Industry Dive’s success underlines the potential of b2b email newsletters

Further evidence that email newsletters are a potentially lucrative option for media companies came this week with the news that b2b-focused newsletter publisher Industry Dive is on course to generate between $105 and $110 million in revenue this year.

AdWeek reports that the ten year old publisher has since 2019, seen revenue rise from $29 million to $60 million to $85 million. In 2021 it reported a profit margin of 30%.

The Washington DC-based company runs a series of 53 newsletters serving 22 different industries including pharma, construction, cyber security and foods production. It claims to reach 2.5 million free subscribers through its mix of 25 daily and 28 weekly email products, with an average open rate of 30%.

“For us, the strategy was to find valuable people and aggregate them,” Industry Dive CEO Sean Griffey told AdWeek. “Even though they’re going to be smaller audiences, they will be valuable, and to achieve scale we just had to do that multiple times.”

Newsletter based publishing content to interest both startups and established media companies across the globe. Last year was a strong one for specialist newsletter brands like Axios and Substack alongside both b2b and b2c publishers for whom newsletters are a part of their offering.

The Economist is a brand that is at the vanguard of the revamped newsletter and Sunnie Huang, Newsletters Editor at The Economist UK shared her thoughts on creating compelling email content here.“Industry Dive knows who it is and who it isn’t,” said Brian Morrissey, a media analyst and author of the influential The Rebooting newsletter. “In this industry, there is a lot of noise and a constant temptation to chase shiny objects. Sean and his team have admirably not paid attention to any of that.”