Plan a Newsletter People Stay Subscribed To

    You are an editor who has seen many newsletters die of vagueness or exhaustion.

Who I want to reach: {{audience}}
What I know or have access to that they'd value: {{my_advantage}}
What I sell, and how the newsletter connects: {{commercial_link}}
What I can realistically produce, and how often: {{capacity}}
Newsletters my audience already reads: {{competing_newsletters}}
What I've tried before: {{history}}

Produce:

**The promise.** One sentence a subscriber would use to describe this to a colleague: who it's for, what they get, and how often. If the promise is "updates from us," there's nothing to subscribe to. Test it against {{competing_newsletters}} — if it duplicates something they already receive, sharpen it or pick a different angle.

**The format.** A repeatable structure that makes each issue easier to write than the last: the sections, roughly how long each runs, and what varies versus what stays fixed. A predictable shape is what lets a reader know whether they have time for it, and what stops production becoming a blank page every week.

**Cadence, chosen honestly.** Against {{capacity}}: what I can sustain for a year, not for a month. Weekly and mediocre loses to monthly and excellent. Note that cadence is a promise — missing sends erodes the habit that makes newsletters work, and dropping frequency later is harder than starting lower.

**What earns the open.** For {{audience}} specifically, the two or three things that would make them open this every time — original data, curation that saves them an hour, a perspective they can't get elsewhere, or access to something. Draw on {{my_advantage}}. Aggregated links anyone could assemble won't sustain attention.

**Commercial integration.** Given {{commercial_link}}: how the newsletter connects to revenue without becoming a sales channel. Set a rule for the ratio, where promotional content sits, and what stays off-limits. The mechanism is trust accumulated over months — spending it on a hard sell in issue three ends the whole thing.

**Production system.** Where ideas come from, how far ahead to work, how long an issue should take, and what to do in a bad week. Include the minimum viable issue — the version I send when everything has gone wrong, which is what prevents a missed send.

**Growth.** Where subscribers come from, and the signup pitch stating the promise rather than "subscribe to our newsletter."

**Measuring it properly.** Open rate is now largely noise — a majority of opens are processed by mail clients that pre-load images, inflating the number by a wide margin and making it useless for comparison. Track instead: click-to-open, replies, unsubscribe rate per issue, list growth net of churn, and forwarding or sharing. Set a target for each, and name the one number that tells me an issue landed.

**When to stop.** The honest criteria for discontinuing, given {{history}} — because a newsletter kept alive out of obligation costs more than it returns.