I've noticed that my own email newsletter reading habits have changed dramatically as the influx of spam has increased and I have to spend more time battling to keep my in-box "clean" and less time reading the good stuff. Dailies: Forget 'em. Weeklies: Only sometimes when they have killer subject lines. However, strangely I am reading more monthlies now.



I used to sneer at email publishers who were only monthly because I thought in this super-speedy age, who's going to remember or notice you with just one lone email a month? As of today I'm totally reversing my position. If your monthly has true value to the end reader, it's not just self-promotional we-we-we talk, and you make it clear it's a monthly (perhaps in the name or subtitle), then even if your subject line sucks I'll probably open it.



Why? Partially because I'm so grateful you're not clogging my email box with loads of stuff. You're respecting my email time. Also partly because I'm aware that if I delete this one, I gotta wait a whole month for another. It's not "replaceable" with another issue in a few days. It gains inherent value.



My advice now is: If you're doing a newsletter as a marketing tool to impress people, high quality content matters more than frequency. Don't slam out a bunch of good-enough frequent issues. Instead, work on a really-great less frequent issues.