Software Development
Technical.ly

Ph.ly News Weekly: one year of sending a local journalism newsletter

We called it the Ph.ly/NewsWeekly and after getting a rush of some 1,500 subscribers to start.

The sign-up page for our now discontinued weekly newsletter. (Screenshot)

One year ago, we announced Ph.ly, a locally-minded URL shortener that was also home to an experiment: a weekly email service that promised to share the three biggest, most meaningful journalism stories in Philadelphia. (Update: We ended this experiment in August 2013. Check out the full archive here.)

subscribersWe called it the Ph.ly/NewsWeekly and after getting a rush of some 1,500 subscribers to start, the service has slowly grown to more than 1,700 weekly subscribers.

Big mistake from my part? The first few weeks I A/B tested by way of keeping the A subject line the same for several weeks. The result was that for a portion of the list early on, Ph.ly ended up in the spam folder. That happens often to new regular lists and we’ve since largely grown out of it, but our strong open rates could likely be even higher.

open-rates

You can see an archive of the recent newsletters and sign up at Ph.ly/NewsWeekly.

Media attention help:

Companies: Technical.ly
Engagement

Join the conversation!

Find news, events, jobs and people who share your interests on Technical.ly's open community Slack

Trending

Where to watch the April 8 solar eclipse in Pittsburgh

How venture capital is changing, and why it matters

What company leaders need to know about the CTA and required reporting

The ‘Amazon of science stores’ and 30 other vendors strut their stuff for Philly biotech

Technically Media