Do you use newsletter software and are you interested in PRIVACY Part II

Hi Indie Hackers,

Last week we posted about privacy friendly newsletter software (see the following link):
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/do-you-use-newsletter-software-e-g-mailchimp-and-are-you-interested-in-privacy-a4869e0dd6

And we got some great feedback! Here's a summary:

• One comment about an Indie Hacker offering their Email infrastructure (postagent.io)
• One comment with a question about how it would work
• Some comments about how tracking is useful, and not having it would put you at a disadvantage
• One comment about not liking MailChimp
• One comment about privacy challenges, and a link to a great post
• One comment about not caring about specific open rates, rather general open rates

So here are our thoughts on the comments:

We agree that not having tracking & analytics would hurt a lot of marketers, (although we think open rates are a pretty bad metric), so even though we're talking about privacy friendly newsletters, it would probably still need tracking & analytics (optionally) but with a lot more transparency and opt-in / opt-out choices for the end user (e.g. at the bottom of every Email with tracking, explaining what's going on, and a link to opt-in/out for each type of tracking).

Another point we thought about regarding (bad) open rate metrics: Would it help to have options for greater engagement. E.g. you could click on an Email, and it would put you through to a web version of the newsletter, and that would allow for feedback (open and private messages), polls, ratings, did you enjoy the newsletter with smiley face options, etc.

And lastly, looking at how much it costs to send Emails via services such as MailJet, SendGrid, etc., it would take a fairly large chunk of any revenue from newsletter services. Sending Emails in bulk yourself is very challenging!

So all in all, we think it's worth some more validation, but not entirely sure about this one.

Any thoughts from fellow Indie Hackers? We'd really appreciate any feedback!

Nick