Opinion

Morning Poll: Should we launch a morning email?

The ARLnow Afternoon Update email newsletter

Some 16,000 of you are big fans of our ARLnow Afternoon Update newsletter, giving us email open rates near the tippy top of industry averages.

The Afternoon Update, for the uninitiated, sends out headlines, links and article previews at 4 p.m. daily, for the past 24 hours of ARLnow content. It is the defacto local homepage for just shy of 10% of Arlington’s adult population.

Our ARLnow Press Club members, meanwhile, also receive an Early Morning Notes email at 3 a.m. daily, with the as-yet unpublished Morning Notes post and a preview of the stories we’re planning to cover that day. The open rate for the Early Morning Notes is even higher, suggesting that our members really enjoy starting their day by getting a quick look at what’s going to be in the local news that day.

Both the Afternoon Update and the Early Morning Notes are no-nonsense, with no cutesy prose or writerly musings to wade through to get the info you want.

Given the above, you might think that we’re maxed out in terms of email offerings. But, not wanting to rest on our laurels, we think there might be room for another — and wanted to get your thoughts on it.

We think some subset of readers would prefer to get their local news entirely in the email, in summary form. Think: Axios.

A possible solution would be a daily 8 a.m. email that has:

  • The entire Morning Notes post
  • AI-generated bullet point summaries of the past day’s articles

An example of the article summaries is below.

AI-generated article summaries

Would this be something you’d be interested in subscribing to if we were to launch it?

Let us know what you think in the poll and the comments.

Author

  • Launched in January 2010, ARLnow.com is the place for the latest news, views and things to do around Arlington, Virginia. Started by a Pentagon City resident who has spent the past several years working in local TV news, ARLnow.com seeks to distinguish itself with original, enterprising, up-to-the-minute local coverage.

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