[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Is it just me, or is the inbox is the worst ...
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: Is it just me, or is the inbox is the worst place for
newsletters?
Is it just me, or do you believe your inbox is the worst place for
newsletters? Any other medium would be preferable.
Author : ahmd
Score : 109 points
Date : 2021-07-02 11:49 UTC (11 hours ago)
| nkotov wrote:
| I just stopped reading email newsletter in general. Currently
| sitting at 307 emails unread in the newsletters folder.
|
| I have a tab folder that I launch every morning when I drink my
| coffee and prep for the day. It contains HN, local news, tech
| news, several subreddits, and YC related stuff. I wish there was
| a digestible way to gather my top 20 so that I don't manually go
| through all that information while drinking my coffee in the
| morning.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| > I wish there was a digestible way to gather my top 20 so that
| I don't manually go through all that information while drinking
| my coffee in the morning.
|
| You know, it's likely most if not all of that can be fed into
| an RSS reader...
| hollander wrote:
| Facebook was the place for newsletters for me. I didn't do much
| on a personal level, but it was an OK place to follow stuff.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| Not at all. Any other medium would be a blog with RSS.
|
| I set my email up to automatically snooze all newsletters to 8am
| the next day. Every morning I have a bundle. I read most of it,
| skip some, and then I'm done for the day.
|
| The signal to noise ratio is pretty good, and more importantly
| its finite. I honestly can't imagine going back to scrolling
| newsfeeds or refreshing sites throughout the day.
| [deleted]
| deergomoo wrote:
| I don't mind, although I don't get a lot of email. Maybe like 10
| a day, and most of that is just receipts/invoices/confirmations
| which can be immediately archived.
|
| So in fact my inbox is usually about 90% newsletters that I
| haven't read yet.
| andybak wrote:
| So - you don't use email for communication with actual people?
|
| Do you mind me asking roughly how old you are? I would like to
| test my theory that email is generational and it's only the
| over-(insert number here) that still use it as it was
| originally intended.
| conductr wrote:
| FWIW, I'm 41 now and don't use my personal email for much p2p
| comms. Maybe a couple times a year there's a family thread
| about a gathering. My close friends is all SMS. My non-close
| friends is just another FB connection. I don't even have most
| of my friends email addresses. Actually one of my fairly
| close friends I met about 5-6 years ago just asked me for my
| email to forward me something logistics related. Most of my
| comms on over text as banter, check-ins or logistics. Mostly
| logistics since we meet in person most frequently and that's
| where we talk.
|
| I get a lot more email though. I think it's more correlated
| with complexity of your life. Meaning, I started getting more
| email when I owned a home vs renting, then more again when I
| got married, then more again when I had a dog, then more
| again when I had a kid, I'm sure as my kid ages into more
| activities the email volume will increase further. Also, my
| "personal business" generates a fair amount of comms. Like
| hiring contractors, getting bids on things, basically
| anything I pay for that is not a retail purchase requires
| some email traffic. But people like my housekeeper, pool guy,
| and lawn guy I can text them for anything I need to have them
| look at. It's better that way since they don't work at a
| desk.
| oskarc wrote:
| I am not the author of the comment, but I am 19 and only
| communication that I am doing through mail is related with
| support/feedback/employment. Also after I got a job as intern
| webdev (I don't even like it), we've been communicating via
| Slack. Also I saw that friends of mine have Discord/MS
| Teams/Telegram(!) as main communication service in companies.
| So, I am also getting a few mails per day, and most of them
| are invoices, notifications that I don't need to see
| immediately, newsletters, etc.
| deergomoo wrote:
| > So - you don't use email for communication with actual
| people?
|
| Nope! I may be cheating somewhat as I'm not counting work
| communication here, which does involve a decent amount of
| email, but I only access that inbox through a web browser so
| I can easily close the tab and be done for the day. I'm also
| not getting any newsletters to my work inbox.
|
| > Do you mind me asking roughly how old you are? I would like
| to test my theory that email is generational and it's only
| the over-(insert number here) that still use it as it was
| originally intended
|
| I'm 28. All my communication is via messaging apps (iMessage
| for family as we all have iPhones; WhatsApp for almost
| everyone else), so I suspect your theory is probably right!
| andybak wrote:
| Follow up question.
|
| I find the problem with messaging services is that there's
| no central inbox and no decent handling of "unread".
|
| If I get an instant message from someone that I can't (or
| choose not to) respond to immediately, then the chances are
| very high that I'll forget to respond.
|
| But with email it stays in my inbox and I can easily set it
| back to "unread" for extra emphasis.
|
| I find I'm terrible at keeping up with messaging unless
| it's synchronous chatting. Anything asynchronous goes out
| the window.
|
| I suppose I just find everything else lacking in features
| that I've come to depend on in email. I just don't
| understand how everyone else manages.
| deregulateMed wrote:
| I'm on the other side of the issue. I have 10000 subscribers with
| a 0.6% Spam rate. That's technically high, despite me getting all
| emails voluntarily and not even offering a freebie for signing
| up.
|
| Anyway, can't use Facebook/IG/Reddit/Twitter because of the
| algorithm.
|
| Can't email more than 4 times a year due to spam filters. I still
| pay hundreds of dollars a year to reach people via email octopus
| and Amazon.... And it still goes to Gmail spam.
|
| This is not the internet I grew up with.
| mrlatinos wrote:
| Regardless of whether I "consented" or not, I'll mark recurring
| marketing/news/feedback emails as spam in Gmail. This also
| gives me the option to unsubscribe if Gmail finds a link. Much
| easier than seeking out the unsub link myself, so I use this
| even if it's not technically spam.
|
| I do wish Google provided a standalone unsubscribe link. Or
| maybe companies shouldn't hide it in the fine print and make me
| fill out a form and survey. The bad apples ruin the bunch.
| syntheticnature wrote:
| In my Gmail, most such email has a Google-provided
| unsubscribe link right next to the source address at the top,
| e.g.
|
| Spamming Stores <spammingstores@e.spamming.com> Unsubscribe
| deregulateMed wrote:
| The Karen of email.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| How is it that you're limited to 4x/year whereas many vendors
| will happily send me marketing email once a week without issue?
| prawn wrote:
| I get emails through to my GSuite inbox from senders that
| I've marked as spam repeatedly (10+ times). Same from email.
| Same subject style and format. And they still get through.
| Makes me really curious about what they're doing to get
| through.
|
| 90% of the spam that escapes my spam folder is web design
| pitches from email addresses of the format
| firstnamelastname123@gmail.com - always GMail...
| deregulateMed wrote:
| If you are bombarded with emails, you either unsubscribe or
| you let them keep coming. Even if lots of people mark as
| spam, the number of emails not marked as spam greatly
| outnumber the spam emails.
|
| It seems you can either email occasionally or email weekly.
| The current system is not set up for monthly emails.
|
| My content takes weeks to produce.
|
| I'm also a bit skeptical that Gmail treats all domains equal.
| I imagine HBO/Joann Fabrics/etc... has a deal to spam people,
| where I do not.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Not enough people are marking those as spam ...
| boplicity wrote:
| If you're sending just 4 times a year, people will have
| _forgotten_ you when you send them a message. That could be at
| the core of your problem: You send so rarely that people don 't
| even remember signing up for your email list. You've got to
| build and maintain a strong relationship with your subscribers.
| Always provide value when emailing. Stick to your promise (the
| reason they signed up) when emailing. Email often enough that
| they won't forget you. Once a month, at a minimum, and 2-3
| times in the first week after they subscribe.
| deregulateMed wrote:
| I've tried this. It didn't work and I got put on probation.
| jfengel wrote:
| I'm curious: how do you learn your spam rate?
| npteljes wrote:
| I had trouble with this back then. I used a home-baked email
| sender, emails looked good in mail tester and several mail
| clients, and yet, some of my test gmail addresses got the
| email in the Inbox, and some of them in Spam. I have no idea
| what was different.
| mobilemidget wrote:
| And I doubt there is anybody at Gmail/google that actually
| knows.
|
| It's impossible to communicate with their support about it
| anyway
| cinntaile wrote:
| I have a mail address specifically for news letters I subscribe
| to, so it's like a physical mailbox with my subscription
| magazines dropping in every now and then. If the newsletter is
| worth reading, I don't mind reading it in my inbox. The problem
| is that most newsletters are a waste of energy and then the inbox
| becomes a place where the newsletters go to die. Once I notice
| this pattern I unsubscribe from those newsletters. This leaves me
| with an inbox with mostly high quality newsletters.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| I get multiple newsletters in my inbox; some are daily, some
| weekly, some randomly.
|
| It takes no time at all to scan them, decide if there is anything
| useful and then delete, flag to be read or "save to pocket".
|
| I read the more interesting newsletters or linked articles at my
| leisure.
|
| Works perfect for me.
| benfrancom wrote:
| I've found that most places offer the same content in an RSS feed
| as their newsletter. I prefer the terminal newsboat RSS reader
| running in Docker. : https://newsboat.org/
| https://github.com/newsboat/newsboat ...and lynx is also in the
| container for browsing.
| hidden-spyder wrote:
| It is! I now use Kill the Newsletter [0] for those newsletters
| that don't offer an RSS feed.
|
| [0] https://kill-the-newsletter.com/
| tern wrote:
| I recently switched to https://www.hey.com/ for email, which
| provides a dedicated page for reading newsletters.
|
| I didn't like it at first, but after comparing in depth with
| Gmail and Superhuman I prefer the workflow. Having separate
| interfaces for communications, feeds, and automated emails has
| been great.
| theoblank wrote:
| I use HEY for all my personal email now too. I definitely
| believe it's a step in the right direction.
| dash2 wrote:
| I like having newsletters in my inbox. It gives me something nice
| to read among all the spam, work and other junk.
| igammarays wrote:
| No, I prefer my newsletters to my inbox over anywhere else. I
| have an inbox zero workflow, so if I don't have time for in-depth
| item right away, I print it or save a PDF to my iPad reading list
| for later review.
| andymitchell wrote:
| My Gmail plugin is coming from the same pain (I subscribed to a
| ton of great newsletters, but they clutter everything human):
| https://www.getbreef.com . It's just my side project, and it's in
| beta - let me know if you'd like to try it.
|
| It gives desktop Gmail an RSS-esque topic view of your inbox, and
| lets you infinite scroll through emails like you would Twitter or
| Insta.
| brandrick wrote:
| Depends on the type on newsletter I'd say.
|
| I find a lot of newsletters now are just blog posts that yes,
| would be better served elsewhere (especially those with little or
| no web archive/presence). A lot of great writing hidden away I
| feel.
|
| However, curated newsletters with round-ups/link lists, I feel
| are _great_ in email. I can tag them, stick them in a folder, and
| peruse at my leisure. However, if you 're big on RSS this too may
| have limited appeal.
| GrinningFool wrote:
| Somewhat OT - but are there any good technical newsletters where
| the full content is in the actual email?
| ssss11 wrote:
| The marketers believe its best place for their newsletters so you
| gotta convince them why we'll bother looking somewhere else.
| jasode wrote:
| Probably multiple forces affect sending newsletters to email
| inbox:
|
| - Client-side motivation : some users want to use their email as
| the "universal inbox". E.g. They may also send TODOs/reminders by
| sending emails to themselves instead of a separate app for
| alarms. Newsletters are just another stream of info that should
| conveniently go into their universal inbox.
|
| - Publisher-side motivation: email addresses are valuable because
| it's important to "build an audience" outside of centralized
| platforms like Patreon/Youtube/TikTok. RSS doesn't solve the same
| problem because that's a "pull" mechanism instead of "push" like
| email.
|
| If the above factors are unimportant to a particular person, then
| yes, the email inbox is a suboptimal communications channel for
| newsletters.
| Sharlin wrote:
| The absolutely most important reason: everyone has an email
| address. It's not just the least common denominator, it's
| pretty much the _only_ common denominator. RSS practically does
| not exist outside the tech scene.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Everyone having an email address is a false assumption, or a
| bad generalization. There are people among us without one,
| and owning a phone number instead.
|
| I'm not sure along which lines the divide falls though.
| Younger? Less western? Less businessy? It's still possible
| that the people who would be interested in a newsletter are
| the same people who have email addresses.
| easrng wrote:
| If you have a phone number, you probably have an email
| through a SMS/MMS gateway.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| That's interesting, I have never seen that. Is it
| customary or well known in your area?
| Sharlin wrote:
| I used the word "everyone" rhetorically, of course. The
| point is, to a first (and second) approximation everybody
| uses email and nobody uses RSS.
| kazinator wrote:
| The main paradigm in RSS, also, is to make it look like
| e-mail.
|
| Every feed reading mechanism I've ever tried that was usable
| looked like a mail client. Feeds look like mail folders, and
| arriving items look like mail delivery, with UI notifications
| like "Foo (15)" indicating that feed Foo has 15 unread items.
|
| The advantage over e-mail is that it is pull; you don't have
| an RSS identity that can be spammed. Kill a feed and it is
| gone.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > RSS doesn't solve the same problem because that's a "pull"
| mechanism instead of "push" like email.
|
| I don't think that matters. Having somebody add your RSS to
| their reading addresses has basically the same effect as having
| they give you their email and not add you to their spam list.
|
| Email is not exactly push anymore, it stays on a server waiting
| for the user to go there look. Any of them can, and usually do,
| automatically pull data on a schedule and alert the user when
| there's something new. The biggest difference I can see is that
| you and the user do not have to deal with the spam-handling
| problems. If the newsletter is spam, that's a big win for the
| publisher, but if it's not, it's a loss.
| jasode wrote:
| _> Having somebody add your RSS to their reading addresses
| has basically the same effect as having they give you their
| email and not add you to their spam list._
|
| I mentioned "RSS" under the bullet point of _publisher
| motivations_ and RSS being "pull" matters from the
| _publisher 's perspective_ because they _want the email
| addresses_.
|
| With RSS, the publisher's server logs can see users' ip
| addresses (when client RSS readers scan the URL) but not
| users' email address.
|
| Consider a real-life example of a _publisher 's perspective_
| to make this distinction clear and to understand economic
| limitations of RSS:
|
| E.g. Tim Ferris has a blog website.
|
| - https://tim.blog/ <-- main url
|
| - https://tim.blog/feed/ <-- RSS url for the blog
|
| - https://tim.blog/comments/feed/ <-- RSS url for blog
| comments
|
| - https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/ <-- newsletter URL
| requires _email signup_
|
| - (no newsletter RSS url) <-- newsletter _has no RSS option_
|
| ... and Tim Ferris will not allow a RSS url for the
| newsletter because _building his email mailing list_ is the
| _purpose_ of his newsletter. He 's willing to allow RSS
| readers to access the main blog but not the newsletter. This
| selective access is not inconsistent and it makes perfect
| sense if one _understands the publishers ' motivations_.
|
| Luckily for publishers like Tim Ferris, _many users prefer
| their newsletters in their email inbox_ which aligns with
| publisher 's preference to send them there.
|
| (Yes to be pedantic, some hackers can fake out email
| newsletters by using Feedbin's email+RSS bridge mentioned in
| other comments but that's not relevant here because
| publishers don't care about the small minority doing that.)
| andreyk wrote:
| I like it - since I do inbox zero, it makes it easy to see them
| without going to another app.
| troydavis wrote:
| My RSS reader service also provides an email address for email-
| only subscriptions:
| https://feedbin.com/blog/2016/02/03/subscribe-to-email-newsl... .
| I read email newsletters in the same place as RSS. I'm subscribed
| to a few low-volume Twitter searches too
| (https://feedbin.com/blog/2018/01/11/feedbin-is-the-best-
| way-...).
| ajot wrote:
| I use Kill the newsletter for that purpose, as my RSS reader is
| client-side
|
| https://kill-the-newsletter.com/
|
| https://github.com/leafac/kill-the-newsletter
| soheilpro wrote:
| Same here.
| docdeek wrote:
| Looks like a great tool - thanks for sharing.
| davidbarker wrote:
| +1 for sending newsletters to Feedbin. It's a great feature.
|
| The only issue I had once was a newsletter provider who
| required you to reply to an email to confirm you wanted to
| subscribe (which of course you can't do as it's only for
| incoming emails), but I contacted the newsletter owner and was
| approved manually.
| graeme wrote:
| Woah thank you. I was looking for something like this but
| couldn't find the right service. This looks great.
| [deleted]
| Semiapies wrote:
| I do the same thing with Feedbin. It's delightful.
| timmins wrote:
| Same here with Inoreader. Big fan of their service.
| tpoacher wrote:
| My problem is not newsletters. I happily send those to a
| Newsletters folder via a filter.
|
| My problem is companies sending important non-newsletter stuff in
| a way that is virtually indistinguishable from a filter point of
| view to their newsletter emails.
| OwlsParlay wrote:
| This is exactly what RSS feeds were for. In fact Outlook and
| other mail programs support RSS feeds alongside e-mail.
|
| Maybe Google should have integrated Reader into Gmail instead of
| dropping support for it.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| I use an email address provided by Inoreader to get all my
| newsletters along my RSS feeds.
|
| Unfortunately some newsletters are tied to my user account and my
| main email address for some services, so I had to do an email
| forward rule in Gmail for those for them to skip my inbox.
| hansy wrote:
| I can give you some data from my own newsletter [1]. Newsletter
| supports both RSS and Pocket as alternative sources for
| newsletter issues.
|
| ~200 subscribers
|
| ~6% accessed their RSS URL within the last week
|
| <1% authenticated with Pocket
|
| [1] https://funnies.page
| hiidrew wrote:
| One of the features I liked about Hey but as a broke graduate
| student couldn't justify that cost.
|
| Easy to replicate in Gmail though: create a folder/label, filter
| to skip the inbox, mark as read, and go into the desired folder.
| Boom you have a newsfeed specific to your newsletters.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I _need_ everything to go to my inbox, including newsletters. It
| 's the only place I'm guaranteed to look besides SMS and my
| calendar.
|
| Then I just process them together with everything else -- take a
| quick glance at headlines, archive if nothing interesting, keep
| it in my inbox if I want to read it sometime today, label it if
| it seems long and I want to keep it for later reading at leisure.
|
| The _last_ thing I want is yet another delivery mechanism I have
| to check.
|
| If you have a problem with e-mail overload, it's not going to be
| solved by _adding another_ information source. It 's going to be
| solved by tackling it head-on in your e-mail, and there are lots
| of methods.
| ianwalter wrote:
| I'm trying to switch my newsletters over to Feedbin but it's a
| slow process.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Ill take a crowded inbox over the previous system: a crowded post
| box. At least i can throw spam blockers and other tools at the
| problem. Setting roadblocks to catch postal trucks is a federal
| offence.
| moltar wrote:
| I use Kill The Newsletter to sub via RSS to all newsletters I
| want to read.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Different media have different affordances and cultures.
|
| I happen to think:
|
| email is for discussion with people, and occasionally for
| notifications/reminders
|
| chat systems are for talking in near-realtime
|
| Usenet is for long slow public conversations
|
| forums are like Usenet but worse for reading
|
| RSS is for reading periodic content - comics, newspaper articles,
| magazine articles, columns, blogs
|
| Newsletters are clearly periodic content, so RSS is the way.
| jp57 wrote:
| I use NetNewsWire (Mac, IOS) to subscribe to substacks RSS feeds.
| Free posts appear right in the app. You have to click through to
| read subscriber-only posts in the browser. It has several options
| for syncing your feeds' state between devices. (iCloud, Feedly,
| etc)
| SamWhited wrote:
| As others have said, I use an RSS reader for this sort of thing.
| Many newsletters provide a blog/syndicated version anyways which
| I can subscribe to, and there are bridges available. That being
| said, I don't have a bridge so for ones that are only available
| by email I setup filters and put them into folders unless I want
| to read them every single week (in which case I do think the
| inbox it the best place).
|
| If you do decide to go the RSS route, I use
| https://www.inoreader.com and haven't found a better web-
| based/has a phone app one yet. The others I tried were all full
| of nonsense AI that kept bugging me, or weird javascripty fancy
| UIs that broke, or just didn't let me read inline (you had to
| click through to pages). Other recommendations welcome though.
| SllX wrote:
| Yes, which is why I have a rule setup to forward to Instapaper.
| TheFreim wrote:
| myemail+newsletter@example.com
|
| Filter it out so it doesn't get in the way, read them when you
| want to (still generally dislike newsletters in email, rss is
| nicer)
| adamcstephens wrote:
| I filter mine as well, and use Fastmail's snooze to only have
| them show up once a day.
|
| I used to use rss heavily, but it has been many years since I
| regularly checked a client. At least with email delivery I
| don't miss them.
| TheFreim wrote:
| I find that with most newsletters I don't really care about
| what's new or has changed. It's only when I actually need to
| use X product or do Y thing that I like to know what's new.
| This makes RSS nice since I can go weeks and then when I need
| to work on something using a tool I can check the news for
| that item.
|
| It depends, of course. Some things I appreciate having it
| sent daily, others I really don't. There isn't a one size
| fits all solution and that's not a bad thing.
| mvexel wrote:
| Filter by presence of header List-Id takes care of bypassing your
| inbox for most any list-like email.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| I'm a selfhosting nerd so I use Huginn to scrape the newsletters
| from my email and turn them into RSS feeds that I consume by
| converting them into an e-newspaper with Calibre.
|
| I also use ttrss's feature to republish articles via an RSS feed,
| plus Wallabag and it's RSS, to get bundles of long form content
| onto my Kindle.
|
| My Saturday morning ritual is then to open Calibre and download
| the last week's worth of Matt Levine newsletters to my Kindle,
| which I then enjoy on my porch with a coffee.
| kazinator wrote:
| OK, but suppose someone were to scrape newsletters from their
| e-mail and turn them into RSS feeds, just like you do. But
| then, suppose they just behave like a typical RSS user and read
| these with a feed reader. A stereotypical RSS feed reader which
| implements an inbox-like paradigm, where you see feeds as
| folders, which show a count like (3) of new unread items.
|
| What would be the point?
|
| (What you're doing makes sense to you because of the additional
| steps that are enabled, like conversion into e-newspaper and
| whatnot. In _principle_ , at least, a mail client could do the
| same thing, without requiring round trip out to RSS.)
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| > What would be the point?
|
| First, at least IMO, RSS readers tend to have far better
| reading UX since their primary function is consumption.
|
| Second, related to the previous, I prefer the "infinite
| scroll of content" UX of an RSS reader versus the typical
| email paradigm.
|
| Third, it segregates the content so that my email contains
| those things that actually require effort to respond to, and
| not just content I'm consuming.
|
| Fourth, you can blend your newsletters with other content
| published via RSS, creating a unified content feed of things
| you want to read (in my case it's a combination of
| newsletters, long form news articles, blog posts, etc).
|
| Finally, again, RSS is far more convenient for converting to
| other formats like ePub.
|
| Can you get some of these benefits with the right kind of
| email client, filters and config, etc? Probably. But, the
| original post was from someone saying they didn't want to use
| email. So this is an alternative. If you're happy using
| email, keep on keeping on!
| psanford wrote:
| I do something very similar. I've got mx records for a domain I
| own pointed AWS SES which invokes a lambda function that pushes
| the email to my Remarkable 2 e-ink reader.
|
| I also enjoy reading Money Stuff this way.
| ijustwanttovote wrote:
| This is an awesome idea. I should set it up this weekend.
| daxaxelrod wrote:
| I dont know why but this reminds me of the classic HN counter
| argument to Dropbox.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
|
| Maybe there's a webapp here...
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| Oh 100%.
|
| What I'm doing is not for the feint of heart. For me it's as
| much for the joy of the project, though I do really like the
| power and customizability of the stack I've put together. I'm
| also a privacy wonk and I like having full control over my
| data, not to mention the content I'm consuming.
|
| But yeah, I won't claim this is for everyone. But for those
| interested in a DIY project it's working great for me!
| ahmd wrote:
| email newsletter are to me just a "blog posts with email
| notification", they are difficult to filter, difficult to search
| and makes the inbox filled with less important stuff, i think
| there is a gap in the market for some sort of a solution, maybe a
| service that sends all your newsletters to "Notion" so you can
| search them ;) what do you think?
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Feedly has a newsletter feature that I use for a few of my
| subscriptions, but yeah generally I agree. Inbox/Email is for
| people reaching out to me directly, not for general Internet
| things.
| rodelrod wrote:
| Thankfully, Substack provides an RSS feed. If there's no RSS, I
| don't subscribe.
|
| In the future I might try Kill the Newsletter as suggested in
| another comment.
| edisonywh wrote:
| I kept missing my newsletters and that annoyed me to an extent
| where I decided to build my own solution:
| https://slickinbox.com/, Slick Inbox provides you an email that
| you can use to subscribe to newsletters, and the app is built for
| reading newsletters.
|
| There are other services out there like Stoop Inbox, Feedly &
| Feedbin that also does the same thing, but point being that I
| think newsletters are fundamentally different from an "email" and
| thus deserve a special treatment (similar to how Podcasts are
| just RSS feed underneath, but it's fundamentally a different
| product)
| ayush--s wrote:
| I was in the same boat - until I jumped over to RSS feeds using a
| selfhosted Miniflux instance.
| Glench wrote:
| I switched all my email newsletters to RSS newsletters with
| https://kill-the-newsletter.com and my life has gotten so much
| better.
|
| I was inspired by the design of Hey email, whose designers
| reasoned that newsletters aren't really that important, they
| should just be something you scroll through and separate from
| other email which often needs a response.
| long11l wrote:
| I just don't read them, they are.AAL is pointless
| andybak wrote:
| How do I get notified of a new newsletter?
|
| For me my Inbox is the only place I'm guaranteed to visit
| regularly. If a notification is on any other platform then I
| might not ever know about it.
|
| But then - you haven't really explained what you mean. Do you
| mean in terms of rendering? notifications, sharing?
|
| And it depends on your relationship to email vs other platforms.
| Tell us more about your reasoning.
| rodelrod wrote:
| > How do I get notified of a new newsletter?
|
| Not OP but I use Inoreader for RSS. It has push notifications
| in the paid version, although I don't need them, I just open
| Inoreader when I'm in a newsletter-reading mood.
|
| > Tell us more about your reasoning.
|
| The reason email does not work for me is that my email inbox is
| overflowing with a variety of types of communication: business
| emails that require a quick reply, unsolicited sales pitches,
| notifications from several services, personal emails. I need to
| go through each email rapidly and either reply immediately,
| snooze it for later, create an action item in the my to-do
| list, give a quick read and archive or just straight out
| archive without reading.
|
| There's no place in this for "take 40 minutes to leisurely read
| this long-form email". Also the volume of communications is way
| to big to go through all of them and mark them for later
| reading. I imagine I could create rules for all the newsletters
| and send them straight to some folder but then the experience
| is just lacking compared to a dedicated RSS reader.
| andybak wrote:
| OK. (on a side note this is "Inbox bundles" solved elegantly
| in Google Inbox RIP)
|
| Anyway - I too have an overflowing inbox. I used to aim for
| Inbox zero but slipped and am living with it.
|
| One discipline I do maintain though is that the Inbox should
| always be actionable. It's my todo list.
|
| So - how do I handle non-actionable, non-urgent stuff?
|
| 1. If it will be urgent and actionable I snooze it. 2. If
| it's of interest but not urgent and has a web representation
| then I open a browser tab for later.
|
| Newsletters nearly always fall into category 2. Unless I can
| just skim them for interesting links and archive them.
|
| And a lot of the time I unsubscribe - as soon as I realise I
| don't really want to read it. I get most of my news from HN
| or various subreddits.
|
| I think there's about 3 or 4 regular newsletters I tolerate.
| And I'm more tolerant of infrequent emails (new features for
| products I'm interested in etc)
| ghaff wrote:
| The problem with newsletters of all sorts is that they end
| up in some sort of someday (but probably not) category
| whether they're explicitly filtered or not. Sometimes they
| end up in a Gmail tab that I mostly glance at infrequently.
| If I explicitly filter, I mostly stop looking at the
| filtering filter. I admit I used to use RSS a lot but these
| days mostly expect to find plenty of stuff through Twitter,
| HN, etc.
| rodelrod wrote:
| Google Inbox was fantastic, I miss it. Still, not as good
| UX as Inoreader for reading newsletters.
|
| Also, I find it healthy to keep things I *have* to process
| (email, to-do lists) separate from things that I scan for
| interesting stuff when I have a moment to spare (RSS,
| Twitter, HN, Instapaper).
|
| > I think there's about 3 or 4 regular newsletters I
| tolerate.
|
| Maybe you'd be willing to tolerate more if you kept them
| out of your inbox ;)
| kureikain wrote:
| I like email as news letter though. It is decentralize. I can
| read on any platform, anywhere, search going back. flag, move
| them around in my folder however i want
| omegalulw wrote:
| With email you also don't have to check 10 things every day.
| corobo wrote:
| It is not you, RSS etc etc like the other comments
|
| Feedly and Unread (iOS app) are my poison of choice. Lovely
| interface on top of a reliable service.
|
| Unread also does an instapaper-like parse of the article if you
| subscribe to a feed that does that daft excerpt only thing :)
| gherkinnn wrote:
| I use Hey as my main email client and make good use of its feed
| category, a dedicated inbox for newsletters. I wish it would
| offer more "reader" options, but other than that it works.
|
| Works.
| notJim wrote:
| I actually like it. I'm in the habit of checking my email
| regularly, so this allows me to consume the content I subscribe
| to without needing to build a new habit/ritual. Not saying
| everyone has to do things my way, just saying why I like it.
| aethertron wrote:
| My inbox a good place for me to learn about the existence of a
| new issue of something, but a poor place to actually read said
| issues, to keep track of what I've read, and manage a 'library'.
| I want e-reader-like features: - save my place
| - highlighting - annotations
|
| Should these features be added to Gmail? I trow not. Better to
| have these newsletter issues converted to some appropriate format
| and sent to my library, along with my ebooks and saved web pages.
| [deleted]
| vcavallo wrote:
| I set up a newsletters email folder with automatic filtering.
| When I feel like reading newsletters, I go there. Otherwise, I
| don't see them. Sort of the same behavior loop of opening up my
| RSS feed (which, incidentally, is how I'm seeing this post).
| pwinnski wrote:
| It's clearly not just you, based on the other comments, but I use
| my RSS Reader (InoReader) for quicker bits of
| reading/scanning/art/comics, so email works just right for me.
|
| I have filters for each newsletter, so I don't actually think of
| it much as "email," but as "let me go check and see which
| newsletters have new issues to read today now that I have time
| for newsletter reading." Checking just now, there are 18
| individual titles under my "Lists" heading in Fastmail, of which
| six are bold, indicating something new to read.
|
| For me, sending those newsletters to RSS would be a step
| backward, and having to remember to go visit the websites in
| question would be two steps backward, so I guess I'm the target
| market for the status quo!
| hsn915 wrote:
| Newsletters use email because it's much more likely to stay
| operational for longer into the future than any other random web
| service.
|
| It's a source of power.
|
| If they don't have your email, then they can't contact you in the
| future if the platform decides to kick them out.
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