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Newsletters by Refind — The easiest way to email a link digest to your fans
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I get some Tweets that the invite link doesn't work. If you click on the "Get it" button you'll end up on https://refind.com/about/newslet... (note the "?ref=producthunt" param). Using that link you should get in without problems. Please let me know if that doesn't work and I'll send you another invite link.
Just in case, I also invited all people who signed up for the waitlist today.
@dominikg I have an invite already on the service but am wanting to use my businesses twitter, anyway to get an invite? Thanks!
I have used https://www.getrevue.co/ to distribute curated newsletters but Refind takes it to another level. I need to see a few things though for example, how well I can add my own custom links too (manually), how I can organize the sequence of links, and how I can categorize the links. Worth a shot!
@vingar You can add links with the browser extension (Chrome/Safari/FF), with the iOS/Android app, or by entering a URL manually (via the user menu). Or you can import links – also auto-import from Twitter or Pocket, if you like. Re: sequence: links are ordered by the number of saves in that period, so popular/trending links appear on the top, i.e., you can't influence the sequence (for now). Re: categorization: This is outside the scope of newsletters, but Refind has "smart topics" you might find interesting: https://productmap.co/p/2049
@dominikg Thanks for this new feature. This will save me bunch of steps I have right now for my newsletter.
Is there a way that I can select the links for the weekly digest?
Some of my saved refines make no sense for my newsletter audience.
@timdechau That's great to hear! It will take up to the top 10 links you saved in that period (daily or weekly, depending on your subscriber's preference), i.e., you can't select but if a link is "weak" it probably won't make the cut anyways... Hope that works for you?
@dominikg I will give it a try. For most cases this should work.
Maybe in the future you can define tags for your newsletter. Based on that you can have multiple newsletters :)
@dominikg @timdechau Love the look and ideas of newsletters, but can only see using them if I can choose which specific links to publish. Tags would be a help. But would still like to select as the reasons I might save something are different than the reasons I might want to endorse and share something.
@psturrock @timdechau Theoretically, I can see the need to select links for the digest specifically. In practice, however, I believe it's rarely the case that you'd want to remove a link from the digest as it is sorted and includes only up to the top 10 links you saved in that period. Also, note that all links you save to Refind are public anyway...
Can't wait to start testing it out. This products typography and structure is really well done it almost reminds me of the interface of Medium.
@dominikg and crew have been doing excellent work on Refind recently — and the newsletter feature is onl the latest addition to the arsenal of great features that Refind offers. Although this feature is straightforward, it works well and takes out all the overhead from helping Refind link hunters get greater distribution to their audience.
Email, it turns out, is far from dead — and although the choices for sending newsletters has grown in the last year — Refind provides a lot of personal utility on the link saving and retrieval front that can is now married with set-and-forget publishing ease.
If you're interesting in the links I'm saving, you can subscribe to my newsletter here.
@dominikg This is a great idea, could see this coming in handy. Idea: Is it possible to import subscribers from elsewhere—say, MailChimp? It would be nice to offer a secondary option for readers of my main newsletter (http://tedium.co) who want a more curated thing than the essayish style I lean for. Refind is a longtime fave, BTW.
@shortformernie No import options yet. But you could add the link to your profile page (https://refind.com/ShortFormErnie) in your next MailChimp newsletter? Have a look in Incognito/Private Mode to see how people see it who are not logged in. The "Subscribe" button is front and center.
@dominikg Will see how I can work it in. Want to be careful about integration and such. I think it would be nice to do a Tedium-specific link roundup, rather than the stuff I tweet about. Thanks!
Refind is awesome! Incredibly helpful refinding websites and discovering new content!
Refind is my source for useful information in the tech space. Looking forward to give this new feature a spin. Thx @dominikg for building such a great product.
The only thing I find frustrating right now is who I'm following.. I'm cool with following my Twitter crowd, but many people seem random.
@desmondduggan2 Since Refind is still small, we decided to let new users automatically follow all friends of their inviter – in that case me. However, there is a one-click opt-out on your /following page. If you click that, all auto-followed friends are unfollowed and you can start fresh, building up a network of people you're interested in.
@j00st I like the idea. There's no widget (yet), but you can simply point people to https://refind.com/j00st People who are not logged in will see the Subscribe button front and center.
@j00st No, anyone with an email address can subscribe to your newsletter! When a non-user visits your profile page, there's a big Subscribe button so he can subscribe to your newsletter by entering his email. Have a look at your profile in Incognito/Private Mode in your browser so you'll see what I mean.
@stoweboyd Thanks for the input. We're still looking for the best way to introduce comments (low-effort but still personalized), but that's on our list!
@stoweboyd That's a great idea! If you stick around, we'll build it for you. Deal? :)
@stoweboyd Btw: I see you imported 1k links. Just FYI: Your links are crawled in the background so titles, exerpts, and images will follow. :)
This is a clever addition to Refind - lets you very easily create and distribute simple curated newsletters with all the links you come across. Especially like that there a weekly digest option.
Hey @dominikg @refind - congrats on the new side product, really digging it! I've got a few questions and some feedback for you:
If i'm sending a weekly newsletter with Refind and i've saved 30 links in total for this week, I understand that you will be choosing the top 10 links which have the most amount of "saves" from the 30. I'm assuming the counted "saves" are saves from other Refind users? I understand that doing this automatically provides the value of making the compilation of the newsletter fairly easy and straight forward, but is the trade-off worth it? If someone is going to trust you to send them a newsletter they'd want you to make sure that the links are "hand-picked". If a link that I really wanted to send out on the newsletter isn't one of the top 10 most saved links from the 30, what solution are you provided me with to make sure that I can include it in the newsletter?
I'm really trying to understand your thinking behind doing it this way. The branding is awesome, "Save great links, we take care of the rest". I don't mind this being the default option, but why not give users the extra option of choosing which links to include in the newsletter? Im very interested in newsletter platforms and i've been experimenting with Revue and Curated. Both of these platforms provide the option to chose which links you want to include in your newsletter, and this is a key feature for me personally.
Also the subscriber has the option to chose whether to receive a daily or weekly newsletter. But what if I wanted to only send a daily? Again it seems that you did all this for the sake of "automating" the whole process which is great, but these should be features that add value vs limiting the way one can use Refind.
Also the one thing that newsletter platforms lack is deep layout customizations. I can't stress how important it is to be able to truly customize the look and feel of a newsletter. I'm not saying to go all crazy with it, because simple design is usually best (especially on mobile) but layout customization is another big differentiating factor when choosing a newsletter platform imo.
@madebyildi Wow, thanks a lot for your detailed and helpful feedback! I'd love to tell you more about our design decisions, but keep in mind that is v1 and we're happy to listen to what users say to improve it.
Re: automatic selection:
Yes, you're absolutely correct: it takes up to the top 10 links from that period (daily or weekly) according to the number of saves globally. As you said, we do it this way because we believe this adds value to people who want to have their own link newsletter but don’t have the time to curate it all manually.
At the bottom of each newsletter, there's a "View all" link to the user's links so the other links are still accessible (by anyone) – they just didn't make the cut for the newsletter.
There are a number of products our there that help you create a manual newsletter where you can select links individually and write text. It's not our aim to compete with them – Refind is not a pure newsletter product, but rather, this is a side product that IMO fits nicely into Refind's concept (of saving great links – for you and for others). On the other end of the spectrum, you can also use MailChimp & Co. and do it all manually of course.
Having said that, if we get the feature request of choosing links manually a lot, we might add an option to explicitly “remove” links from your newsletter (or use tags, as suggested earlier here).
Re: subscribers choosing daily/weekly:
We made this decision from the point of view of a subscriber. I personally like to choose the frequency of newsletters I subscribe to, and since we rank the top 10 for whatever period the subscriber chooses (daily/weekly) I believe this works quite well here.
Re: customization:
Absolutely! We try to have minimal Refind branding (there's no Refind logo, just one text link in the footer (“Curated by X with Refind") that points to Refind. After all, this is your newsletter. So far you can set a title, a description, a link to your website, an optional background color, and your (Twitter) photo of course.
Hope this answers some of your questions. If not, please reach out and I’m happy to explain more.
@dominikg Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions!
What happens when the links you share are not shared by anyone else on Refind? How do you then choose which 10 links to send in the newsletter?
I think this was mentioned somewhere in the comments, but a "global feed" of the most popular links shared on Refind by all users would be useful. An option to filter this feed by most popular links shared daily, weekly, monthly would also be nice. Maybe you can tweak it even more and have a what's "trending now" filter. Filtering by popular topics would also be nice as well. Currently you solve this by allowing users to follow topics which i'm assuming injects articles about those topics in a users personal feed.
I really like what you and the team have built so far. Kudos for the iOS and Android mobile apps as well! There's so much greatness on the internet, we need more products that help with filtering the noise and identifying the gems.
@heyellieday Love to hear that! Maybe I can also convince you to try the Read Soon feature at some point? :) https://medium.com/@refind/intro...
I've been using Refind on regular basis and definitely see the value. Curious, what a email newsletter would look like to my subscribers?
@vivekmgeorge Hi Vivek. Save a link and then have a look at the preview here: https://refind.com/VivekMGeorge/... What do you think?
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