Creative Newsletter Name Ideas to Engage Your Audience

The importance of choosing catchy names for newsletters

A newsletter name is more than just an email header or a domain name for sending new issues. It’s also a part of your brand, along with email design, tone of voice, and other elements. The name of your newsletter is “the face” your current or potential readers will recognize. So, many things depend on it.

Here’s why choosing your newsletter name wisely is important:

• Names hint at the content. For example, The Run Out Grooves is a newsletter dedicated to closing tracks on different albums. You may not know what the runout groove is to understand the pun fully. However, you probably know the metaphorical meaning of the word, so you get a hint it’s about music. This is how the audience that may be interested in you stops to check out what you have to offer. So, you need the right name to attract the right people!
• Names can be persuasive. Brand names can be a walking advertisement that describes certain features of what you’re selling or even contains a little CTA. For example, the Chinese transliteration of Coca-Cola (可口可乐) doesn’t just sound similar — it’s also roughly translated as “tastes good and makes you happy”. So, if you hide a subtle message like this in your newsletter, growing your list will be an easier task.
• Names improve your brand awareness. If your newsletter name is short, memorable, and easy to pronounce, more people will remember it, more people will repeat it, and you’ll get more subscribers thanks to the word of mouth. Imagine people having a conversation like “Have you subscribed to [newsletter-name] yet? — Sounds interesting, give me a link”. Now, imagine the same dialog but like this: ”Have you subscribed to [name] yet? — What? — [Name]. — I don’t understand, can you spell it?..” That doesn’t sound like a good brand (pun intended)!
• Names define your identity. A brand goes beyond one certain element — it’s the harmony of everything, from your looks to how you communicate with customers. So, if you start by choosing a good newsletter name, the rest will come to you naturally. 

What makes a good newsletter name

So, is there a foolproof recipe for a good newsletter name? We wouldn’t say “foolproof” exactly. However, the laws of naming have been studied for a while. 

Here’s what you may want to take into account:

• Meaning — related to the newsletter content or not? According to an old but gold study, people prefer “meaningful” names that describe the product’s features or benefits for consumers over unrelated ones. So, if you’re making a music newsletter, give it a music-related name that hints at its content.
• Brevity — short is not always better. There are many semi-reliable numbers online like the perfect brand name should have two syllables tops or 10–15 characters… While short words are easier to remember, it’s not that simple. For example, longer brand names are associated with luxury — and longer words in general are associated with more complex concepts. So, if you need to convey luxury or sophistication in your newsletter name, slightly longer variants would be more helpful.
• Uniqueness — it shouldn’t be hard to Google you! For example, I wanted to name my (still) non-existing music project The Rejects, until I learned there are too many of those. However, you can be too unique as well — so, using a bunch of ASCII symbols in your newsletter name is a bad idea.
• Accessibility — it shouldn’t be a tongue-twister! Ideally, your newsletter name should be easy to spell and pronounce. And, if your newsletter name is in English and you’re targeting an international audience, opt for the words consisting of more common sounds that can be found in other languages. For example, “Like” is a good word, and “Tether” is not — non-native speakers will have a harder time with “r” and “th”.

But enough theory, let’s move on to practice and get you a perfect newsletter name.

Newsletter name ideas to get inspired by

Stuck in the creative block and even ChatGPT won’t give you a proper newsletter name? Let’s take a look at some starting points to go from — with inspiring examples for your inspiration, of course.

Descriptive names

Sometimes the simpler solution is the best one. Descriptive names don’t try to impress you — they simply tell you what to expect in the newsletter.

For example, these newsletter names speak for themselves — it’s not hard to guess what to expect:

• News Items by John Ellis
• Culture Study by Anne Helen Petersen
• Abortion, Every Day by Jessica Valenti
• What To Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking by Caroline Chambers
• Marketing Examples

One good thing about such names is that they are pretty self-explanatory and both easy to understand and to come up with. Not everything has to have bells and whistles, c’mon.

Alliteration

Alliteration is the repetition of consonants at the beginning of words that are placed next to each other. It’s a trick often used in poetry to give more power to the verbal imagery with sound. You can use it in your newsletter name ideas too — repeating sounds will make them catchier, like an ad jingle. 

Here are some great examples:

• Jane on Jeans
• Today in Tabs
• Dense Discovery
• Starter Story
• Gift of Gabs
• Mind the Moss
• Style Scholars

Puns and wordplay

Some say, puns are the lowest form of humor — I disagree! A decent pun can make your newsletter name incredibly memorable, and, combined with a laid-back tone of voice, can create an awesome brand. The best part is, you don’t have to be very inventive and original — you can be cringe on purpose, and it can work. Especially if you’re not running a very serious B2B newsletter.

If you’re having a hard time coming up with a pun, here are some examples to get your brain working:

• Singal Minded by Jesse Singal and JENNY SAIS QUOI by Jenny Walton both incorporate authors’ names into popular colloquial expressions.
• Beets & Bites by Sienna Waters both plays on the vegetable-focused recipes in the newsletter and the fact that it’s distributed online, so, bits and bytes, get it? Oh, and there’s also a newsletter called Beats & Bytes, so it’s a reference…
• Back of House is a newsletter sharing music industry updates, so “house” here is both the music genre and the literal house.
• Heated is a newsletter about the climate crisis, so the name hints both at the world getting hotter and the heated discussions on the matter.
• Can’t Get Much Higher is a newsletter about music and data, so “higher” in this common expression doesn’t just mean literal height but also pitch frequencies or “higher numbers” — no matter how you understand it, it’s a great name!

Rhyming words

You don’t have to be a poet to come up with a good rhyme. If you like the idea of a rhyming newsletter name, use dictionaries like RhymeZone. And, while you’re looking for a perfect pair of words, here are some decent examples:

• Maybe Baby by Haley Nahman (please don’t use it, it’s overdone)
• OKAY MCKAY by PJ and Thomas
• Jokien with Tolkien — in this newsletter name, the spelling of “joking” has been altered so the rhyme is more noticeable when reading. You can use it too!

Industry jargon

As mentioned earlier, a great newsletter name should hint at its content. One way to do it is using industry jargon. Not only will it give the necessary hint but also make an impression of a serious professional. Just don’t use terms that are too niche for the general public to understand. Here are some decent examples:

• Back Row — fashion, “rows” as in rows of seats on runway shows
• The Polymerist — chemistry
• Embedded — all things internet
• Unplugged — music
• Lithium Horizons — energy and materials (lithium is often used in batteries)
• The Orbital Index — all things space 

Single-word titles

Here’s another simple but elegant solution to naming a newsletter — stick to one word, ideally not longer than three syllables. It’s bold, it’s catchy, and sometimes one word is enough to tell the whole brand story. Here are some examples:

• Granted
• tic.
• Platformer
• Technically
• Threadings.
• Apparently (it’s also a pun, since it’s a newsletter about being, well, a parent)

Just name it “newsletter”

We’ve shown you a bunch of methods to come up with a creative newsletter name. However, names like these are actually a minority! Most company or media newsletters, including high-performing ones, have something like “Daily”, “Weekly”, “Digest”, “Insider”, or just “News”/“Newsletter” — accompanied by the already existing brand name or a no-brainer one-word niche description. It’s not a bad approach, you can do it too. 

By the way, Selzy’s newsletter used to be called something like “Email Marketing Digest”. We rebranded since but the previous name wasn’t that awful, we just wanted a makeover. Here are some notable examples of similar names:

• Switch Weekly
• Hacker Newsletter
• AR Insider Weekly
• Big Data News Weekly
• TechCrunch Daily News and other TechCrunch newsletters with pretty simple names

Fun newsletter name ideas to learn from brands and independent authors

Now that you know where to start when crafting a remarkable newsletter name, let’s explore some real-life newsletter examples in greater detail.

FWD: by Selzy

Selzy (you’re reading our blog now, yes) is a beginner-friendly and affordable email marketing software. So, a brand like this running a newsletter with email tips and tricks totally makes sense. 

We chose the name because it’s short and sweet, email-related, and comes with a great “The newsletter you will forward” slogan. By the way, you can subscribe and get 21 foolproof, expert-reviewed tips on growing your email list.

Naming tip to learn: Think of how you want other people to engage with your project — and use it to create a subtle persuasion in the name. For example, we’re making a newsletter we want other people to forward to each other, and those who got it forwarded will then end up subscribing, you know the drill. So, maybe if something is called FWD:, it’s worth forwarding, right?

Morning Brew

Morning Brew is a family of newsletters covering news on different topics from marketing to tech to IT — and, if it’s hard for you to decide what to engage with, Morning Brew itself offers a little bit of everything. And that everything bagel of an email will wait for your click every morning, accompanied by your cup of coffee and the cup logo on the email avatar.

In the context of the name, “brew” means an extraction — each email offers you a curated selection of the most important business news, “an extract” of the world where stuff happens every second.

Naming tip to learn: Instead of diving deeper into the niche, think of when, where, and how people will read your newsletter. For example, many people start their morning routines by checking out the news and updates (inbox included) — and coffee, hence the brew. Although maybe, just maybe, naming your newsletter “The Bathroom Read” is not the best idea, so this naming strategy has its limits.

The Red Hand Files

In this project, well-renowned musician Nick Cave uses the personal feeling of the email not for marketing purposes but to engage in meaningful interactions with fans. Each issue answers one or two fans’ questions in depth — or contains one-word (in some cases, one-emoji) answers to 50 questions. 

Notice how the logo and the overall newsletter website design correspond to the name — the red hand drawing and the burgundy font illustrate the concept.

Naming tip to learn: Look at your history — from past projects to what is generally important to you, what is inseparable from you. For example, The Red Hand Files is not directly related to music but it’s named after Nick Cave’s probably most popular song right now, which is Red Right Hand.

Choosing this particular song is a smart marketing move, by the way. There are likely fewer Bad Seeds fans than people who watched Peaky Blinders. So, the name choice allows Nick Cave to attract a wider audience that will engage with the newsletter since they saw something familiar in the name.

The Hustle

The Hustle is a newsletter run by HubSpot. It covers business and tech news, and, while the premise sounds generic, the topics are quite interesting and vary from corporate swag to divorce coaching to toilet paper shrinkflation.

Naming tip to learn: Do it for the vibe! The word “hustle” has an extensive cultural background and evokes many associations. While not all of them are positive, most people working in digital marketing or tech will likely think of living a fast, eventful life in a big city rather than suffering from burnout. And these people are the audience of The Hustle. 

So, if you want a name like this, look for a word that is loosely related to your niche and also has a strong and mostly positive emotional subtext specifically for your readers.

The Daily Carnage

The Daily Carnage is another marketing-themed newsletter on our list. It’s run by Carney, a digital marketing agency, and it offers an (almost) daily handpicked selection of all things marketing. For example, this issue has some news, an email marketing tip, some tools to use, and other stuff to check out.

Naming tip to learn: Being provocative with your naming is good! “Carnage” is quite a strong and morbid word for a very non-shocking marketing-themed newsletter, right? But this name made me curious, then it made me click the link, and include it in this very article.

The bottom line is that being weird, very far from your niche, and evoking morbid or gross imagery in your newsletter name can work for you.