Background

Why a newsletter, and why does it matter?

Lots of praise have been written about email lists. In the case of ecommerce, it is estimated that emails are forty times more effective than social media when it comes to acquiring new customers. In a recent talk at Web Summit, I’ve also heard Mada Seghete (co-founder of Branch Metrics) say that email is still the second best channel to re-engage existing customers (after push notifications)

Furthermore, as fellow Maker and friend Anne-Laure Le Cunff explains in her latest book, Make & Shine, starting your own newsletter can strongly benefit your personal brand, and help position yourself as an expert in your industry.

So, you might be wondering: why did I start a newsletter that is not about me, and that is not about a specific product or online store?

“Building a startup? Build an audience, first.” — Ryan Hoover

Part of the reason is because I didn’t want to sell them anything. I wanted to build an audience, or community really, not for marketing, but for learning. At the time, I was interested in the idea of creating an online store of office accessories for designers, but given that I am not a designer myself, didn’t know much about the way they work and what they need.

So the reason I started the newsletter was to build an audience of designers that I could exchange with, get to know personally and hopefully, uncover their real needs — to later fulfil them with my online store. Or, shall the idea of the online store be a bad one, I could still rely on my audience to test and validate other startup ideas.

Getting Started

Also known as ‘finding a good niche’

“Instead of trying to build a big audience, start by looking for opportunities to help. You see, when you focus on the needs of others, “finding your niche” actually takes care of itself.” — Justin Jackson

Before creating the newsletter, I first needed to find an idea of content that would not only strongly appeal to designers, but solve a problem for them. I therefore joined a few online communities, such as French Designers Club 🇫🇷 to see if I could identify a recurring problem that they have, and that I could solve with a newsletter.

That’s where I noticed that they were regularly sharing new font releases. While I was not familiar with typography at all, I discovered that aside from big platforms like MyFonts.com, there are hundreds of small design studios (type foundries) out there, frequently releasing new typefaces and selling them exclusively on their own online stores. I assumed that keeping track of all these new font releases must have been hard — which the people in the group confirmed. Seemed like I had found a pain point that I could address with my newsletter!

Doing a bit more research, I came up with the concept:

Called Fresh Fonts, it consists of a handpicked selection of brand new, well-crafted typefaces, along with high-quality free fonts and limited-time offers.