Heading to New Media Summit this week (newmediasummit.com).
If you're going to be there, reach out, let's connect.
On Thursday at the cocktail reception, I'm hosting a casual meetup around a topic that almost never gets stage time at events like this: email deliverability.
Here's what I've noticed about media conferences in general. The conversations are always about audience growth, content strategy, monetization, partnerships, AI, distribution.
All of it matters. None of it is wrong.
But none of it works if you can't reliably reach your audience.
The hard truth most media operators don't want to hear
You can have the best content, the best acquisition funnel, the best sponsors, the best monetization strategy.
If your emails aren't hitting the inbox, you don't have distribution. You have a list that looks good in a dashboard.
I've watched publishers scale aggressively, celebrate subscriber growth, brag about open rates, then one algorithm shift from Gmail or Yahoo later, revenue drops 30–60% in a single month.
Not because the content changed.
Not because the offers stopped working.
Not because the audience disappeared.
Because deliverability wasn't under control.
Growth without control is fragile
At events like this, people talk about scaling paid traffic, coreg strategies, referral loops, cross-promos, new monetization channels. All worth discussing.
But if you don't have a tight base sending segment, clear engagement thresholds, domain group monitoring, a real reactivation framework, and someone actually watching complaint rates, you're building on sand.
Deliverability isn't a checkbox. It's an operating discipline.
That's the message I keep coming back to with media operators, newsletter publishers, and founders.
Distribution control is the moat.
Not content. Not growth hacks. Not clever subject lines.
Inbox placement.
If you're attending
Come find me Thursday at the cocktail reception.
We'll get into Gmail strategy in 2026, how to scale without wrecking sender reputation, what most publishers get wrong about reactivation, why different growth sources behave differently at the ISP level, and how to protect revenue before it disappears.
No pitch. No slides. Just operators talking shop.
Can't make it to New Media Summit but want to talk deliverability? Reply to this email.
The principle is the same whether you're in the room or not: you don't own your audience until you can reliably reach it.
See you in the inbox, and hopefully in person this week.
Chris Miquel
P.S. If you're scaling acquisition right now, paid, coreg, referral, doesn't matter, and you haven't audited your base sending segment lately, that's the first conversation we should have.
