Ask HN: An alternative to mailing lists – a news feed inside your product?

The GDPR legislation coming into force in the EU in May has got me thinking about other ways to reach my users. My mailing list will be essentially worthless as every customer was opted-in by default rather than by choice. Emails typically have a 35% open rate — ok, but not great — making it likely that asking them all to opt in again would reduce my active email list to 10% or so.

My core products are desktop apps. One of the ideas I’m considering is introducing a News page into the products that hits my site for latest news every 5 days or so, and presents this to the user inside the app.

Visual Studio does this in the form of a “Developer News” section that I usually ignore, and a Notifications section that is more prominent and I always look at. I was thinking of following this model, showing important news like a new version prominently inside the apps, and lesser news such as new products or blog posts in a less prominent news section.

My feeling is that it would reach far more than the 35% that my email marketing currently reaches, and would mean my communication with my users would not put me on the wrong side of the GDPR legislation.

I’d add an option inside each product to not show the news page, so users who didn’t want to see it could opt out.

Has anyone tried this approach? Can you think of any downsides? It seems like a good answer to low email open rates and mailing lists that fall foul of GDPR.