Why Every Creator Should Have a Newsletter

The Case for Email in 2023

Austin Rief, CEO of Morning Brew, opens with a striking stat: 87.5% of people in the US still use email as their primary form of communication. Despite years of predictions that email would die, it remains the backbone of how people connect. Rief argues that every creator should have a newsletter, not because email is a growth hack, but because it builds an intimate connection with an audience. When someone reads your email, they're in their inbox alongside messages from friends, family, and coworkers — and that proximity creates a level of trust that other platforms struggle to replicate.

Platforms come and go. Algorithms change. But email persists. Rief points out that newsletters also have strong conversion and click-through rates, making them effective for selling products or pushing content over time. Morning Brew's original insight was to make the newsletter itself the product — the goal was for readers to consume the content entirely within email, not click through to a website. That approach worked.

The Three Types of Newsletters

Rief breaks down newsletters into three categories, each with different economics and difficulty: