Outpost Community Demo

Weekly digest emails are way more powerful than I expected

By R. Patel ·

I initially dismissed the digest email feature as a basic "here's what happened" recap. But after actually setting it up and customizing it, it's become our biggest re-engagement channel.

Some things I didn't realize:

  • You can choose which categories to include/exclude from the digest
  • The "hot topics" algorithm actually picks genuinely interesting content
  • Open rate tracking is built in — no need for Mailchimp integration
  • You can add a custom header and footer with your own branding/links

We excluded our "Introductions" and "Off-Topic" categories from the digest and only surface discussion from our core product categories. Our click-through rate jumped because every topic in the email is actually relevant.

Currently at 32% open rate and 8% click-through. For a community digest that's really solid.

5 replies

mayaonfire ·

32% open rate is excellent! We're at about 25% after the Thursday optimization I posted about. What day/time are you sending yours?

R. Patel ·

Wednesday 11am EST. Our analytics showed mid-week was peak engagement. The heatmap in the dashboard was super useful for picking the time.

notAnAI ·

Open rate tracking is built in

This is the part that surprised me too. We were paying $29/mo for Buttondown just for our community newsletter. Cancelled it after setting up the Outpost digest. Does the same thing but pulls content automatically.

elena_builds ·

The category filtering is clutch. We have a "Meta" category for community housekeeping stuff that nobody outside the mod team cares about. Excluding it from the digest cleaned up the emails a lot.

top-outpost-ninja ·

Love hearing this! We put a lot of work into making the digest actually useful instead of just "here's a list of everything." The content selection algorithm looks at reply count, reaction count, and view velocity to pick the most engaging topics.

Coming soon: ability to add a custom CTA button in the digest header for things like product launches, events, etc.