It’s been a big year so far for The Daily Aus. Whilst the uncertainty of news’ future on Meta platforms has been a big concern for the Instagram-first title, this year has also brought with it a major milestone – 200,000 subscribers to the site’s newsletter.
Behind the scenes, making sure the newsletter hits inboxes each morning is The Daily Aus’ editor-in-chief, Billi FitzSimons, who took over the newsletter at the beginning of 2022, overseeing the stories that make it in and writing the intro.
“To get to 200,000 is absolutely incredible,” FitzSimons told Mediaweek. “As well as how big it’s gotten, it’s also such an engaged audience – as the size has increased, the engagement has as well.”
With The Daily Aus reaching young Australians primarily through social media platforms, a newsletter may not be the first thing that springs to mind when it comes to reaching its target audience. FitzSimons said that she “used to think that newsletters were this archaic thing, and that’s initially the perception that people still have.”
Despite the perceptions, the results speak for themselves.
“For us, the audience loves it because it’s direct communication with us, it’s us speaking to them every day. They respond to us, they email back, and I’m in conversation with them every day.
“With newsletters, all of the news is in one spot. The Daily Aus always says that we try to find audiences where they’re at, and we know that people are at their emails every day.”
FitzSimons said the team are always working to “think of creative ways that we could attract new audiences,” including adding a riddle into the newsletter.
“We got feedback that the audience wanted more riddles, which is why we launched the daily emoji game. That has been massive, in the first month we got 10,000 subscribers just through that game.”
It’s not just ‘Picture This’, the daily emoji game, to which The Daily Aus audience has been responding. The team is currently looking for a launch partner for the upcoming Good News Newsletter, and has added a daily sports newsletter to the mix.
“One morning I asked them to settle an office debate – how do you put your shoes on in the morning? Is it sock, sock, shoe, shoe? Or is it sock, shoe, sock, shoe? We got literally a thousand responses, it was insane how many people felt so passionate about something so simple,” FitzSimons laughed.
“I’m always putting questions to the audience to hear what they think, and they are always responding.”
The Daily Aus will also be catching up with its audience face-to-face at this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival, when co-creators Sam Koslowski and Zara Seidler sit down with ABC’s Leigh Sales.
‘A bit of a threat’: Meta’s Australian move
As a social-first news publication, Meta’s decision not to renew its deals to pay Australian publishers for news content has led to threats that it will pull news content entirely from Facebook and Instagram.
The Daily Aus launched on Meta-owned Instagram and has 549,000 followers on the platform.
“There’s definitely been a push for the newsletter outside of Meta, but we’ve also used the Meta moment to really talk to our audience about what is going on, how it’s a bit of a threat to The Daily Aus, and trying to diversify how our audience finds us,” FitzSimons said.
“A big focus for us at the moment is making sure that no matter what happens, we not only survive, but thrive. That’s why a big focus is on the newsletter – building an audience on Instagram was great, but that was more of a rented audience as opposed to an audience that we own. With the newsletter, that’s an audience that no social media platform can take away from us.”
In March, co-founder Seidler told Mediaweek that if government chooses to “designate” Meta, which would force the tech giant into arbitration with publishers, Meta would likely pull news, posing a significant risk of misinformation and disinformation.
But, she explained, “our fastest-growing revenue channel is actually newsletters at the moment. We’re really going to be pushing as much as we can to strengthen those numbers and those commercial partnerships in the newsletter space, so that we aren’t in a position where we can suddenly have it taken away from us.
“We never want to go down a singular stream. We always want to be platform agnostic.”
When Meta’s decision was announced, The Daily Aus asked its Instagram audience to subscribe to its newsletter. Seidler told Mediaweek that the daily newsletter has 180,000 subscribers, with a 53% open rate.
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Top Image: Billi FitzSimons