100 editions of The Beat: Behind the scenes of our interactive marketing newsletter

As you probably know, one of Rock Content’s main goals is to provide relevant content for marketers and brand owners.

We’ve been doing this for over ten years through our blog, social media, courses, and other content formats like Rock Content Magazine and Marketing Backstage.

Two years ago, we decided to deliver not only high-quality content targeting our persona’s main search intents but also weekly news in a marketing newsletter: The Beat.

This week, The Beat reaches its 100th edition, and it’s safe to say we’ve learned a thing or two along the way.

To celebrate this milestone, we’re pulling back the curtain on The Beat to reveal all the details of our newsletter, from our production process to the numbers we’ve achieved over the years.

Another marketing newsletter?

Marketing newsletters are not exactly a new concept. There are hundreds available, many of which are quite good.

So, before The Beat even thought about seeing the light of day (or our readers’ inboxes), we had to answer the question: how can we ensure our newsletter stands out from the rest?

We chose to make The Beat stand out from the crowd with two specific features:

1. The Beat is an interactive newsletter (yes, Rock Content is serious about content experience). Readers can interact with various elements and enjoy an experience that goes beyond written content.

If you want to know more about The Beat’s interactive design process, I highly recommend you read this article.

2. It’s more than just “news for the sake of news.” Besides covering everything that happened during the week, we discuss how each topic impacts your strategies—with insights from our experts on each subject.

Now that you and The Beat have been introduced, let’s start our behind-the-scenes tour.

An overview of The Beat in numbers

To kick off our tour, we’ve gathered some of the most interesting facts from these 100 editions to help you get familiar with our newsletter:

• 2 years of publication
• 100 editions in total, always published on Fridays
• 10,836 subscribers, gained 100% organically

An overview of The Beat in topics

We also analyzed the most frequently covered topics in The Beat and created a word cloud. Here’s the result:

The themes “SEO” and “Marketing” were the most covered over these 100 editions, for obvious reasons. But we’ve also talked a lot about social media, data, and, of course, Artificial Intelligence.

Best editions so far, according to our audience

We might be biased because we love every edition of our newsletter, but our audience has particularly enjoyed three:

#1. Welcome to The Beat: The very first edition at its official launch. We made a lot of noise about the project’s inauguration, resulting in one of the most accessed editions to date.

#83. Influencer Marketing in 2024: This edition featured a comprehensive article with data on Influencer Marketing in 2024, discussed Google updates, and included a full interview with the VP of Marketing at Aircall.

#24. Organic mobile traffic is dropping: This edition was packed with interactive elements like charts, quizzes, and reaction buttons.

Editor’s picks: Best editions of The Beat for Rock Content

I know, I know. When it comes to results, our opinion might not matter much. But as the editor of The Beat, I do have my favorite editions. Here are some of them:

#21. We tested the new Instagram feed in advance: I’m biased not only because I’m the editor of The Beat but also because I wrote the main article of this edition. It is truly amazing: interactive elements, a new podcast episode with the Senior Market Research Manager at SemRush, and exclusive interviews… it turned out excellent.

#28. TikTok now threatens Google: Remember the controversy about Google’s own data showing that Gen Z preferred searching on TikTok over Google? Of course, we covered it.

#50. Our first look into Google Analytics 4: Another edition I tip my hat to. The cover story reveals Rock Content’s behind-the-scenes look at how we were adapting to GA4, while the rest of the edition covers the launch of Bing Chat and the TikTok ban issue in the United States.

#68. 30+ questions, answered: How AI is changing SEO: Finally, the edition where we brought in the Head of SEO at Wix to chat with our VP of Marketing about the future of SEO with the AI boom, answering over 30 questions from our audience. Super informative.

It’s great to look back and see how The Beat has served as an information channel for marketing professionals on key topics over the past few years.

The Beat process: step-by-step for creating an interactive newsletter

As we continue our tour, let me walk you through the step-by-step process of our routine with The Beat.

Today, the newsletter is created by two people on our team: myself, responsible for writing, editing, and distributing the newsletter, and Creative Designer Nayara Medeiros, who designs the newsletter and its visual materials.

This was the initial process we designed, and it has remained pretty much the same until today:

Step 1. Gather the content for the edition

Every Tuesday or Wednesday, I decide which content will be included in the edition.

To create the newsletter content, I consider a few points:

• What topics have we covered on the blog this week?
• Do we have any audiovisual material worth including? For example, podcasts, social media content, or videos.
• Are there any extra interesting content pieces for this edition? For example, interviews or case studies.
• Is there any rich material that could be featured in this edition?

Step 2. Writing the content for The Beat

With that in mind, on Wednesday, I start creating the newsletter content. The Beat has a fixed structure, so I always work within that framework, dividing the content into three parts:

Interactive Experience:

• Title
• Newsletter introduction
• Content: title + author + introductory paragraph
• Interactive elements
• Closing

The content generally follows this pattern:

Email: Unlike most newsletters, The Beat’s content is not presented in the email but within the interactive experience. So, the email serves as an additional distribution point, inviting subscribers to read the full content. It follows this structure:

• Title
• Introduction
• Summary of what the subscriber will find in the edition
• CTA for the interactive experience

We’ve conducted many tests on how this email should look and are always testing changes to increase open rates and, of course, CTR. Today, this format works well.

Copies for distribution: Finally, I also create the copies for promoting The Beat on social media (Instagram, LinkedIn, and Telegram) and via push notifications, including guidelines for captions and creatives.

Step 3. Creating the interactive experience

With the content ready, it’s now in the hands of our Designer.

On Thursday, Nayara builds the entire interactive experience for The Beat (she detailed the process here) and also creates the cards we’ll use for promoting the edition. The result looks like this:

Once everything’s ready, we review each piece, test the links, and I schedule the email and social media posts.

And that’s it! By the first hour of business on Friday, The Beat is fresh in our subscribers’ inboxes!

Corporate Newsletter: The strategies that have worked best for The Beat

Last but not least, let’s talk about some strategies we’ve tested over the past two years that have delivered the best results for us (after all, I know you might want to replicate them in your company, too).

Here we go:

1. Have more than one distribution point for the newsletter

This might surprise you, but email is not the main distribution channel for The Beat today. As I mentioned, whenever a new edition is released, we distribute it across various Rock Content channels.

One of the main ones is right here on our blog: a micro-interactive experience where you can subscribe to the newsletter without even leaving the page. By the way, have you subscribed yet? 

2. Create a special monthly edition for the general leads base

First of all, if you’re thinking about creating a corporate newsletter for your brand, don’t assume your leads base will automatically be your subscribers.

This mistake can seriously harm your newsletter’s performance and even your email domain.

Subscribers need to opt-in to receive your newsletter and genuinely want to receive it. So, send editions only to those who have actually signed up for your content, agreed?

However, this doesn’t mean you can’t invite your leads base to check out your newsletter and, if they wish, subscribe for more content. We did this for a while with “The Monthly Beat,” a special monthly edition of The Beat, summarizing the most important events of the month.

The monthly newsletter was partially accessible (meaning the reader could only see the beginning of the content. To read the rest, they had to subscribe). This action alone doubled our number of new monthly subscribers.

3. Incorporate visual and interactive elements that complement the article

This is the main reason why The Beat is no ordinary newsletter, and I simply love the possibility of creating content that subscribers can interact with.

4. Special editions

We’ve had a few themed editions of The Beat, usually to promote specific material that Rock Content was launching.

Two examples:

#30. Ok, diversity sells. But how about changing the world? An entire edition on Marketing, Diversity & Inclusion, created to promote the sixth edition of Rock Content Magazine with the same theme.

#94. AI Virtual Influencers: We needed to promote the State of Marketing Report, a partnership between Rock Content, HubSpot, and other companies, so we created a special edition of The Beat with insights from the report.

In both cases, The Beat helped boost growth marketing results without losing its essence and objective of providing quality content to subscribers.

Which brings me to my final point…

5. The main and non-negotiable principle: Be relevant

Nobody wants a corporate newsletter that only talks about the company and its products.

The Beat has never been, and never will be, about Rock Content.

It’s about bringing the top marketing and content topics of the week, explaining how each topic directly impacts the lives and strategies of marketing professionals and brand owners, from the perspective of our experts as content marketing leaders.

Yes, it speaks a lot about the brand. It brings awareness, authority, and even growth results. But its content will never be about that. It’s about being truly relevant to our subscribers.

And that’s what makes The Beat so unique, for the past 100 editions, and for many more to come.

And since we’re talking about The Beat, how about subscribing now? There, you’ll find all the trends that matter in the digital marketing landscape. Enjoy!