen Lakhiani.
Each weekly email is visually appealing and has enough content to choose to read or watch further. It doesn't overwhelm you.
14. Canva
Canva is a Saas company and their platform is used to design graphics, presentations, posters, documents and other visual content.
They send an email newsletter every day. Each email has a pitch for using one of the features of their product but also has valuable insights around design work, how to stand out or be creative.
You should check it out even if you are a professional designer.
15. Next Draft
Next Draft is a one-man show. It is run by Dave Pell who sends an email out every day. Each email has 10-12 news pieces, everything from politics to pop-culture.
Every email is written in witty, no-nonsense language that can be understood by everyone. Each section has links to the original, trustworthy articles.
Fun fact, every day Dave starts his day by opening 75-80 or so tabs at a time to pick out what's best for that day's newsletter.
16. Lenny's Newsletter
Lenny's newsletter is a weekly newsletter sent out by Lenny Rachitsky. It has detailed insights & advice on product, growth, management and anything related to office work.
The content is mostly question and answer format. Lenny receives questions from his readers that he answers in his newsletter.
It is highly recommended for product managers.
What's Next?
If you have now been inspired to start your own newsletter, congratulations! You are on to doing something amazing.
It can be scary to start from 1 subscriber but the road to 1000 or 10,000 is not very tough if you use the right tools and strategies. Strategies might depend on the kind of topics you will choose or the speed at which you would want to grow your newsletter but the right tools will be required, whatever you decide.
And one of the most important tools is going to be your email marketing software. Since you are already here, I would suggest giving Sendx.io a try for creating your newsletter.
It's a platform trusted by 3000+ companies and has a simple, intuitive but powerful editor to help you craft that perfect email. It's a perfect place to start building your list with pre-built signup forms.
The starting cost is less than 2 cups of coffee… only $7.49/mo. But that too only after you have tried and tested the platform for 14 days.
There is nothing to lose. Try now for 14-days for free. Without any credit card or lengthy signup forms.
