Quartz's Davos Daily Brief is the latest in a series of pop-up newsletters

To capture the discussion and atmosphere in Davos during the World Economic Forum, Quartz set up a pop-up newsletter updating readers on what happened the previous day and what to expect in the following 24 hours.

This was just one of Quartz's pop-up versions of its flagship Daily Brief, temporary newsletters designed to provide coverage of busy events like Davos, Cannes Lions or Mobile World Congress.

The opening rates for this year's Davos Daily Brief were 44 per cent, and subscribers were delivered a mix of facts and figures discussed or related to conversations at Davos, as well as overheard quotes and a regular update on "who won" each day of the event.

"In terms of trying to capture the main theme of the day, we declared a winner, which is a way for us to organise," said Jason Karaian, global finance and economics editor at Quartz.

"The delegates of Davos are pretty status obsessed, so we think that's a clever way to frame how Davos works, because especially when it comes to the politicians and world leaders, they're trying to one up each other."

Karaian was part of the Quartz team in Davos alongside editor-in-chief Kevin Delaney, economics and market reporter Eshe Nelson, reporter Jenny Anderson and White House correspondent Heather Timmons. This was the largest team Quartz has ever sent to the event.

Each pop-up newsletter follows a similar structure, although the format of the coverage varies to match the ethos of each event. For events where activities are more visual, such as new technologies being demonstrated or creative work presented, gifs and Instagram stories have been used to better paint a picture of the atmosphere.

"The broad structure of the email remains the same across the events: what happened yesterday, what to look forward to today, here are some numbers that will help you sound smarter at a cocktail party, and then here's the overheard gossip and killer quotes," explained Karaian.

For some events, briefings a few days before and after the main conference are also being sent out, although for Davos this approach was swapped in favour of a takeover of the essay section in two weekend editions of the Daily Brief.

The pop-up newsletters are sponsored by Accenture as part of a larger partnership around technology. Quartz's newsletters, whether sponsored or not, allow the organisation to experiment with better ways to dominate their audiences' inbox, and Katie Weber, vice president of client partnerships for Quartz, told Digiday that "the inbox is the new home page for executives".

Quartz's newsletters also editorial products that stand-up on their own, with readers able to get the full experience and information without having to click through to the website from the email.

The next pop-up Daily Brief will be from the Mobile World Congress, and you can sign up here.

Free daily newsletter

If you like our news and feature articles, you can sign up to receive our free daily (Mon-Fri) email newsletter (mobile friendly).