A note to readers

We're bidding farewell to Substack and moving to beehiiv

May 01, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

2 boys in red shirt sitting on yellow metal bar

Dear reader,

Thank you for being a regular reader of The Signal, The Intersection, and our weekly spinoff newsletter products — The Playbook and The Impression.

In the coming days, you may notice that your beloved morning newsletter will look a little different. We’ve moved most of our list to a new platform—beehiiv, as Rajneil Kamath, my co-founder, had hinted in his note in January. Today’s edition was the last on Substack, and we will be archiving our Substack page soon. You will receive the May 3rd via our new platform.

I am writing because your email address is in the last batch of subscribers we’re moving to beehiiv later today. As some of you may have noticed, we’ve been publishing The Playbook, our weekly business of sports newsletter and The Impression, our business of content newsletter on beehiiv. 

For those of you who’ve subscribed to us only for The Intersection, unlike Substack, beehiiv does not give you an opportunity to receive only some emails. You will be automatically subscribed to the daily editions of The Signal.

Nothing changes, except for some of you who have been reading us regularly on the Substack app. It will mean a move back to your inboxes, but we’re in the early stages of planning our own app where you can read The Signal and its other products, which we’re hoping to launch in the near future.

If you are a Gmail user, there’s a good chance that some of our emails in the coming days might land in either your Spam or Promotions folder.

Needless to say, this is a regular problem that newsletters face, particularly when switching platforms. We are not an exception to Google’s algorithm, which seemingly scans every email before delivering it to users’ inboxes. There are multiple parameters it considers, and we don't know all of them.

That said, you can help us.

We know that Gmail acknowledges a sender as genuine when you regularly read emails from a sender. It improves our credibility with the algorithm when you engage with the newsletter.

But for starters, as a loyal reader, we’d request you to take a moment and do the following (should the need arise):

1. Move The Signal from the “Promotions” or “Spam” tab to your “Primary” tab, if you have opted for Gmail’s default inbox view. 

2. Select "Yes" on the popup that asks you whether to land all emails from The Signal in the inbox always.

3. Alternatively, you can also create a filter by heading to your search box on Gmail, click on “Show Search Options", and enter ‘[email protected]’ in the ‘from’ button. Post that, you can create a filter, by choosing ‘Primary’ in the ‘Categorise As’ option. Save the filter and you are good to go.

In the rare case that the newsletter ends up in your spam, we urge you to do the same — move us back to where we belong: your Inbox. You can also reply to us. Do let us know if end up facing some of these issues.

If you are using other email clients, you should not face a problem. However, occasionally, apps such as Outlook could flag our email as junk, again as a function of a new domain name. In that rare event, mark us as “Not junk” and move us back to your inboxes. If you are an iCloud user (Apple Mail), we’d recommend marking our email as VIP, so once again, we’re there every morning.

It will help us even more if you share the newsletter with friends, or leave a comment. ICYMI, last week, we launched a Telegram group — The Signal Forum — where our readers can come in, read, share, and join the conversation on all the happenings around business, tech, economy, policy, finance, and everything we cover in The Signal.

We'd love to have you back and read us regularly as you've been doing so over the last year or so! Write to us at [email protected] for feedback, tips, and more.

Cheers,

Venkat AnanthCo-founder and CEO, The Signal@venkatananth