How to build a better B2B newsletter for scientific companies

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In a world where attention spans are shrinking and social algorithms decide what gets seen, the humble email newsletter might be the most undervalued asset in a life sciences company’s marketing toolkit. But according to Anis Fahandej-Sadi, the key is not to send more emails, but to send the right ones.

Anis knows this from experience. He’s the founder of TLDR Biotech, a biotech and pharma newsletter that gained a loyal following over the last year. His journey from sales to science content creator offers a blueprint for companies looking to build newsletters that actually get read and drive their business growth.

“The benefit of newsletters over social media is that there isn’t an algorithm between you and your audience,” he explained during our recent podcast conversation. “You send out that email, everyone gets it.”

While it might be tempting to treat that direct line as a chance to share company updates, Anis learned through experience that effectiveness lies elsewhere. His time running TLDR Biotech revealed some common misconceptions about newsletters—especially in life sciences—and why many companies struggle to make them work.

From chemistry to content

Anis’s path into biotech newsletters wasn’t obvious. He started with a master’s degree in chemistry, but found the lab wasn’t for him. Instead, he moved into sales, eventually handling GMP-scale aseptic fill-finish systems and cell and gene therapy CDMO services.

But in 2023, he decided to take a swing at entrepreneurship. His first venture, Science 2 Sales, aimed to help scientists move into commercial roles, a topic he knows well as he’s done it himself. The idea had promise, but after six months, “it wasn’t really scaling as much as I’d hoped,” he said.

In parallel, something else was picking up steam: a LinkedIn series sharing biotech news he’d been posting for fun, called “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”.

“It was a little cheeky, because biotech and life sciences are quite formal,” he said. But ultimately, the posts were getting attention and this became the seed for something bigger. That’s what pushed him to launch TLDR Biotech in April 2024.

The TLDR Biotech format: Serious insights, light touch

The newsletter expanded the “Good, Bad, Ugly” format into a full daily publication. Good news stories topped the email, followed by bad and “ugly” news. The tone was casual, sometimes irreverent, with a GIF at the top and punchy headlines inspired by newsletters from other industries.

“I was trying to emulate the Morning Brew style,” he explained in our interview. “There was no one really doing this in biotech”.

TLDR grew steadily, even attracting some advertising revenue, but behind the scenes, the numbers didn’t quite add up.

“I was treating it like a full-time business. And that was probably not the smartest thing to do,” reflected Anis. Despite its momentum, TLDR didn’t scale fast enough to justify the daily workload. Eventually, he decided to put the project on hold and is now taking time to think about what’s next for his content.

Despite the setbacks, Anis learnt a great deal about what makes a successful B2B newsletter.

What most company newsletters get wrong

Now, Anis wants to help companies avoid the mistakes he made and build newsletters that people actually read.

In his opinion, the first thing to fix is how newsletters are typically perceived inside companies.

“When people think of newsletters, it’s often just a company announcement: ‘We hired this person,’ ‘We launched this product.’ And for the most part, those things get trashed,” he said bluntly.

Instead of treating the newsletter as an internal newswire, companies should think of it as a media product—something their audience would choose to read even if they weren’t customers. That shift requires rethinking both the content and the branding.

Anis described two distinct models companies can adopt, depending on how visible they want their brand to be:

1. Branded value newsletter

This is the more straightforward approach. The newsletter carries the company’s name and branding, but the content is built around providing genuine value to the reader. That could mean industry news, practical how-tos, expert Q&As, or original commentary on market trends.

For example, a CDMO might publish a monthly newsletter with content like:

• “5 Things to Know Before You Choose a Manufacturing Partner”
• “Trends in mRNA Fill-Finish Capacity”
• “What the Latest FDA Guidance Means for Your Next IND”

This kind of newsletter keeps the company top of mind while establishing credibility and trust, but without pushing products directly.

2. Sponsored editorial newsletter

The second approach is more subtle (but potentially more effective). Instead of building a newsletter as an extension of the corporate brand, the company creates a standalone editorial brand that serves the same audience.

“One example is Beehiiv’s Creator Spotlight,” explained Anis. “It looks like an independent newsletter, but it’s actually run and sponsored by Beehiiv”. Another example is TLDR (not to be confused with TLDR Biotech), a popular Canadian finance newsletter that’s casual and funny, and fully sponsored by the neobank Wealthsimple.

“All the branding on that newsletter is TLDR,” he explained. “But the sponsor slot in the middle says, ‘Brought to you by Wealthsimple.’”

In both models, the key is value. Whether it’s a company-branded email or a stealth editorial project, the goal is the same: build trust by giving your audience something genuinely useful and interesting, something they look forward to opening.

The three pillars of a successful newsletter

So, what does it take to run a newsletter that’s more than just an inbox filler? Anis breaks it down into three pillars: audience, content, and measurement.

1. Know your audience

Before you start writing, you need to understand who’s on your list, and why.

“You can go through and figure out where they’re based, what kind of company they’re at, their responsibilities… that gives you an overview of who you’re really targeting,” he said.

This kind of audience analysis informs your entire approach to content. For example, if your list is composed mostly of technical decision-makers at biotechs, you might focus on regulatory insights, manufacturing challenges, or clinical trial trends. If it’s mostly business development leads, your newsletter might lean more into partnership activity, funding news, or M&A.

Understanding your audience also helps define your newsletter’s tone, format, and frequency. A busy executive doesn’t want a dense wall of text. A scientific team might appreciate detailed breakdowns or curated reading lists. Without this clarity, you risk building content that pleases no one.

2. Create content people want to read

This is where most life sciences newsletters fall short. While the channel has enormous potential, the content often fails to deliver. Too many companies treat the newsletter as a dumping ground for press releases, product updates, or internal announcements—material that may be important to them, but irrelevant to their audience.

This is particularly important in B2B life sciences, where the sales cycles are long and decision-makers need time to build trust with your brand. Valuable, recurring content helps keep your company top of mind in between meetings, events, or direct outreach.

As I explained on the podcast, your newsletter should help your target customer associate a niche with your brand.

And you don’t always need to generate original content to do this. Many life sciences companies already produce useful material—like webinars, slide decks, or technical documentation—that can be repurposed into engaging editorial pieces. The key is to reshape that content so it serves the reader first.

In short, think like a publisher, not a promoter. Create a newsletter people would still read even if they weren’t your customers. That’s how you earn attention and trust.

3. Measure what matters

One of the trickiest parts of running a newsletter is knowing whether it’s actually working. Traditional metrics like open rates and click-throughs can offer some insight—but they’re not always reliable, especially with recent changes in how email clients handle privacy.

“It’s hard to assess how many people are actually going through your content”, explained Anis.

That doesn't mean measurement is impossible. It just means you need to be thoughtful about what you track and how you interpret the numbers.

If you're using a robust email platform, you'll still have access to reasonably accurate data. Tracking these metrics over time helps you spot trends, but in the B2B context, the real value often comes from deeper integration with your CRM to track actual sales influence. This kind of integration moves your newsletter from a “nice to have” to a measurable contributor to growth.

At the same time, some of the most important feedback won’t show up in a dashboard. It will come from real-world interactions.

“It almost seems like more of a vibe thing,” said Anis. That “vibe” becomes tangible when people start replying to your emails, referencing your newsletter on sales calls, or mentioning it during conferences. Over time, you’ll notice whether your content is building recognition or being ignored.

I personally share this point of view as it’s been my experience running The Science Marketer. At first, I just heard crickets, but after a few months, people started emailing me or connecting on LinkedIn just to tell me how much they love this newsletter.

It’s hard to explain in a pragmatic way, but you just feel the difference. You see how the touchpoints increase over time, and that means that your newsletter is having an impact.

The takeaway? Don’t rely on a single metric. Use open and click data to inform your editorial strategy, but also stay alert to how your audience is responding in real life. A newsletter’s impact is often cumulative and invisible, until it suddenly isn't.

Using a newsletter as a growth engine

Most biotech companies treat newsletters as an isolated tactic, but as we both highlighted on the podcast, newsletters can be so much more: a central node in your marketing system, linking all of your efforts into a cohesive strategy.

“The nice thing about newsletters is that you can take existing content and put it all in one place and flesh it out,” said Anis. “And then, you can take original content from the newsletter and repurpose it for social media.”

This content flywheel effect is especially valuable in a B2B sector like biotech, where marketing budgets are tight and technical complexity makes fast content production difficult. By focusing efforts on a high-quality newsletter, companies can make their content work harder.

I’ve been applying this myself with one of my client in the life sciences industry. Every month, we write a blog post, this blog post is then fed into the newsletter as the featured article. Below that, we add product updates, conference appearances, and social media posts from the team’s personal accounts, like the CEO (which I also write).

This approach transforms the newsletter into more than just a broadcast tool. By adding in-depth content relevant to the target audience, the newsletter becomes a regular resource they want to open and engage with.

Beyond content distribution, newsletters can also offer strategic leverage. For example, instead of relying on one company-wide newsletter, marketers can segment their audience and customize communications based on role, industry vertical, or interest.

Anis also suggested an advanced tactic: personalizing newsletters so that they appear to come from someone inside the company with a similar role to the recipient.

“You segment your audience, and someone from your team—maybe with a similar job title—sends the email,” he explained. “It adds a layer of personalization. It looks like a 1-to-1 message, but it's actually the newsletter in disguise.”

This tactic is particularly effective in technical fields, where peer-to-peer communication carries more credibility than a corporate announcement. With modern email platforms and AI-assisted workflows, these segmented, persona-driven newsletters are now scalable, even for small teams.

It’s not an email, it's a relationship

Too often, science companies see newsletters as transactional: something to announce a new hire or promote a webinar. But the best newsletters operate more like media products: valuable, trusted, and consistent.

“You need to have something that is a value add to their professional life,” said Anis. That’s the shift biotech marketers need to make: from self-promotion to service. From announcing what they’re doing, to helping people understand what’s happening.

It’s not just good content, it’s good strategy. And with the right structure, tools, and mindset, newsletters can become one of biotech’s most powerful owned assets.