Picture: The Telegraph
Flagship Telegraph newsletter From the Editor has become its “biggest source” of new paying subscribers one year after launch.
From the Editor promises news, comment, analysis “hand-picked” by Telegraph editor Chris Evans. The newsletter, sent at 7.30am each morning, also includes reader comments, puzzles, cartoons and an exclusive column.
Everyone who registers for free to The Telegraph’s website (giving them limited access behind the paywall) is automatically opted in to receive the newsletter.
The publisher claims From the Editor is read by more than 850,000 people every day. Deputy editor Catherine Bentley-Gouldstone told Press Gazette in December it had a total audience list of more than two million.
[Read more: The projects publishers were most proud of in 2025, including From the Editor ]
Telegraph executive editor Christopher Williams, whose role includes accelerating the newsletter strategy, told Press Gazette: “We have an intelligent paywall that takes you on a journey from being just somebody who’s flown in from Google to giving us your email address to subscribing,” adding that this method has helped the newsletter grow “really quickly”.
Williams said that in the past year the number of subscriber conversions from the newsletter “is running into the tens of thousands”, describing it as “our biggest source of subscriptions”.
“Most people who become subscribers from From the Editor do it after a couple of months reading it. So, it’s a gradual process of them getting to know us and getting to like what we do before they’re ready to connect to a subscription.”
From the Editor was launched in April 2025 as a twice-weekly product after the paper noticed strong subscriber conversion rates from an auto-generated digest of Telegraph content sent to inboxes.
The digest was turned into a more editorial product with a distinct voice to capitalise on this success. Publication ramped up to a daily newsletter by July.
An additional afternoon PM edition launched in October on Mondays to Fridays, sent to a smaller, opt-in audience.
Epstein coverage ‘amazing’ for subscriber conversion
To maximise subscriber conversion, The Telegraph focuses on original writing and “behind-the-scenes” reporting for the newsletter.
“It’s often a more direct conversational style, like it’s an intimate medium,” said Williams, adding that the newsletter tries to communicate how a story was obtained and what it means “in a way that is quite approachable”.
The newsletter focuses on specific content that performs well in the format, such as scoops like Angela Rayner’s Government resignation, health, lifestyle and travel journalism, in-depth features and puzzles.
Coverage of the Epstein files led to “amazing results in terms of reading and subscribing”, Williams added.
The newsletter avoids call-to-actions telling people they “have to subscribe” to The Telegraph, but does urge readers to share the newsletter with others.
From the Editor leads to ‘culture change’ around Telegraph newsletters
The Telegraph newsletters team is ten people in total, with five directly working on the two editions of From the Editor led by head of newsletters Maire Bonheim and editor of the newsletter Gareth Davies. But dozens of people get involved from across the newsroom.
The success of From the Editor has driven expansion of The Telegraph’s other newsletters, currently totalling 31.
A business newsletter, To Business, and a football newsletter, Total Football, both launched in March, while international affairs newsletter Telegraph Cables launched this week.
These are “proof points that the success of From the Editor has been how quickly we’ve managed to learn from it and spread that through the organisation”, said Williams.
He added that a “big sign of success and culture change” is seeing how much journalists care about From the Editor.
“It’s hard for a journalist to cling onto, ‘hey, I was top of the website for three hours yesterday’, which is nevertheless very important but it’s not something that they can show their sources, whereas an edition of From the Editor, they can show the results they had and how much people read the story.”
How to monetise a large newsletter audience
Though the newsletter driving subscriptions is “really material to the business”, the team is still otherwise working out “how you monetise a large newsletter audience in the UK”, said Williams.
“I’m not aware of anyone doing it particularly effectively,” he said, pointing to sponsored newsletters which he noted are mainly done by B2B or specialist brands like Politico, and brand email marketing campaigns which he said are more common for publishers in the US. “But we’re not there yet.”
He added that the commercial team is currently examining whether to insert adverts into the newsletter.
“There are discussions about monetisation,” Williams said. “I think they’re in the early stages, it was important to get the editorial product right, make something that’s just really good rather than [thinking] how do we make money out of this from day one?
“But I think after a year and the audience we now have, that’s a conversation to be had, but it won’t affect the editorial approach.”
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