Rebuilding a technical newsletter

The reader

JEOLink is JEOL USA's email newsletter for the community around its scientific instruments: scanning and transmission electron microscopes, electron probe microanalyzers, electron-beam lithography systems, and focused ion beam systems. More than 17,000 subscribers receive it every two months. Their technical depth varies widely, from people new to the field to specialists who run these instruments daily.

The problem

One issue covers nine product lines. A reader who works with one instrument type has little use for the other eight sections. The newsletter is also the main news channel for JEOL USA's Electron Optics division, so a single email has to serve every one of those readerships at once.

The work

I write and produce JEOLink and send it through Salesforce on its two-month schedule. Content comes from the product managers and from JEOL's global teams. The issue is organized by product line, so each reader can go directly to the section about their instrument and skip the rest.

I hand-build the full HTML from scratch and test it in Outlook, Gmail, and Apple Mail before every send.

An email that displays broken does not get read.

The outcome

The newsletter's open and click rates run high, and it drives heavy inbound response. The clearest example: entries for JEOL's monthly image contest arrive through the newsletter, and because I run that contest end to end, I see the volume directly. The exact rates are internal to JEOL, so this page does not list them.

One email serves nine readerships because each reader needs to find only one section.

Next

Case study 02: a paid 13,478-subscriber campaign a predecessor left unused. The inherited campaign.