I worked with independent media organization The Tyee, based in Vancouver, to redesign their newsletters. Since undergoing a rebrand in the previous year, and overhauling the look of their website (something I assisted with), their newsletters needed a fresh, modern take. The Tyee’s growing readership was also attracting more readers under 64 years of age. They wanted to increase this trend and attract a wider, younger audience.

The Tyee identified several problems with the existing newsletters, including that there was little personalization or voice. It offered long lists of story links with only one cover image and no additional context. They had also learned some things from testing different components in their very successful election newsletter, The Run. Overall, their data provided some good starting places for what was and wasn’t working with the existing newsletters.

They had ideas for many different types of reader engagement pieces, so I designed several modules that they could swap in and out as needed. There was a focus on making sure as much content was visible as possible before the scroll and within various device views to maximize clicks and engagement.

The new design saw an increase to the average click-through rate from 7.5% to 8.6%, reaching as much as 11%. The average for the media and publishing industry is only 3.6%. Subscribers have grown from 61,000 to over 68,000 and the open rate has increased by several percentage points as well.

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Role: newsletter branding, design and development