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Newsletters You Should Know: The Hustle
A good newsletter is hard to beat. More importantly, people want quality content they can count on. With a well-written newsletter, marketers can engage subscribers and organically grow their lists.
In our quest to shed a light on our favorite newsletters, we’ll be sharing a different recommendation every time. To kick off the series, today we’ll be talking about The Hustle.
Introducing The Hustle
The Hustle is a daily newsletter providing snackable, quippy news on a variety of professional industries. Tech, stocks, scandals—and basically any other kind of businesses—are included in The Hustle, as long as they’re newsworthy and professionally relevant.
While most of the emails include a few short features, occasionally writers at The Hustle will do in-depth pieces on trends (e.g. “Soylent: What Happened When I Went 30 Days Without Food”) or other relevant stories (e.g. “The Beanie Baby Bubble of ’99“—a comparison of Beanie Babies and cryptocurrency).
By offering different kinds of stories, The Hustle provides a comprehensive news cycle. Readers can quickly scan emails for daily news segments, but occasionally, they are also offered the opportunity to go deep on an idea or story. This keeps the publication fresh for readers.
How it started:
Sam Parr is the founder of The Hustle. But before this newsletter, before Parr built websites, he was just a guy who made businesses. Selling CDs, working on his YouTube, building a hot dog stand—this was his norm.
Then Parr built an internet startup that was later acquired. After the acquisition, Parr decided to create a conference: Hustle Con.
To spread the word about the conference, Parr used email. Friends told friends who told friends who told friends. With an ambassador program to incentivize signups and referrals, plus partnerships and the blog, The Hustle was born.
Who it targets:
Because the newsletter covers a number of industries in its business news, The Hustle is a perfect read for professionals. Still, it should be noted that the voice of the newsletters are dry and snappy—written like a conversation rather than a news story.
With this youthful approach, it’s possible the newsletter is a better fit for millennials and gen Xers, as opposed to readers searching for traditional news media.
Additionally, the newsletter covers tech companies in-depth. For those uninterested in tech, the newsletter could be hit-or-miss.
What you can learn from it:
The Hustle has a wide variety of lessons to teach, both for readers and email marketers.
As a reader
While there are phenomenal tech-industry focused publications available (Wired and Techcrunch come to mind), The Hustle brings a brief selection of easy-to-digest news directly to its readers.
Subscribers can learn about tech, the stock market, and varying global industries, all in a few minutes while checking their inboxes. What’s more, the copy of The Hustle sounds like it’s coming from friends, rather than journalists.
As a marketer
As a marketer, The Hustle teaches a valuable lesson. Email is not only essential for marketing efforts, but it is both effective and lucrative as a business model.
You can quickly and organically grow your following with incentivized signups and referrals. Your subscribers are more likely to be engaged, and engaged subscribers are the first step to a successful email list.
Wrap up
The Hustle is a favorite among professionals—garnering over a million subscribers in less than three years. With a clever strategy, good copy, and quality research, a small team has managed to grow their newsletter into a full-blown business.
Are you thinking about building a newsletter? Already have one? If so, consider how you can incorporate some of the tactics used by The Hustle into your work.
Want to see your favorite newsletter listed here? Tell us in the comments below which newsletters to subscribe to. Or start your own by signing up with Campaign Monitor today.
