第 334 期书信的现实意义

BoF

本周, 《大西洋月刊》(The Atlantic)的凯特琳-蒂芙尼(Kaitlyn Tiffany)撰写了一篇关于通讯行业历史的报道,内容细致入微,很有价值。历史的长短取决于你问的是谁。对于她的观点,Substack 希望你相信他们的团队开创了这一运动。她正确地认为,他们已经成功地为不同的受众进行了调整。他们很可能会取得巨大的、长期的成功。只要看一眼 Substack 的付费排行榜屏幕,你就会明白作者自始至终提出的观点。她在文章中写道

安-弗里德曼(Ann Friedman)说:"[时事通讯]已经成为一种事物,"她自 2013 年起开始撰写每周时事通讯,拥有 40,000 名订阅者,被公认为第一波时事通讯热潮的领军人物之一。

蒂芙尼的文章在很多方面都与我一段时间以来的一些想法有关。她恰如其分地指出,虽然安德森-霍洛维茨(Andreessen Horowitz)对 Substack 的 1530 万美元投资标志着一个开端,但对于其他群体来说,它已成为让时事通讯 "变酷 "的有用工具。她逐条介绍了通讯行业历史上一些最重要的名字。这份报告值得您花时间阅读。

在九月份的 "Destination D2C"展会的后台,十几位同行聚在一起畅谈职业世界,我们每个人都以自己的方式追求着这份激情。我们每个人都有一些共同点,但最重要的是对直接面向消费者行业的兴趣。现在,凯特琳-蒂芙尼(Kaitlyn Tiffany)在《现代零售》(Modern Retail)杂志的《DTC 兄弟的崛起》(The Rise of the DTC Bro)一书中纪念了这一重要时刻。凯尔-魏斯曼首先发言:

首先是奢侈品时事通讯《Lean Luxe》的创始人保罗-蒙福德(Paul Munford)和网站 2PM 的创始人韦伯-史密斯(Web Smith),后者与 Haus 的创始人兼首席执行官海伦娜-普莱斯-汉布雷希特(Helena Price Hambrecht)坐在一起。然后是 DTC 战略家兼顾问马可-马兰迪兹(Marco Marandiz),他坐下来和大家一起讨论他们的客户。之后,在 Twitter 上自称 "DTC 达人 "的 Nik Sharma 也加入了讨论。

也许,《现代零售业》的记者没有看到的是,在那个场景中,在座的每一位成员都忍受着不相称的拒绝。海伦娜-普莱斯-汉伯瑞希特(Helena Price Hambrecht)是一位著名的直接面向消费者的创始人,她最初是一名创意人员。Hambrecht 本身就是一位沟通大师。

她很快就证明了自己,但对于我们这些在瓶子发货前就认识她的人来说,她已经得到了证明。

但在此之前 Haus推出之前,她共同创立的品牌面临着一场艰苦的战斗。没有人愿意资助她的想法。早期,记者们私下对她的理念和方法大加挞伐。我个人知道,为了完成 100 万美元的种子轮融资,她投了 500 多次。这是一个非常高的失败率。传统风险投资人考虑的因素有:地域、行业、年龄、性别等等。模式匹配提供了安慰和一点保险。Hambrecht 并不符合模式匹配。不过,她募集的下一轮资金将在几天内完成。Haus创始人海伦娜-普莱斯(HelenaPrice)在给 2PM 的评论中写道:

我们的第一个 100 万美元花了 8 个月的时间和大约 500 次推销。我们听到了很多拒绝。我们经历了许多黑暗和怀疑的时刻。话虽如此,但如果你真的相信你所做的东西会有受众,你也会在风险投资中找到这些人。我现在告诉正在融资的人,他们可能还没见过 90% 最终会投资他们的人。你只需不断获得介绍和发送冷邮件,最终就会找到你的人。

她很快就证明了自己,但对于我们这些在瓶子发货前就认识她的人:什么都没变,她已经被证明了。她只是不符合零售业管理者和制造商的想法。至于电子商务行业的领导者或思想家,我们坐在后台的人中也很少有人符合这种模式。马兰迪兹、夏尔马、芒福德和我都不是商业和媒体行业高层资源的原型。在这份业内人士名单上,你找不到我们中的任何一个人。不过,名单上有几位成员订阅了《2PM》或《Lean Luxe》。

在一个对那些不按常理出牌的人的贡献视而不见的行业里,通讯运动提供了一个平台。我们每个人在这一时刻分享的东西都被这段话记录了下来。在成为出版商之前,我们都曾是经营者:创始人、董事、经理、建设者。这些来之不易的经验是推动我们个人项目前进的风。

曾任Hint Water(后为 Vaynermedia)电子商务总监的夏尔马经常与多产的大卫-佩雷尔(David Perell)合作撰稿。芒福德(Munford)的职业是公共关系主管,他在 2PM 推出几个月后就创办了Lean Luxe。马可-马兰迪兹(Marco Marandiz)在推特上发表了对Away和Glossier等DTC品牌的分析文章,一举成名。他在HomeAway负责产品时就开始这样做了。在我为媒体刊物《Gear Patrol》和《Uncrate》管理商务之前,我与他人共同创办了Mizzen + Main。不过,这些资历往往还是不够的。

358225C3-66C6-4B54-894E-979C7563A454 2
Sherrell Dorsey、Dan Runcie、QuHarrison Terry 和 Web Smith

就在三个月前,2PM 还参加了全国黑人记者协会(NABJ) 的专题讨论会,与会的还有成功的(利润丰厚的)时事通讯出版物:The PlugInevitable HumanTrapital。讨论的主题是 "建立付费订阅媒体公司"。但我们不难发现其中的共同点:如果没有通讯受众的临界质量,我们的想法很可能会被传统媒体通过与专业记者的现场或非现场对话进行重新包装。时事通讯出版商努力掌控其观点的传播及其周围的社区。

因此,当我读到《现代零售》的这篇文章时,我并没有感到不快。魏斯曼是一位伟大的作家,他可能没有恶意。但我感到困惑的是,为什么没有人看到我们所做的一切。我不确定许多读者是否理解我们当初坐在那里是多么自豪。就在三年前,那一幕还不会发生。对我来说,那一刻就像是莫大的荣幸。每一次,我们都找到了自己的方法,向竞争激烈的生态系统传递我们实用的、以经验为导向的想法。而在那一天, Yotpo的创始团队认识到了这一切的正确性。这是一个重要的时刻。

前子栈时代

目标:发表 180 封信。重新评估。 2015 年成立的 2PM 公司可谓是雪中送炭。那年 12 月,我不再共同经营 DTC 业务。相反,我开始为出版商提供建议和/或建立电子商务运营。作为一个副业,我创办了2pml.com,以此来对自己负责。

2PM 的主张很简单:了解一切,才能更好地做好一件事。

我想在自己的专业领域做得更好。当时,我只专注于一项任务,导致盲点多于实际进步。因此,我错过了在阅读、思考和认真分析之后获得的实用知识。第一封 2PM 电子邮件发布给了 11 个人;出于需要,我在发出 180 封邮件后将其货币化。建立这家公司成了我的全职工作。

通过了解 2PM 与商业相关的行业如何相互作用,对彼此产生消极或积极的影响,我能够为我所参与的项目规划出最佳步骤--无论当时还是现在。通过 2PM,我希望能为其他行业的同行复制同样的能力。这是个简单的命题:了解一切,以影响那一件事。

如果说蒂芙尼的《有人会靠电子邮件通讯致富吗? [1]一书中可能存在的盲点。现在有越来越多的前经营者把大部分时间花在磨练出版技能上。他们了解商业、营销、品牌、物流和数据科学。他们运送过包裹,洽谈过分销协议,领导过绩效营销工作。而读者似乎也会被这些在围墙内讨论行业的人的原始视角所吸引。无论您是在阅读艾米丽-辛格(Emily Singer)的《Chips and Dip》、马格达莱纳-卡拉(Magdalena Kala)的《Retales》、里奇-西格尔(Richie Siegel)的《 Loose Threads》、珍妮-吉兰德(Jenny Gyllander)的《Thing Testing》,还是保罗-蒙福德(Paul Munford)的《Lean Luxe》,都能感受到运营经验的存在。

运营商优先的出版商

没错,Substack 在其 7 月 17 日的博客 "更好的新闻史"中遗漏了相关历史。当然,他们强调了本-汤普森(Ben Thompson)和杰西卡-莱辛(Jessica Lessin)这两位独立付费订阅行业的名人。但 Substack 可能忽略了另一个趋势。Substack 在向出版业致敬的最后写道

纽约太阳报》创刊至今已有 184 年,我们正站在新闻行业新革命的风口浪尖。哀悼旧媒体模式失落的时代已经过去。现在是展望未来两个世纪的时候了。

这场革命本身并不新鲜。但它正在影响那些寻求平台以推动行业发展的新型思想家。它会让出版商致富吗?也许会,也许不会。但作为一个平台,出版与单独发送新闻简报完全不同。吉兰德刚刚完成了一轮规模可观的天使投资,投资方包括硅谷的众多精英。她的订阅方式新鲜、可信、吸引人。西格尔刚刚成功举办了为期一天的零售业会议,如果没有他的《Loose Threads》时事通讯,这次会议就不会举行。Munford 每次举办Lean Luxe社交活动时都会爆满。虽然这不是一个以订阅者为导向的付费平台(暂时如此),但他已成功地通过每周赞助实现了盈利。此外,2PM正在为商业和媒体高管推出首个会员制论坛:Polymathic。每家公司都面临着巨大的机遇。

运营商优先的出版商时代令人目不暇接。从某种程度上说,它正在为媒体界创造一个公平的竞争环境。但是,在 Yotpo 的豪华会场后厅的一张桌子上,有一群人无疑脱颖而出--无论从字面上还是从形象上。我们的举止与众不同,我们的外表也与众不同。商业相关媒体中的非传统声音正在对传统媒体圈产生积极影响。我们希望,这些由新闻通讯转变而来的平台能继续为成熟的数字行业高层提供新思路。2PM 再次观察到一场来自内部的静悄悄的运动。

点击这里阅读第 334 期策划

Web Smith 报道 Tracey Wallace 编辑 |About 2PM

Member Brief: The DTX Company

The DTX Company is emblematic of the era that we’re in. A new fund – led by former Oath CEO Tim Armstrong – has launched to influence an evolving direct to consumer retail ecosystem. In this report, we take a look at what DTX is hoping to achieve and we suggest an adjusted path forward. Things are changing quickly and DTX has an opportunity to position their fund for where DTC is going. A new cohort of direct-to-consumer brands launches to calculated fanfare, nearly every week. And with each of those additions, the landscape changes. In No. 297, The DTC Industrial Complex we discussed the state of the ecosystem:

本会员简报专为以下人士设计 执行委员为了方便加入,您可以点击下面的链接,获取数百份报告、我们的 DTC 权力清单和其他工具,帮助您做出高水平的决策。

在此加入

第 303 期通讯经济学

On newsletter economics. Perhaps, digital media growth was intended to be slow and methodical. It could be said that the best models for media are devoid of venture capital. Without it, publishers would have to grow their audiences reader by reader, transaction by transaction. For many newsletter-driven media companies, this has been the method. Building a moat around a product once involved volume by way of Facebook and Google; today it means building a world without either. Customer acquisition principles in the realms of direct-to-consumer products and independent media are quite similar. Capital efficiency and acquisition independence are the aims of each industry. The races are long and unceremonious but the benefits of organic growth remain the treasure at the end of the rainbow.

In 2016, WIRED published an article entitled The Blissfully Slow World of Internet Newsletters. In the article, it discusses a few of the pivotal email-driven media publications of this era (2015-2019):

This isn’t a new digital gold mine poised to monetize all our eyeballs. Sure, there are some professional-class newsletters. Ben Thompson’s Stratechery costs $100 a year. Lena Dunham’s Lenny Letter has 400,000 subscribers; theSkimm, a news summarizer, has over 1.5 million. But from what I’ve seen, more newsletters are in the long tail—publishing for audiences from the single-digit thousands to the dozens. They’re engineered not for virality but originality: It’s a chance to listen in while someone thinks out loud.

Today, nearly every major digital publication has a newsletter strategy. Condé Nast just announced that they’ll be launching a new vertical called “Vogue Business.” And they aren’t the only ones. The power of the email medium is two-fold, it’s independent of the aggregators and it helps to develop 1:1 relationships with community members. Stratechery’s Ben Thompson is the authority on aggregation theory. In his view, brands and publishers are not truly safe unless they can operate independently. In today’s member letter, he wrote:

What is clear, though, is that the only way to build a thriving business in a space dominated by an Aggregator is to go around them, not to work with them. In the case of publishers, that means subscriptions, or finding ways to monetize, like the Ringer, beyond text. For web properties it means building destination sites that are not completely reliant on Google. 

The Buzzfeed Lesson

For many in the media industry, “going around” an aggregator means that newsletters are a key component for the hedge against the duopoly of Facebook and Google. In a recent blog post by David Perrell wrote: “Powered by organic distribution, “Need Content” publishers are armed with competitive advantages that cannot be bought on Facebook, Instagram, Google, or Amazon. Brand loyalty, trust and credibility can’t be bought. It must be earned over time.” While Amazon is competing against the duopoly in product discovery, the newsletter media industry and its enablers (Mailchimp, Substack, Memberful) are helping media companies compete for readership loyalty. There are essentially three types of newsletter products:

(1) a newsletter that provides a traffic driver to an existing site. A great example of this is Digiday’s recent foray into a thrice-weekly retail newsletter called the Digiday Retail Briefing led by Hilary MilnesFor Digiday, Milnes and team take extra care to present unique perspectives and exclusive editorials within the email product.

(2) a newsletter that operates as testing ground for future digital verticals. Look no further than today’s news that broke in the Financial TimesVogue Business will start primarily as a newsletter, published twice a week and edited by Lauren Indvik, former editor-in-chief of Fashionista.com. There are 21 employees working on the venture, including six writers. The project is rumored to be a newsletter-driven, B2B media publication for those interested in fashion, beauty, and luxury retail. Like Paul Munford’s Lean Luxe newsletter, the publication hopes to attract the hearts and minds of modern and traditional brand insiders.

(3) The newsletter that is the medium.

Lean Luxe Founder: Paul Munford

While each publication is unique, for media companies like Stratechery, Loose Threads, Lean Luxe, TheSkimm, and 2PM – the primary product is the email. And the economics of these businesses have one similarity – the readers support the product in some way or another. At Lean Luxe, Founder Paul Munford supports his weekly letter by partnering with short-term, audience-focused brand sponsors. These aren’t outside advertisers. Rather, they are businesses that already exist within his ecosystem, amplifying their presence by way of his newsletter feature. Here’s what Munford had to say in a short Q&A with 2PM:

When did you see a need for a newsletter? how do you go about addressing this need?

The newsletter was the priority from day one. I chose this path because I knew that I wanted to own the relationship and have a direct line to the consumer — that that was the most fundamental thing going forward for all companies, media or otherwise.

I think plenty of media co’s are still grappling with this concept, the balance between their true customers and focus being between the end user (and that relationship) versus the advertiser. I never thought that was sustainable and have always viewed that as such a limited business model considering what you can do today as “media” operation, and how your role can now be rethought or rebuilt around that idea of more than just content.

How does your audience support your work?

The audience supports my work by reading, by sponsoring, by spreading the word, by emailing thoughts, tips and ideas. And generally being engaged with the Lean Luxe brand – as limited as it is – in a way that’s meaningful.

Any thoughts on traditional publishers infringing on your space?

No big thoughts really and I mean that.The competition makes me shrug a lot; I like to shrug. They’ll just mostly be focused on content-only products as the big thing, perhaps with some events mixed in. But they won’t bring a distinctive point of view, they won’t be building out an engaged and powerful community, and in many, many places they’ll simply be dropping the ball.

Not remotely worried – especially since I don’t consider media or publishing to be the core competency of Lean Luxe. It’s part of the package, sure, but it’s not the future model and really just serves to spark conversations between folks. For us, media is important, but it’s more of a means to a larger end, not an end goal in and of itself. It’s just a complement to an overall larger thing we’re building.

Lean Luxe also benefits from a few key innovations: a partnership with Lightspeed Venture Capital and a Slack channel that is one of the retail industry’s leading sources of banter and discovery. To receive an invite to the Lean Luxe chat, you must be an active subscriber for several months. And recently, Nike partnered with Lean Luxe to brainstorm new direct to consumer products. Munford’s company has yet to raise any outside capital. In category No. 3 of newsletters, this is in contrast to TheSkimm.

See: The Indie Digital Publisher List

While, TheSkimm has the benefit (and responsibility) of nearly $29 million raised – their profile is still closely aligned with the third type of newsletter product, for now. Founded by Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin, the media company has attracted the attention of many of the titans in the industry, to include: Oprah Winfrey, Sarah Blakely, Google Ventures, Homebrew, and RRE. The original newsletter has provided a platform that now includes its own native app, podcast series, and calendar technology that syncs directly to your calendar of choice so that you don’t miss the cultural events that are important to its readers (I am one of them).

The blissfully slow world of 2pM

For newsletter-driven companies like 2PM growth experience has been slow and methodical. I had the idea for the newsletter in December 2015. Initially, it was for a few dozen or so friends who wanted a digital destination for curiosity and research. We all shared a desire for a distraction-free newsletter that tracked the ways that media, branding, logistics, commerce, and data science were intersecting and amplifying one another. At the time, every publication – regardless of its intended focus – was broadcasting the American political discourse. And between the distraction of politics and the heads-down grind of working in hyper-growth industries – there wasn’t a place that helped guide executives and executives-to-be back to the bigger picture.

What is happening now in the context of everything else? What will happen next? How do we prepare? How do we respond?

I was quietly building 2PM while also focused on operations in the real world – building commerce operations for content providers or partnering content providers with commerce solutions. About two years into the slog of building a worthwhile audience, I launched the Executive Membership at 2PM. By then, 2PM became a 60-70 hour per week job between writing original content, curating meaningful and valuable letters, and updating 20-50 database data points per day. A paid membership allowed the top 10-15 percent of our engaged audience to support the whole. When I re-platformed to WordPress in the beginning of 2018, it allowed me to begin building a suite of tools for members to track commerce and commerce-adjacent industries. And it added a community of industry leaders looking to collaborate and build with one another.

In addition to traditional publishing, I felt that maintaining an operational advantage was important. When 2PM publishes, it is necessary that the perspective is that of an operator within the community, not just an observer. The addition of agency executive Meghan Terwilliger solidified this core tenet of 2PM’s product voice. To amplify this perspective to our published data an editorial, 2PM launched invitation-only Growth Partnerships in Q3 of 2018. This allowed 2PM to partner with leaders of the industry throughout logistics, agencies, brands, and financing.

The primary constraints to growth and sustainability are: audience loyalty, revenue, and retention. Each newsletter addresses these needs in their own ways. As Perrell recently wrote, “content and commerce are converging.” For newsletter-driven media companies, quality and effort are differentiators. Platforms like these can rarely withstand days of failure because the communities are small and value and consistency are the priorities to them.

As the digital publishing industry continues to shed jobs and pivot away from aggregators like Facebook and Google, newsletter media’s principles will influence the traditional media’s largest companies: (1) slow and sustainable growth, (2) community, and (3) subscription-based revenue. Teams will be leaner, capital will be more efficient, and platforms will answer to the community – not advertising partners. The blissfully slow world of internet newsletters may produce the blueprint that addresses digital media’s chief concerns. Namely: who is our loyal audience? And how do we achieve a path to profitability?

Read your No. 303 curation here.

报告人:Web Smith |大约 2PM