Most lab newsletters share the same shape: a list of recent publications, a note about a conference attended, maybe a photo from a lab outing, sent to a list that hasn’t been reviewed in two years. They get opened once, glanced at, and archived. The labs whose newsletters people actually read are doing something slightly different, and it’s not about better design.
Start with who’s actually on the list
Before touching the content, it’s worth auditing the list itself. A newsletter sent to five hundred addresses scraped from old conference sign-in sheets performs worse than one sent to sixty people who deliberately asked to be kept in the loop: alumni, close collaborators, funders, and prospective students who reached out. Open rates on a small, intentional list routinely beat open rates on a large, stale one, and a healthy open rate is worth more than a large subscriber count that nobody looks at.
Lead with something not on the website
The failure mode of most lab newsletters is that they’re a re-summary of the lab’s about page and recent papers, information a reader could get by visiting the site directly. What makes people open the next issue is something they can’t get anywhere else: a short, specific note from the PI about what’s actually been interesting or frustrating this quarter, a line about a experiment that didn’t work and what the lab learned from it, a mention of where a former student landed. That kind of content takes fifteen minutes to write and does more for engagement than a polished list of publications.
Publications belong near the bottom, not the top
It’s tempting to lead with the most impressive recent paper, but readers who wanted paper announcements already saw them on LinkedIn or X when they were published. By the time the newsletter goes out, that news is old. A short publications roundup near the bottom, as a reference section rather than the headline, respects that the newsletter’s job is to add something the reader hasn’t already seen.
Quarterly beats monthly for most labs
A monthly schedule sounds more engaged, but most labs don’t generate enough real news to fill four newsletters a month without padding, and padded newsletters are exactly the ones people stop opening. Quarterly is a cadence almost any lab can sustain with real content each time, and readers come to expect and trust that each issue will actually have something in it.
Keep the design plain
An elaborately templated newsletter with a masthead and multiple columns takes longer to produce than it’s worth and often renders poorly in half the inboxes it lands in. A plain-text or lightly formatted email, written the way the PI would write to a colleague, reads as more personal and is more likely to be opened on a phone, which is where most people read email now.
One clear next step
Every issue should end with one specific thing a reader could do if the newsletter interested them: reply with news of their own, forward it to a student who might want to apply, check out a new paper. A newsletter with no call to action is easy to read passively and forget; a newsletter with one small ask, kept to a single line, tends to get more replies and keeps the list feeling like a two-way relationship rather than a broadcast.
The measure that actually matters
Subscriber count is a vanity number. What matters is whether people open it and, occasionally, reply. A newsletter with eighty subscribers and a 60% open rate is doing its job; one with two thousand subscribers and a 4% open rate is mostly wasted effort, however impressive the list size looks on a grant renewal.
Common questions
How often should a lab send a newsletter?
Quarterly is the most common cadence that holds up. Monthly is possible only if the lab genuinely has monthly news; forcing a monthly schedule with nothing new to report is how newsletters start feeling like filler and get unsubscribed from.
Who should be on the list?
Alumni, collaborators, funders, and anyone who's expressed direct interest in the lab's work, such as conference contacts or prospective students who reached out. It shouldn't be a purchased or scraped list — a newsletter read by fifty genuinely interested people beats one sent to a thousand strangers.
What email tool should a lab use?
Any standard tool with a free tier for small lists works fine: Mailchimp, Buttondown, or even a well-organized BCC email for very small lists. The tool matters far less than having a consistent list and a habit of actually sending on schedule.
Should the newsletter repeat what's already on the website?
Some overlap is fine and expected, but the newsletter should lead with something not obvious from a quick site visit, like a specific reflection from the PI or a behind-the-scenes note about a project. That's what gives people a reason to open the next one.