What Word In Black is learning from launching a national newsletter

Digital startup Word In Black has a lofty goal to reach 500,000 newsletter subscribers in the next two years. With support from the Google News Initiative and Local Media Association, founding members recently agreed to fund three low-cost initiatives to boost newsletter subscriptions. They gained an added benefit from these audience growth initiatives: they generated hundreds of donations and thousands of dollars of reader revenue support for Word In Black.

1. Paid email marketing campaign

Test: Word In Black executed an email marketing campaign targeting nationwide readers in specific interest and demographic categories in two metro areas — Indianapolis and New Orleans. One target was people who had donated to causes, since Word In Black is also growing its base of donors.

Results: The email — a note from the managing director explaining Word In Black and a collection of recent stories — reached a half million inboxes, and was opened more than 16,500 times. It drove a noticeable increase in traffic to the site, but led to fewer than a dozen email signups.

Lessons: The email marketing initiative benefitted brand exposure but not newsletter subscriptions. With future email marketing campaigns, Word In Black could experiment with a more focused message instead of a sampling of content, or consider email sponsors to cover the cost of distributing to qualified email addresses.

2. Facebook lead generation

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