The Java Weekly Email Newsletter
We’ve published the Java Weekly newsletter for over 10 years now, every Friday.
Naturally, the focus in each instalment is news and updates from the Java community and ecosystem.
Beyond the emails, you can also have a quick look at the Java Weekly posts, here on the site.
You’ll notice that a post with an associated Partner will look like this: example.
When we send a Java Weekly email with a Partner, we’ll share the focus between the instalment of that week and a Partner message.
You’ll see some examples above.
The Full / Targeted Emails
While in a Java Weekly email, the Partner message will share the focus with the newsletter, a Full or Targeted send is dedicated only to the Partner. The only difference between these two types of emails is – the Full send goes out to the full list, while the Targeted email will go out to about 40% to 60% of the list. We do that by will layering in targeting. The goal is to make sure we send the email to people who are quite interested in that particular topic. More on targeting later here. These emails go out once a week at most, either on Tuesday or Thursday.Targeting on Emails
We tag our email subscribers extensively to allow us to build very targeted segments.
As expected, we use these segments on the Targeted emails only. That’s because the Java Weekly email goes out to a predefined segment, and the Full Email goes out to the full list.
Our segments are based on reader interest – essentially what each reader has shown interest in, over time.
Additionally, we layer in engagement metrics as well as other secondary metrics, such as interest in past sends from the same Partner.
Email Copy
You’ll find context about what a typical email looks like in the examples below.
First, we’ll need to decide what the focus of the emails will be – simply put, what we want to promote.
Then, we’ll look at the copy.
What’s important to understand is – the Partner will share an early draft of the copy, but I’ll always rewrite that in my own voice. Sometimes extensively.
It’s also worth noting that the other campaigns are a lot more driven by the team. Here, on email – I’m personally driving the email campaigns, so I do need to really understand (and like) the product.
Audience Sizes and Expected Results
Each type of email goes out to a different segment of our audience and will naturally have different results:
- The Java Weekly Email
- the email is sent out to about ~70K subscribers
- and will get around 700+ clicks
- The Full Email
- the email is sent out to the full list (130K)
- and will get about 1800+ clicks
- The Targeted Email
- the email is sent out to a targeted segment of the full list (usually about 40-60K)
- and will get about 1300+ clicks
The Report – How we track send metrics
We send out the metrics of email send to the Partner through email. The results are composed of:
- number of subscribers that opened the email
- number of subscribers that clicked the link in the email
- number of subscribers who are tagged in the email
Budget info
The budget for an email send, within a campaign:
- Java Weekly – the budget of the Java Weekly send is $1500
- Full/Dedicated Send – the budget of a full send is between $3000 and $4000, depending on the targeting we use