📩 How to Scale Local Newsletters

Most local newsletters are not getting crushed by competition. They are getting quietly buried by the inbox. You are paying to write for people who never even see you.

Not because your content is bad, but because your sending setup is. If you want local at scale that actually lands, you have to build like someone who expects to send five hundred editions a day without lighting your domains on fire.

In partnership with

Find customers on Roku this holiday season

Now through the end of the year is prime streaming time on Roku, with viewers spending 3.5 hours each day streaming content and shopping online. Roku Ads Manager simplifies campaign setup, lets you segment audiences, and provides real-time reporting. And, you can test creative variants and run shoppable ads to drive purchases directly on-screen.

Bonus: we’re gifting you $5K in ad credits when you spend your first $5K on Roku Ads Manager. Just sign up and use code GET5K. Terms apply.

Use code GET5K now

Architect your sending for local scale: 
- Treat each city like its own product, not just a segment inside one giant list.
- Use separate sending domains per city so one messy market does not tank inbox placement for everyone else.
- Lock in SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for each domain, and watch for sudden bumps in complaints or bounces before they turn into a reputation problem.

Avoid the easy deliverability landmines: 
- Build a simple pre send checklist so the wrong city, wrong segment, or wrong file never leaves the building.
- Stop “reactivating” zombie segments just to see what happens, because what happens is spam complaints and bad engagement that stick to your domain.
- Decide on clear engagement thresholds that kick in automatically, so suppressing or re engaging is a rule, not a feeling.

Run a clean sending formula: 
- Keep your core editorial sends on their own path.
- No cold outreach. No random promos. No one off stunts on the same IPs or domains as your flagship newsletter.
- If you need to prospect or do high risk tests, use separate ESPs or at least separate accounts so any damage stays quarantined.
- Put a small central team in charge of opens, clicks, complaints, bounces, and blocklists, and give them permission to hit pause early.

Grow fast without poisoning the list: 
- When you plug in big partner files or new sources, ramp them in waves instead of dumping them into full volume sends on day one.
- Score new subscribers on early engagement. If they ignore the first few sends, slow them down, then suppress them.
- Aim for growth you can digest every month, not vanity spikes your infrastructure and reputation cannot actually support.

A Framework for Smarter Voice AI Decisions

Deploying Voice AI doesn’t have to rely on guesswork.

This guide introduces the BELL Framework — a structured approach used by enterprises to reduce risk, validate logic, optimize latency, and ensure reliable performance across every call flow.

Learn how a lifecycle approach helps teams deploy faster, improve accuracy, and maintain predictable operations at scale.

Read the Full Guide

*Ad

Make list health beat list size on purpose: 
- Write down the rules for pruning. For example, if someone has not opened or clicked in your chosen window, they move into a re engagement sequence, and if they stay silent, they get cut.
- Accept that your visible subscriber number might drop while your revenue and advertiser interest go up.
- Sell advertisers on engagement: open rates, click rates, and city level performance, - not just a big top line list number.

Streamline monetization with self serve flows: 
- Give local advertisers a way to buy placements without emailing a salesperson.
- A simple storefront style checkout can handle orders, inventory, and payment.
- Let them upload creative, pick dates, and even get light AI help on headlines directly in that flow, so your team only steps in on larger deals or custom packages.

Build daily operating habits that protect your inbox: 
- Review sender reputation, engagement, and complaints on a fixed schedule, not just when revenue dips.
- Document how new experiments are allowed to send, which domains or IPs they can use, and what has to be true before they get promoted to your main lane.
- Treat every local edition as part of one system.
- When you find a fix in one city, decide whether it becomes a non negotiable rule for the entire network.

Audit your email setup this week and cut every list, domain, and send that would not survive at five hundred editions, or be honest that you are fine paying to write to ghosts.

Learn AI in 5 minutes a day

What’s the secret to staying ahead of the curve in the world of AI? Information. Luckily, you can join 1,000,000+ early adopters reading The Rundown AI — the free newsletter that makes you smarter on AI with just a 5-minute read per day.

Sign up to start learning.

*Ad