How we’re reaching +1 million Americans in their inboxes, every day

By COURIER Team

We recently hit a major milestone for our fast-growing network –  and for the struggling local news industry writ large: we surpassed one million email subscribers. 🚀

Our rapid subscriber growth, which consists of 100% opt-in newsletter sign-ups from a target audience of less politically engaged Americans, is a strong sign that even among less engaged Americans, there remains an appetite for local news — so long as the reporting is packaged and delivered directly to readers in ways that are relevant, engaging, and responsive to their fast-changing consumption habits. The vast majority of our readers across the country are passive news consumers who don’t actively seek out news, and are unwilling to pay through paywalls, but who have found in our local newsletters a product that consistently delivers the relevant information and stories about their community they actually want and are simply not finding anywhere else – and the proof is in the data.

COURIER’s local newsletters receive an average open rate of 47% network-wide, much higher than the media industry average open rate of 34%. We have built strong, trusting audiences in each of our 10 states, in addition to our new suite of national opinion newsletters. Here’s a breakdown of where we have the most readers today:

Here’s why email newsletters are a valuable platform for COURIER and our mission to build a more informed, engaged, and representative America:

• Trust: Audiences can (and do!) reply directly to our local reporters and correspondents, enabling our team to build direct relationships with their most engaged readers. Our Community Editors regularly send our readers surveys to learn more about what news and information they want to see more of, then use that intel to prioritize their reporting.

• Measurement: We’re able to easily capture richer data on who we are communicating with and see how often they read and engage with our content. We regularly run A/B tests and RCTs to measure the impact of our news delivery.

• Ownership: The political, media, and technology ecosystem is changing rapidly before our eyes. Building direct relationships with our audiences is absolutely essential today to cut through the noisy information environment, bypass algorithmic gatekeepers (the big social media platforms), and sustain relationships with our audiences regardless of what social, streaming, or other platforms they move and migrate to over the coming months and years.

• Monetization: As part of COURIER’s diversified revenue strategy that will help us keep growing our reach and impact, we’re excited to be launching our flagship email sponsorship program to mission-aligned advertisers this year. Advertising in email newsletters has emerged as a growing, sustainable source of revenue for media companies across the spectrum, and as the fastest-growing local news network in America, we plan to maximize this market advantage.

Our newsletter vertical ladders up to our overall mission of creating a more informed and engaged electorate, and our testing has proven that newsletters covering local politics can have a material impact on voter participation. In a 2023 study, we tested the impact of newsletters with purely lifestyle news compared to newsletters with lifestyle and local political coverage. The results were strong: we found that folks who received the newsletters that included political coverage demonstrated a five percentage point swing in their likelihood to support candidates who shared their values – and the folks that moved the most had been subscribers for over 8 months, validating our greater hypothesis that when our reporters become the trusted messengers to our audiences for local news, their impact on their civic education and participation can be massive.

And that’s precisely why COURIER exists.

PS, you can sign up for any of our state-specific newsletters on their respective websites here, or find one of our national opinion newsletters here.