# Newsletter Human Guide

## What This Is For
Use when running an email newsletter as a recurring publication — subject + preview pair, issues that turn opens into clicks, the welcome sequence, cadence and engagement tiering, growth. It gives the agent a clearer input/output frame for email marketing: what context to ask for, what decisions to make, and what usable artifact to return.

Use this as a human-readable version of the Newsletter agent skill. It is meant for marketers, operators, founders, and other non-coders who want the workflow without reading agent-specific implementation instructions.

## When To Use This
- Use this when you need a repeatable process for newsletter.
- Use this when the task needs judgment, examples, constraints, or a clear output format rather than a one-off prompt.
- Use this when you want to hand an AI assistant enough context to produce a usable marketing artifact.

## When Not To Use This
- Do not use this when you only need a quick factual answer.
- Do not use this when the work depends on private data you cannot share with the assistant.
- Do not use this as a replacement for legal, compliance, financial, or medical review.

## What You Need Before Starting
- The goal or business outcome you want.
- The audience, customer segment, or market context.
- Any source material the assistant should respect, such as notes, briefs, examples, URLs, or brand guidance.
- Constraints such as tone, length, channel, deadline, region, or approval requirements.
- A clear definition of what a good final answer should look like.

## Step-By-Step Workflow
1. State the job clearly: "Use the Newsletter guide to help me with..."
2. Add context: audience, goal, offer, channel, source material, and constraints.
3. Ask the assistant to identify missing inputs before producing the final output.
4. Have the assistant follow the skill-specific guidance below.
5. Review the result against the final checklist and ask for revisions where needed.

## Skill-Specific Guidance
- **Payload in the first ~33 characters**; keep the whole subject ~30–50 chars (≈7–9 words) so it survives mobile truncation.
- **The preview extends the subject, it never repeats it.** Its first ~35–50 chars are prime real estate; waste them on a duplicate and you've burned the line.
- **≤2 emojis, at the end, never an all-emoji subject** — an all-emoji subject is the one case that actually trips filters.
- **Deliver the promise (immediate)** — the thing they signed up for, instantly. Sets the expectation that you ship value.
- **Set expectations + best-of (day 1–2)** — what arrives, how often, plus your best past issue so they see the ceiling.
- **The referral ask (day 4–5)** — once they've gotten value, ask them to share (the theSkimm pattern: referral ask *inside* the welcome, not bolted on later).
- **Signup incentive / lead magnet** — a specific, immediately useful asset converts the subscribe far better than "join our newsletter". The asset is what gets shared.
- **RFC 8058 one-click unsubscribe** (`List-Unsubscribe` + `List-Unsubscribe-Post` headers) on every send, plus a **visible footer unsubscribe link.** Both, always.
- **Keep the spam-complaint rate under 0.1%** and never let it reach 0.3%. This is why you sunset, not why you mail harder.
- **Test exactly one element at a time** — subject vs subject, or preview vs preview. Change two and the winner is uninterpretable.
- **Put preview text in the rotation**, not just the subject; it's half the inbox row and usually under-tested.
- The statistical design — sample size, significance, minimum detectable effect — is `../ab-testing/SKILL.md`. This skill tells you *what* to test; that one tells you whether the result is real.

## Decision Points And Nuance
The original skill emphasizes: When NOT to use — route instead, The metric truth after Apple MPP, Issue anatomy — one job per issue, Subject + preview as a pair, Cadence & segmentation, The welcome sequence, Growth loops, Compliance baseline, A/B testing the right way, Anti-patterns.

Use these questions to steer the work:
- What is the intended audience or buyer?
- What source material must be preserved?
- What should the assistant optimize for: clarity, persuasion, accuracy, speed, creativity, or conversion?
- What examples represent the desired quality bar?
- What should the assistant avoid?

## Common Mistakes
- | Open rate | Almost nothing post-MPP | Low — do not target |
- Everything secondary becomes a one-line P.S. or a small "also" block, never a competing button.
- **The preview extends the subject, it never repeats it.** Its first ~35–50 chars are prime real estate; waste them on a duplicate and you've burned the line.
- **≤2 emojis, at the end, never an all-emoji subject** — an all-emoji subject is the one case that actually trips filters.
- **Keep the spam-complaint rate under 0.1%** and never let it reach 0.3%. This is why you sunset, not why you mail harder.
- "A visible unsubscribe line / one-click unsubscribe is noted as required on every send."
- `email-deliverability`, `landing-copy`, `retention` — must win their cases). The
- `capability` case is scored by a judge against its `must_include` rubric: it

## Copy-And-Paste Prompt
```text
Use the Newsletter human guide.

My goal:
[Describe the business outcome]

Audience:
[Describe who this is for]

Context and source material:
[Paste notes, examples, links, or existing copy]

Constraints:
[Tone, length, channel, timeline, must-include items, must-avoid items]

Before producing the final output, ask me for any missing information that would materially improve the result.
```

## Final Checklist
- [ ] The output matches the original goal.
- [ ] The audience and context are reflected in the answer.
- [ ] Important constraints and source material were preserved.
- [ ] The assistant made the relevant decisions explicit.
- [ ] The final artifact is ready to use, review, or hand to the next person.

## Source
This guide was generated from the ericrisco/rsc-harness skill entry for `newsletter`.

## Source Skill Notes
These notes preserve the nuance from the original skill. Use them as supporting reference when the workflow above feels too generic.

# newsletter

Run the newsletter as a **product you ship on a cadence**, not a one-off send. The job is the system around the recurring issue: the subject + preview that earns the open, the issue body that earns the click, the welcome sequence that activates a new subscriber, the cadence and segmentation that keep the list healthy, the growth loops that compound it, and a scorecard that still tells the truth after Apple broke open rates. Every send is one episode of an ongoing show — design the show, not the episode.

## When NOT to use — route instead

| The ask | Route to |
|---|---|
| One-off product launch announcement or campaign drip nurture | `../marketing/SKILL.md` |
| Mail lands in spam; set up SPF / DKIM / DMARC, tracking domain, reputation | `../email-deliverability/SKILL.md` |
| Write the subscribe / opt-in landing page copy | `../landing-copy/SKILL.md` |
| Define the house voice, tone, and vocabulary the newsletter speaks in | `../brand-voice/SKILL.md` |
| Win back / reactivate lapsed *paying customers* (lifecycle, not readers) | `../retention/SKILL.md` |
| Produce the underlying long-form articles the issue links out to | `../content-engine/SKILL.md` |
| Sample size / significance / MDE math for the test itself | `../ab-testing/SKILL.md` |
| Source or scrape new contacts; prospect an un-opted-in list | `../lead-gen/SKILL.md`, `../cold-outreach/SKILL.md` |
| Actually wire the send through an ESP / Gmail API and schedule it | `../email-connector/SKILL.md`, `../google-workspace/SKILL.md` |

You own the *recurring opted-in publication and its open/click/growth system*. The plumbing under every send and the page that captures the signup are someone else's.

## The metric truth after Apple MPP

Apple Mail Privacy Protection pre-fetches the tracking pixel, firing an "open" even when nobody read the email. It accounts for **~49% of all tracked opens** and inflates reported open rate by **~15–35%** on iOS-heavy lists — one beehiiv newsletter jumped from a 28% to a 55% open rate with zero behavior change. So **stop steering on open rate.** MPP does not touch link tracking, which is why the click is now the honest signal.

**Rule: make click rate and non-Apple CTOR the north star, because the click is the one event MPP cannot fake.** Leading 2025 programs removed open rate from decision-making entirely and anchor on clicks.

Calibration benchmarks (2025, cross-industry): average open rate ~42–43% (MPP-inflated, treat as noise), average click rate ~2.1% (range 0.83%–4.90%), click-to-open ~6.8%, conversion ~0.08% (top decile ~0.44%). Use the click figures to calibrate; ignore the open figure as a target.

The scorecard — track these, in this order:

| Metric | What it tells you | Trust |
|---|---|---|
| Net engaged readers (clicked in last N issues) | The list that actually exists | High — steer on this |
| Click rate (unique clicks / delivered) | Did the issue earn action | High |
| CTOR on the **non-Apple** segment | Did the body convert the open | High |
| Unsubscribe rate | Cadence / relevance pain | Medium |
| Spam-complaint rate | Inbox placement risk (gate, not vanity) | High — keep < 0.1% |
| Open rate | Almost nothing post-MPP | Low — do not target |

## Issue anatomy — one job per issue

Each issue gets **exactly one job and exactly one primary CTA.** A second CTA halves the first. Put the hook on the first screen (subject's promise paid off before any scroll), keep the body scannable (short paragraphs, one idea per block, links that read as links), and end at a single button-grade action.

```text
Bad (rambling, no single job, CTA buried):
  Hey everyone! Lots going on this week — we shipped some updates, there's a
  webinar coming, I read a great book, and oh also our pricing changed, plus
  here are five links I liked. Anyway, check it all out when you get a chance!

Good (one promise, one payoff, one CTA):
  This week: the 3-line config change that cut our cold-start by 40%.
  • What it was   • Why the default is wrong   • The exact diff
  → Read the 4-minute breakdown   [single primary link]
```

Everything secondary becomes a one-line P.S. or a small "also" block, never a competing button.

## Subject + preview as a pair

The subject and the preview (preheader) ship together and are tested together — they share the inbox row.

- **Payload in the first ~33 characters**; keep the whole subject ~30–50 chars (≈7–9 words) so it survives mobile truncation.
- **The preview extends the subject, it never repeats it.** Its first ~35–50 chars are prime real estate; waste them on a duplicate and you've burned the line.
- **≤2 emojis, at the end, never an all-emoji subject** — an all-emoji subject is the one case that actually trips filters.
- **The "spam trigger words" list is a myth.** "Free", "guarantee", a normal emoji — these do not sink you; authentication and sender reputation dominate deliverability. Police reputation, not vocabulary; the reputation/auth layer lives in `../email-deliverability/SKILL.md`.

```text
Bad (payload past char 33, preview repeats subject):
  Subject:  We are very excited to finally share our big new feature today!!!
  Preview:  We are very excited to share our big new feature

Good (payload first, preview extends):
  Subject:  Cut cold-start 40% with 3 lines
  Preview:  The default config is wrong — here's the exact diff and why
```

## Cadence & segmentation

Cadence is not one number for the whole list — it branches on how engaged the reader is. This is the decision table: