Newsletter Writers Editing and Proofreading Services

Two thousand people subscribed because they wanted this. Four hundred and twenty open it. The writing inside is good and almost nobody finds out, because the decision was made in a list view showing about forty characters of subject line and thirty of preview text — and the preview text, on most newsletters, reads "View this email in your browser".

We edit what independent newsletter writers produce — subject lines and preview text, issue openings and structure, section headings and navigation within long issues, sign-up and confirmation copy, re-engagement and unsubscribe messages, sponsorship and paid-issue copy, and the archive pages that show a newsletter to somebody who has not subscribed. Our editors work on seventy characters that decide whether the rest is read.

The subject line and preview text pair is the whole of a newsletter's distribution, and its failure is a subject written alone with the preview left to whatever the template put there. These two are read together and almost nobody writes them together. We work through these so the pair is composed as one unit, with the preview completing the subject rather than repeating it, since a subject that asks and a preview that answers uses both slots and a subject repeated in the preview wastes half the space; so the subject is specific to this issue rather than a series label, because "The Weekly Roundup #47" tells a reader nothing about whether today is worth their four minutes; so curiosity is not manufactured, given that a subject which conceals what the issue contains works twice and then trains people not to open; so the most interesting thing in the issue goes in the subject even where it is the fourth item, as most writers lead with the first thing they wrote; so the length is checked against a phone rather than a desktop, since that is where it will be truncated; so the sender name is the person if the newsletter is a person, because that is the strongest signal in the list view; so the first line inside repays the open immediately rather than opening with housekeeping; and so any issue that is mostly one thing says so, letting the uninterested reader skip today and stay subscribed. Pairs written this way get opened by the people who wanted it.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including drafts, subscriber data and sponsorship arrangements. We are editors rather than email or marketing advisers, and we offer no view on platforms, deliverability or list growth. What we can do is make the two lines work as one.