Air Mail News

Air Mail is a digital newsletter dealing in high society delivered in weekly email dispatches.

Helmed by Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter and the New York Time’s Alessandra Stanley, Air Mail’s breezy, sardonic style had earned them a dedicated readership in less than a year.

Key results

↗ Subscriptions

KPI: grow subscriber base

↗ Pageviews

KPI: increase new visitors

↗ Ad Revenue

KPI: MOM ad traffic

The original, email-only format was limiting the site's reach. How could Air Mail preserve it’s charm while improving recirc, ad-rev, and SEO?

The Old Site

No homepage, no search, and a reverse-chron backlog that separated content like a stack of magazines. We needed more!

The solution was broad but straightforward: build an infrastructure around the weekly issue format that focused on SEO, time-on-site, and subs.

The New Site

We introduced a robust new information architecture without touching the core email / magazine product.

Email + Archive

Article Treatments

Responsive Layout

Psst! Want the scoop on how we got this site off the ground?

The new digital strategy was designed to promote a quality reading experience that elevated Air Mail’s core KPIs.

Content Strategy

We wanted users consuming content in the most intuitive way possible before we asked them to subscribe.

Old newsletter UX

Email only. Effective but with a hard ceiling and limited options to capitalize on a growing readership.

New sitewide UX

A complete digital ecosystem provided points of entry without breaking the issue format or resetting SEO.

Dynamic Hero

We built the homepage around a dynamic hero that previewed the upcoming issue. We treated the weekly format as key to generating anticipation and providing structure.

Weekday hero

Sunday issue drop

Navigation

To unblock old content and keep users clicking, we introduced a contextual nav system that promoted organic journeys to, from, and across issues.

Sitewide Nav

Intra-Issue Nav