What’s New

Our in-boxes are jam packed with tons of emails that can be overwhelming at times, but they are an essential tool in modern business. Add to that the buzzy rise of social media, short-form video, and algorithm-driven news feeds that inundate us daily, and one can be forgiven for experiencing information overload. But one communication tool continues to perform across all sectors of business. The powerful, yet simple (or not so simple!) newsletter. And now is the time of the newsletter, a 50-year technology that has become a must-have communication strategy for businesses to engage with their readers. Last year, the newsletter platform Substack raised over $100 million in a funding round that valued the company at over a billion dollars.

For readers, business newsletters are a trusted source of information, relevant on a professional level, that they can use and engage with without the constant stream of bothersome push notifications from an app, ultimately fostering loyalty through personalized, strategic communication.

The process of creating an effective newsletter involves several key factors. Initially, you have to define a clear goal to focus content strategically. You also have to understand your audience, enabling the crafting of personalized content. Using user-friendly newsletter platforms like Mailchimp can simplify design, scheduling and analytics, allowing you to scale distribution professionally.

The HARMAN Luxury Audio monthly newsletter is now seven years young. When Vice President & GM for Luxury Audio David Tovissi first joined HARMAN in February of 2019, he sent out a survey asking customers what they liked and didn’t like about the way HARMAN Luxury Audio was conducting business. One of the common complaints was the lack of knowledge and communication about what was going on with HARMAN and the products that they were developing. David reached out to the Technology Insider Group (TIG) and requested a brainstorming session to determine how to better communicate with customers. The rest is history. Seven years of history to be exact.

Since the newsletter’s inception, my team at TIG reports to David Tovissi on the analytics and customer engagement metrics every month. Before we talk about the HARMAN Luxury newsletter performance, let’s take a look at industry averages from the platform Mailchimp, which is what we use for the newsletter. The average open rate for B2B newsletters is generally between 35% and 45%. While the general average across all industries hovers around 21% to 28%, B2B newsletters historically boast some of the highest engagement metrics on the platform.

When the HARMAN Luxury Audio newsletter began, the first year’s open rate averaged 45%, which was at the high end of industry averages. Not bad. Then COVID hit. Realizing the need to keep HARMAN global distribution and sales channels apprised of what was going on as far as supply chain issues, product release dates, inventory levels, shipping information, etc. David Tovissi realized he already had the perfect megaphone that spanned the globe. His highly successful monthly newsletter.

So, beginning in 2020, the HARMAN Luxury Audio group started reporting weekly via the newsletter platform with timely, relevant information that related to the impact COVID was having on everyone’s businesses. Engagement metrics skyrocketed. And once a month, separate from the COVID impact weekly updates, the usual monthly newsletter also went out with an ever-wider array of writers and contributors. The Meet the Team article (introducing key members of the luxury group’s amazing team), the Dealer Profile article that highlights our wonderful dealers from various regions, the informative Tech Talk article that deep dives into the technology that fuels the engine of sound reproduction, the Training Tips article from HARMAN University that helps your sales team to understand and explain the benefits of our products to consumers, and updates on current events, trade shows, product releases, and one of our most consistent and read monthly articles, From the Audio Files, which lists the incredible amount of press and media attention the group’s array of famous brands is garnering each month – all of these and more got ever wider readership and audience engagement.

By Q2 2020, the average open rate had spiked to over 50% (some of the most critical COVID-related news reached over 70%). By 2023, we consistently were at 55%. 2024 saw our numbers rise to 60%. As of today, our global audience’s engagement clocks in each month at or near an average of 65% open rate. Pretty good!

But David Tovissi, the global team members within the Luxury Audio Group, and TIG think we can do even better. But we need your help. So let us ask a question for those of you who open the newsletter each month. What topics would you like to see us cover? More tech, more product news? Something new or an idea you think might work? What can we do better to improve our communication with you, our global partners, that will make more of an impact on how successful we all can be in this competitive industry. Please take five minutes to think about what else you’d like to see each month and drop David Tovissi an email at [email protected]

And please share the newsletter with all of the members of your team so everyone in your organization can better understand what our mindset is, how our products are designed, how to increase sales with better training and product overviews, and how the world’s media is covering the great brands that make up the HARMAN Luxury Audio Group. Thanks for reading, and thanks for sharing your thoughts.