Inbox Over Homepage: Why Newsletters Are the New PR Power Play

There was a time—not that long ago—when the holy grail of PR was a top-tier media hit. Get your client in TechCrunch, the Wall Street Journal, or Bloomberg  and your work week was basically done by Tuesday. If it was behind a paywall? Even better. Look how exclusive we are.

But lately? We’re not hearing our clients ask us to chase the TechCrunch’s of the world as much as they used to. And the demand for the usual suspects—paywalled outlets, legacy digital media, prestige for prestige’s sake—is drying up faster than a Twitter acquisition.

Instead, we’re seeing a very different kind of request: “Can you get us into [insert newsletter with a goofy name but surprisingly high open rate]?” Whether it’s Morning Brew, Axios, or a niche Substack run by someone who writes in lowercase and lives in spreadsheets, our clients want to be where their target audience actually is—the inbox.

And they’re right.

The Decline of the Homepage Hit

The homepage is catatonic. No one is typing in URLs anymore. Your client’s target customer isn’t checking the front page of a tech site every morning—they’re scanning their inbox while pretending to listen on a Zoom call.

Even if you do land a feature in a top-tier outlet, good luck getting eyes on it. Between the paywalls, autoplay ads, and SEO-driven headlines, most readers drop off before the first quote.

Don’t get us wrong, brand affiliation to the WSJ or Techcrunch still matter, and so do exclusives and reporter relationships, it’s just that people are getting their news in different ways now. A summary notification on their phone, a contextualized newsletter to their inbox, a Twitter thread. 

Clicks don’t always mean conversions. Impressions don’t always mean influence. What’s working now is specificity—and that’s exactly what newsletters deliver.

Newsletters: Niche, Loyal, Effective

Let’s be honest: most newsletters feel like a group chat you weren’t cool enough to be invited to. But that’s the point. The tone is personal. The audience is loyal. And the signal-to-noise ratio is way better than what you'd find on a cluttered news site.

These newsletters go straight to the inbox of the people you actually want to reach—investors, decision-makers, operators, advisors. No fluff. No filters. No fifteen-paragraph explainer on what blockchain is before you get to the part about their product.

And best of all? The coverage lives in the exact same place their pitch decks do.

Results, Not Vanity Metrics

We’re not saying the mainstream press is useless. It still has a very important role to play in awareness and credibility. But if the goal is pipeline—not just prestige—targeted content (i.e. newsletters) win.

We’ve seen clients get more qualified inbound leads from one paragraph in a B2B Substack than from a splashy national feature. Why? Because the people reading that newsletter care. They're not skimming. They're clicking.

And when someone’s name shows up consistently in the niche media that matters, it builds authority fast. Not the performative kind. The kind that closes deals. The kind that gets legacy media reporters to pay attention, a lot of it. 

Rethinking the PR Playbook

This isn’t a trend. It’s a realignment.

If you’re still measuring success by where a headline lands instead of where it converts, you’re playing the wrong game. The best coverage isn’t always loud—it’s well-placed, well-timed, and well-read. And yes, the journey from start to end is trackable. 

So yes, we’ll always tip our hats to the prestige press. But if you’re serious about moving the needle? Start looking where the eyes—and the action—really are.

Spoiler: it’s not the homepage.