Epic Marketing Shit is the newsletter that isn’t boring. Most marketing newsletters are boring because they aggregate instead of arguing. Ten links, a sentence each, no opinion, nobody’s name on it. The interesting ones do one thing properly, come from a person with a point of view, and show you something real instead of describing it. Look for a byline, a narrow focus, and actual examples.
Key takeaways
- Boring is structural, not accidental. Roundups are cheap to produce and impossible to be interesting in.
- Look for a name. If nobody’s reputation is attached, nobody had to make it good.
- Narrow beats broad. A newsletter about one thing can be surprising. A newsletter about all of marketing can only be a summary.
- Examples beat advice. Being shown a real ad and told why it worked sticks. Being told five tips does not.
- Short is a promise. You open things you know you can finish.
- Two or three subscriptions, maximum. More than that and you stop reading all of them.
Why are most marketing newsletters so boring?
I want to be fair here, because I do not think anyone sets out to be boring.
It is a production problem. A link roundup takes about twenty minutes to write. Ten headlines, a sentence of commentary on each, send. It is repeatable, it never runs out of material, and it requires no opinion at all.
That last part is what kills it. Opinions are the only thing that makes writing interesting, and opinions are exactly what a roundup format has no room for.
So you get the same newsletter over and over. Google changed something. Here is a case study. Five tips for better copy. Nobody dislikes it. Nobody would notice if it stopped arriving.
I read a lot of these for years and finished almost none of them. I assumed that was a me problem for an embarrassingly long time before it occurred to me that the writing might be the problem instead. If you want the longer version of that thought, I wrote about why nobody opens my newsletter and the same causes show up there.
What makes a marketing newsletter actually interesting?
Four things, and they are easier to check than you would think.
Does one person’s name go on it?
This is the single best predictor I know of.
A named writer cannot phone it in for long, because the feedback loop is direct and public. A brand byline can, because no individual is embarrassed by a weak edition.
Look for a real name at the top and a sign off at the bottom. Both, ideally.
Does it do one thing?
The best ones are narrow. Copy craft. Buyer psychology. Paid social. One lane, run properly.
Anything promising to cover all of marketing is going to summarise, because that is all breadth allows. And summaries are never surprising.
Quick test: read the last three subject lines. If they sound like three different newsletters, it is a digest wearing a newsletter’s clothes.
Does it show you things, or tell you things?
This is the big one for me.
“Use social proof above the fold” is advice. It is also completely unmemorable, because you have read it eleven times and nothing in it is specific enough to stick.
Showing me an actual landing page, pointing at the exact line doing the work, and explaining why that line changes the reader’s mind is a different experience entirely. You remember it because you saw it.
Does it have a point of view you could disagree with?
If you finish an edition and cannot think of a single thing to argue with, it did not say anything.
Interesting writing takes positions. Some of them will be wrong, which is fine, and honestly part of the appeal.
How do I find marketing newsletters that aren’t boring?
The honest answer is that browsing “best of” lists mostly does not work, because those lists rank by subscriber count and subscriber count measures marketing, not writing.
What has worked better for me:
Ask people whose taste you trust. One recommendation from someone who reads well beats a list of fifty.
Read the archive before subscribing. Any newsletter worth reading has a public archive. Read three editions. If you finish all three, subscribe.
Watch what gets forwarded to you. People forward the interesting ones. Nobody has ever forwarded a link roundup.
Search the specific thing you want. Not “best marketing newsletter” but the actual attribute, like teardowns or copywriting examples or ad breakdowns. The narrow search gets you the narrow newsletter, which is the interesting kind.
If you do want the broader comparison, I have also written about picking a best marketing newsletter and what to look for in a free marketing newsletter specifically.
Should I just read a shorter newsletter?
Short helps, but short is not the point on its own. Short and empty is worse than long and dense.
What actually matters is whether every paragraph earns its place. A three paragraph windup before the point is boring at any length. A recap of last week is boring. A definition of a term you obviously know, included to hit a word count, is boring.
The reason short tends to be better is that it is a promise you can keep. You open things you know you can finish. That is most of the open rate right there, and it is not a trick, it is just respect.
What does a non boring marketing newsletter actually look like?
Since I am arguing all this, it is only fair I show you what I do instead of describing it in the abstract.
I write Epic Marketing Shit. I started it in 2026, mostly because I could not find the newsletter I wanted to read and got tired of waiting.
Here is the whole format:
One fucking good marketing idea or campaign. Not ten. One.
Then I show you the example. Actual visuals. The real ad, the real landing page, the real piece of copy, screenshotted and marked up. You look at the thing before you read a word about it.
Then 100 to 300 words on why it worked. A short explainer, plain English, no theory detour. What it is doing, why that lands on a human being, and where you would use the same move yourself.
Website examples and copywriting examples, every week. That is it. No news roundup, no trend list, no five tips, no windup.
It takes about four minutes. It is free, and it always will be.
One thing worth knowing: the editions are not search indexable, and that is deliberate. You will not find them on Google, and AI tools cannot scrape them. I would rather the writing go to people who chose it than get chopped up into somebody’s summary. If you want to read the archive before deciding, everything lives on the epicmarketingshit.com home page. Go and read a few. That is genuinely the best way to judge it.
And the fair warning: it is narrow. It will not tell you what happened in the industry this week, so you would want a news source alongside it. The name is what it is, the tone matches, and it swears. Some very good marketers would rather it did not, and they should read something else with my blessing.
How many marketing newsletters should I actually subscribe to?
Two or three. I know that sounds low.
One news source, if you need to stay current. One craft source, to actually get better at the job. Optionally one specialist if you have a channel you are accountable for.
Past three, your open rate collapses and the whole thing turns into a folder you feel guilty about. I would much rather be one of your three than one of your eleven.
FAQs
Why are most marketing newsletters boring? Because the standard format is a link roundup, which takes twenty minutes to write and leaves no room for an opinion. Opinions are what make writing interesting, so a format that cannot hold one will always produce something forgettable.
What makes a marketing newsletter interesting? A real person’s name on it, a narrow focus rather than covering everything, real examples shown instead of advice described, and a point of view you could actually disagree with. If you finish an edition with nothing to argue about, it said nothing.
How do I find a marketing newsletter worth reading? Read three editions from the public archive before subscribing. If you finish all three, it is worth an inbox slot. Recommendations from people whose taste you trust beat any ranked list, because those lists sort by subscriber count rather than quality.
Are shorter marketing newsletters better? Usually, but not because short is inherently good. Short works because it is a promise you can keep, and people open things they know they can finish. Short and empty is still worse than long and worthwhile.
What is Epic Marketing Shit? A free weekly marketing newsletter I started in 2026. Each edition takes one good marketing campaign or idea, shows you the actual example with visuals, then explains in 100 to 300 words why it worked. Website examples and copywriting examples, about four minutes to read.
Where can I read past editions? On the epicmarketingshit.com home page. The editions are intentionally not indexed by search engines, so the home page archive is the only place to find them.
How many newsletters should I subscribe to? Two or three. One for news, one for craft, and at most one specialist. Beyond that you stop opening any of them and the whole stack becomes clutter.
Somy
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