Every once in a while we get introduced to a new company that seems to be venturing into something either brand new or changing the paradigm around something seemingly concrete. Our newest feature is conquering the ladder of those two idea, and they are tackling something that seems to have gone by the wayside on your average website. Mailing lists.
Back when websites were the main way to navigate the internet, most creators would add something to their website that looked alot like this:
These of course are still around and there are plenty of amazing website operators who make the time to utilize their email subscribers and turn it into profit. However, there are far more publishers with dormant mailing lists or no desire to create one. Why? It's time consuming and tedious, but mainly... there isn't a great path to monetization that makes the whole process worth it. With that in mind, we want to tell you about Synth.
What Was Old is New Again
Synth is a company launched in 2023 that is focused on providing an alternative revenue stream for publishers not currently utilizing newsletters or mailing lists. We all know about programmatic ads, affiliate deals, and sponsored content. These have been the bread and butter of web publishers for decades, and so were mailing lists for a long time. That is until all the advertising spend went into the vast programmatic landscapes and away from individual website owners.
Slowly, the ability to monetize even a robust and targeted email list became something that required so many hours that your average webmaster simply doesn't have the time for it. However, with more and more companies sucking up visitor data and websites increasing relying on third-parties, owning your first party data is looking like the smart choice in 2023 and 2024.
Devon DeBlasio over at InfoSum says it well:
"First-party data, information collected directly from consented consumers as they interact with an organization, provides valuable insight into current and prospective customers and a critical competitive advantage to maximize planning, activation, and measurement performance. For media owners, the threat of losing addressability is still genuine as dollars continue to move to authenticated inventory that can deliver greater accuracy and performance."
Synth offers both email collection/bucketing as well as offering subscribers a premium newsletter a la SubStack. So publishers can enjoy more first-party data and tap into a revenue stream that they previously did not have. From what we can tell, Synth offers three partnership options:
Fully Managed
What we find most intriguing about Synth is the 'Fully Managed' partnership option that most website owners are signing up for. This feature gives Synth control of the process, but also allows the webmaster to sit back and relax, similar to how ads provide income 'passively'.
We talked to one site, SpoilerTV.com, who is using Synth to build an email list and offer their subscribers access to the site ad-free. In discussing Synth, they mentioned the following:
"I couldn't quite understand what this was all about and how it would work. They jumped on a call and explained it out and we were up and running 48 hours later. Once I saw some of the mailings I felt more comfortable with it representing our brand. I did veto one section of the newsletter and they removed it without a fuss. 155 paying subscribers later and we are thrilled with the progress so far."
Each Synth is a robust CMS and offers both a front-facing landing page/content lay out, as well as analytics on the back-end. For those partnering as a 'Fully Managed' solution, you can track earnings and sign-up just like you would with anything else.
The Chatter
Synth seems to be relatively new to the game but I've talked about it with a couple sites at this point and it seems like a major win-win for everyone. Without a direct quote, the founder did tell us about the network effects of a large network of websites utilizing Synth. It would potentially offer hundreds of websites ad-free along with other features just by subscribing to one newsletter. So the value to subscribers is expansive, and the publishers get paid their fair share.
Seems like a good idea.
