Newsletter template with the subject line and preheader already written

A newsletter template is usually a layout: a header, some blocks, a button. The layout is not what makes an issue land. This prompt returns the writing, five subject lines with their character counts, a preheader that continues the subject rather than repeating it, three sections that each do a different job, and exactly one ask.

What it gives you back

Run with the issue “we published a study of 98 agency homepages and the thing that surprised us was how many had no author in the markup”, audience “SEO and marketing people who signed up from our free tools”, action “read the study”:

SUBJECT LINES

1. 74 of 88 had no author [26]
2. the byline nobody marked up [27]
3. we audited 98 agency sites [26]
4. what a homepage forgets [23]
5. attribution, the cheapest fix [30]

PREHEADER It is a template change, once, and almost nobody has made it.

OPENING We ran 36 checks against 98 agency homepages and published the raw data. One result was lopsided enough to be worth its own email.

The number that stood out 74 of the 88 sites we could fetch had no clear author in the markup. Not a missing byline on the page, in most cases, but a byline that exists as styled text and not as anything machine readable. It is a template change made once, and it is the cheapest item on any technical list.

Worth reading elsewhere Google’s own guidance on third party SEO tools states plainly that no third party tool has access to its internal ranking systems. Worth reading if you have ever quoted a difficulty score to a client as though it were a property of the keyword.

Our take Attribution is being treated as an SEO nicety at exactly the moment it stopped being one. Systems that summarise pages have to decide whether a source is worth naming, and an unattributed page makes that decision easy in the wrong direction.

THE ONE ASK The full dataset is public if you want to check any of it: [read the study].

SIGN OFF More next week.

WHAT I LEFT OUT

• Dropped the second ask about the free tools, to keep one call to action.
• Assumed the study URL is the destination for the link text.

The two lines read as one

Subject line 1 and the preheader appear together in most inboxes, and reading them that way is the fastest quality check there is:

74 of 88 had no author · It is a template change, once, and almost nobody has made it.

That is two pieces of information in the space most senders use for one, because most preheaders either restate the subject or get filled automatically by the email client with whatever the first line of the HTML happens to be. It is free space and it is almost always wasted.

You are writing one issue of an email newsletter. Output it first, with no
preamble, in this exact order.

SUBJECT LINES
Five options, numbered, each with its character count in brackets. All under
50 characters. At least one must be a plain statement of what is inside, at
least one must be a single concrete noun phrase, and none may be a question
or contain a colon. No emoji.

PREHEADER
One line under 90 characters. It must continue the subject line rather than
repeat or summarise it, because in most inboxes the two are read together as
one sentence. Write the preheader for subject line 1.

OPENING
Two sentences, maximum. Say what this issue is about and why it is landing
now. Never open with a greeting, never with "hope you are well", never with
a summary of what the newsletter is.

SECTIONS
Exactly three, each with:
- A heading of five words or fewer, sentence case.
- A first line that states the point rather than introducing it.
- Two to four sentences of body.
Each section must do a different job: one teaches something usable, one
points at something outside our own work and says why it matters, one is an
opinion or a judgement that somebody could disagree with.

THE ONE ASK
A single call to action, at the end, in one sentence, with the link text
written out. Only one in the whole email. If I gave you more than one thing
I want readers to do, choose the one the others depend on and note the rest
under WHAT I LEFT OUT.

SIGN OFF
One line. Not a paragraph, no postscript selling something else.

WHAT I LEFT OUT
A short list of anything you dropped, anything you would have needed a fact
for, and any assumption you made. Not part of the email.

Rules for the whole thing:

1. The email body must be under 350 words, excluding the subject lines and
   WHAT I LEFT OUT. A newsletter people finish beats a newsletter that
   covers everything.
2. Never invent a statistic, a date, a result, a customer, a product feature
   or a link destination. If a section needs a fact I did not give you,
   write [NEEDS FACT: what is missing] on that line and keep going.
3. No marketing adjectives. Exciting, thrilled, game changing, must read.
4. Write plain sentences that would survive being read as plain text with no
   styling at all, because a meaningful share of your list reads it that way.
5. Do not ask me anything first.

What this issue is about: [THIS ISSUE]
Who reads it and what I want them to do: [AUDIENCE AND THE ONE ACTION]