I launched VentureFizz in July of 2009 and about two months later, I started sending out our weekly email. Over time the email has evolved quite a bit, but the mission remains the same: It's your once a week go-to for staying connected to the Boston tech scene.
When I go to an event and introduce myself, I am still always amazed at how many people say, “Your name appears in my inbox every Monday!” It has been really fun to watch the distribution list grow from what started out as a grassroots effort.
I am proud of the feedback and how people find the content every week incredibly useful. But our design has been outdated. In fact, when we conducted a reader survey a few months back and we had over 600 people share feedback, about one-third of it was related to the weekly email newsletter. It was too long, hard to read on mobile, and unorganized. It was clear that redesigning our weekly email was long overdue, and it immediately became a top priority.
It was good timing, since we had tackled some other important projects. For example, at the end of last year, we launched the new design of our website. Then, we released two new daily emails, Daily Job Alerts and VentureFizz Daily, giving our audience different options to consume our content. (If you don't already subscribe to our weekly or daily emails, subscribe now!)
Having the new emails gave us the flexibility to change the format of our weekly email. After taking a deep dive into the analytics, it was obvious that people were consuming the commentary I write every week at the top. But after that, the CTR dropped significantly.
The new design offers a more visual way of consuming my opening commentary. It still includes other aspects of the email that people find useful, like the Deals section. We've removed the Jobs and Stories sections, since they're a duplication of our new daily emails (Daily Job Alerts and Today’s Top Stories).
We hope you like the new design! If you want to share your feedback, please send me an email or click here to send a message through our site. We’d love to hear from you!
I thought it would be fun to review the evolution of our weekly email and get a little nostalgic. Below are four images of our weekly email through the years. Enjoy!
HELP US SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT THE WEEKLY EMAIL'S NEW FORMAT. CLICK HERE TO SHARE IT ON TWITTER.
Our very first weekly email on September 2, 2009
Our redesign on September 3, 2013
Last week's email on July 5, 2016
And now... today's email featuring our new design!
Keith Cline is the founder of VentureFizz. Follow him on Twitter: @kcline6.