Free Reads! 6 Marketing Newsletters for Your Small Business

Have a little extra time on your hands this holiday? Catch up on your reading with these 6 marketing newsletters, each of which provides insight, direction, best practices, and updates to help you with marketing your small business. And the best part: they’re all free.

1. HubSpot

HubSpot offers dozens of resources for small business owners looking to grow their marketing skills. They have proprietary tools that you can use, many of which are free, and thousands of well-researched articles on their site.

When you sign up for their mailing list, you can choose which topics you’re most interested in, like marketing, sales, customer service, or website management. This control helps you to avoid inundating your inbox with irrelevant articles or insights.

Subscribe to HubSpot for a solutions-based newsletter to guide your future marketing plans. 

2. Moz Top 10

Whenever there’s a new trend or significant change in the marketing world, hundreds of websites publish articles and think pieces on it. The sheer quantity of information can overwhelm business owners who just want to understand what’s going on. This is where the Moz Top 10 comes in. 

Moz’s newsletter hits your inbox semi-monthly and is a top 10 list of the most valuable articles on the web. Because the email is curated every few weeks, the Moz team has time to sort the high-quality articles from the rest.

Consider this newsletter the 10 most important things to know about marketing this month. 

3. eMarketer

Do you love data? Are you comforted by clear statistics that explain ideas and defend claims? If so, then the eMarketer newsletter is one of the best choices to consider. This blog frequently shares original research or works with other brands to share their insights. 

You can choose from a variety of newsletters based on your particular goals. If you’re a visual person, sign up for their Chart of the Day for a key insight into marketing and sales. You can also sign up for a daily insights email into the marketing world.

The eMarketer blog almost always has savvy, high-quality content that can help business owners. Note that the information in this newsletter often shares information that would help big businesses, so you may need to scale a few tips down to your smaller-business size.

4. Sketchalytics

The Sketchalytics newsletter is another top choice if you prefer visuals to long-form content—or at least want a visual to guide your long-form reading. Each Sketchalytics newsletter opens with a brief sketch introducing an idea and guiding the reader through its concept. It also comes with a brief article explaining the sketch in greater detail. This is meant to be a mini-marketing lesson sent to your inbox. 

Sketchalytics is actually part of Ceralytics, a content marketing analytics firm. You’ll find sample sketches on the Sketchalytics portion of the company’s website or click through to their blog to find additional sketches along with a blog post that helps explain each. 

So, how is a sketch valuable? Take a look at the sample sketch which discusses the difference between “source” (how people find your website, like a Google search or via Facebook) and “medium” (categories of your sources, like social media or organic search), both of which show up when you look at your website’s traffic in Google analytics. The simple sketch helps you understand both concepts better and what each says about your site’s traffic, all of which can help you allocate a small business marketing budget more effectively.  

5. Non-Obvious Insights

Rohit Bhargava is the man behind the Non-Obvious Insights newsletter, which pulls interesting stories and provides context into why they matter. The main question this newsletter addresses is why: Why should you read this? Why does this affect you? Why should you care?  If you frequently read newsletter content and find that it doesn’t meet your needs, then you’re reading the wrong newsletters. 

Consider subscribing to the Non-Obvious Insights Newsletter to enjoy Bhargava’s engaging and informative tone.  

6. Please Advise

Please Advise is an ideal newsletter for anyone who doesn’t have the time or bandwidth to read through multiple long-form articles (you know: everyone!). If you want easily digestible information on the go, this is the message you want in your inbox.

Each email comes with 3 elements:

• An interesting and useful graphic
• A quick and actionable marketing tip
• An app or software tool that can help your business 

Please Advise is meant to be read and acted upon quickly—great for business owners who run fast-paced companies and don’t want to get bogged down with irrelevant content. 

Subscribe and Unsubscribe to Different Newsletters

The best marketing newsletter is the one you actually read—if you let your unopened newsletters fill up your inbox, then you’re only creating clutter and stress for your mind. Set aside time each day to read the newsletters that come through your email. If you don’t have time to read each one, look for a newsletter that is shorter or arrives less frequently. 

It’s OK to unsubscribe from email newsletters that don’t provide any value to you, too. Choose what’s right for your business today and look for resources that can help you to improve your marketing efforts. 

Disclaimer: The information provided in this post does not, and is not intended to, constitute business, legal, tax, or accounting advice and is provided for general informational purposes only. Readers should contact their attorney, business advisor, or tax advisor to obtain advice on any particular matter.