Some of my pet peeves with newsletters

There's something uniquely comforting about newsletters. Opening my email app during downtime and scrolling through piles of newsletters is strangely a cozy, intimate experience that no social media platform quite captures.

It's just me, my inbox, and the curated content.

Over the years, I’ve formed plenty of opinions about newsletters. Some are specific to certain publications (which I won’t dive into here). But others are broader observations that have the potential to be useful to those who want to create a better reader experience.

A quick disclaimer: the "data" here comes from a sample size of one—me. So you need to obviously take it with a grain of salt. Also, I’ll keep updating this post whenever I come across new points worth discussing on the topic.

Manageable destination addresses

I don’t track exact numbers, but over time, I’ve subscribed to hundreds—though many have faded away, and I’ve unsubscribed from others for various reasons. Currently, I’m subscribed to at least 50 newsletters.

Despite this, my inbox stays organized, so I can quickly spot any important emails, even after being away for days or weeks.

Here’s how I manage it: I created a dedicated subdomain specifically for newsletters. For instance, if I subscribe to a newsletter called Tasty Food, I use an address like tastyfood@newsletters.domain.tld. A simple Gmail filter keeps all emails to *@newsletters.domain.tld neatly labeled and out of my main inbox.

I also use similar subdomains for other categories, like social media accounts and critical apps. This setup works perfectly. Almost.

Some newsletters are in fact tied to larger platforms, like The Washington Post. There, I created my main account years ago using my @accounts.domain.tld subdomain.

When I subscribed to a few of The Washington Post newsletters recently, they were sent to the “Accounts” tab instead of my designated newsletter inbox. This disrupted the careful organization of my Gmail, leaving that tab cluttered with news updates and causing me to miss some newsletters altogether.

Unfortunately, The Washington Post doesn’t currently offer the option to set different addresses for newsletters—or, ideally, a unique address for each one. And they’re not alone; very few platforms actually allow this.

Some newsletters have text that’s too small

Another common issue with newsletters is small font size. While I understand the design challenges—especially with the varied feature support across email clients—text that’s too small can really be off-putting.

The problem worsens because emails aren’t responsive. So, when I have to zoom in to read, the text often overflows off the screen, forcing me to scroll left and right constantly. This gets frustrating quickly, and I’ve abandoned many interesting newsletters for this reason. I always tell myself, I’ll check it out later on my computer (since I read most newsletters on my tablet), but we all know that rarely happens.

I’m not entirely sure why this issue affects some newsletters more than others, but the best solution seems to be thorough testing across different clients, devices, and platforms—which is daunting just to think about.

Obfuscated links

Many newsletters use links to direct readers to other resources, which is fine—sometimes (more on this below).

However, due to the technical setup of newsletter platforms and the need for analytics, each link is typically generated by the platform rather than pointing directly to the final destination. So, when you see “check this post to learn more” and tap and hold, the URL you’ll find isn’t for the post itself.

This makes it harder to share or save the link for later, which can be frustrating for readers who want a straightforward path to the content.

More content and less links

In essence, newsletters generally fall into two categories: those that provide all their content directly in the email, and those that serve mainly as gateways to external content, with links directing readers to a website.

It might seem that newsletter editors don’t have much choice in the matter. If the primary goal is to drive traffic to a website, the argument for including full content in the email becomes moot. In these cases, the newsletter often ends up looking like a dressed-up list of links, no matter how polished the design is.

I’m not here to tell the creators of these newsletters to change their approach—often, their goals and strategies restrict them.

What I would encourage, though, is this: don’t let your newsletter be merely a collection of links. Consider adding a unique piece of content that stands alone—a small nugget that provides real value on its own. This will give me enough motivation to give you the keys to my beloved inbox — and have me, once in a while, intrigued enough by one of your links to visit your website.

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