I’ve seen several Barcelona email newsletters come and go, but I’ve never seen one done so well and grow so fast as What’s On Barcelona. In an era when websites are losing traffic to AI assistants and social media reach is being throttled by algorithms, email stands out as the one place where you truly own your audience—part of what makes it such an exciting medium.
What is your background story?
Hello! I’m Mark Rofe, I’m 36 and originally from the UK and I run What’s On Barcelona, a free weekly newsletter that helps people discover the best things to do in Barcelona each weekend, including neighbourhood festivals, markets, concerts and other local events. I started it in January 2025, and it’s grown to just under 10,000 subscribers.
My background is in digital marketing, and over the years I’ve tried my hand at all sorts of things (with mixed success). I’ve bought and sold domain names, created taxi websites that generated leads for local taxi companies (back before Uber), run an ecommerce store selling sex toys, and even launched an online Christmas tree delivery business.
I’ve also had a few unusual projects along the way. One of the best known was when I bought a billboard to try to get a date. It ended up going viral and led to a number of TV appearances around the world.
My day job is in digital PR. Where I work as a freelancer, helping companies earn coverage in publications to increase their visibility in search engines and AI tools.
How did you end up in Barcelona?
I actually ended up in Barcelona because I met my girlfriend here. What started as lots of flights back and forth eventually turned into me moving to the city.
What gave you the idea for What’s On Barcelona?
Honestly, I just never felt like I knew what was going on in Barcelona, or I’d find out too late.
I remember trying to book tickets for Montjuïc’s open air cinema one year. It had only just started, but most of the screenings were already sold out. I remember feeling really frustrated.
Other times, I’d stumble across a festival or cultural event and realise I had no idea it was happening, or even what it was celebrating and it left me feeling disconnected from the city.
I figured that if I felt that way, there were probably lots of other people who did too, so I started the newsletter. Now it lets people know when tickets go on sale, or what cultural events are taking place, and the stories and traditions behind them.
While the newsletter is in English, the aim is to help anyone, whether they’re locals, people who have moved here from elsewhere in Spain, or international residents, feel more connected to the city and its culture.
Selfishly, putting it together each week has made me feel much more connected to the city. While nowhere is perfect, it’s made me realise there are so many great things going on in Barcelona, and I feel so lucky to live in such an amazing city.
Were you inspired by successful email newsletters like Morning Brew and the Hustle?
I’m familiar with those newsletters, but I wouldn’t say they were my main inspiration.
Before What’s On Barcelona, I already ran a weekly newsletter for the digital PR industry using Kit (formerly ConvertKit). From that I discovered that the founder of Kit had launched a local newsletter called From Boise with Marissa Lovell, and that was probably the first local newsletter I became aware of. Seeing what they built made me realise the same idea could work well in Barcelona.
Once I dug into the space, I discovered others like Naptown Scoop, Catskill Crew and Winnipeg Digest, all of which have built really engaged local communities.
I’ve since connected with people running local newsletters in places like Lisbon, Swansea and Warrington. It’s interesting because the commercial landscape in Europe is quite different from North America, where local newsletters tend to generate more revenue.
That’s not to say you can’t build a successful local newsletter here, but I think most of us, including myself, started because we genuinely enjoy connecting people with the places they live. The business side is almost a by product of doing that.
Do you follow email newsletter gurus like Matt McGarry, Nathan May and Tyler Denk?
I follow Matt McGarry on Twitter and I’m subscribed to his newsletter, and I use Beehiv’s software to send out my What’s on Barcelona newsletters, so I’m familiar with Tyler Denk too.
Have there been any editions that took off unexpectedly or went viral?
I wouldn’t say so. I don’t think newsletters work like that as much as say social media, or if they do, mine hasn’t haha. Every now and again I’ll have a day where I get more subscribers than usual, and then tends to be because someone has shared the link to it in a whatsapp group, or telegram or on Reddit (thank you if you’re one of those people).
In your experience, what are the challenges of selling advertising to local businesses?
This is the most difficult part of running the newsletter, and there are a few challenges when it comes to selling advertising to local businesses, they are budget, attribution, and understanding the consumer journey.
Local businesses tend to have less budget, which means they need their marketing campaigns to not only work, but to work right now, and they need to know that you delivered them that customer or sale.
In practice that doesn’t always happen. For example, if I featured a plumber in the newsletter, most people wouldn’t suddenly click the link and book a plumber that day. But weeks or months later, when their boiler breaks or they have a problem, they might remember seeing that business in the newsletter, search for them on Google, and get in touch. The plumber gains a customer, but never realises the newsletter played a part in that decision.
I worked with a relationship therapist in Barcelona who advertised twice over a two month period. She made a point of asking every new client how they found her, and she was still attributing enquiries to the newsletter three and four months after the campaigns had run. Some people weren’t ready when they first saw her, but they came back when they needed her.
That’s why I think local advertising is often less about generating an immediate click or sale and more about building familiarity and trust, so that when someone eventually needs your product or service, you’re the business they think of first. Convincing businesses of that isn’t always easy.
What do you think about the future of email newsletters in the age of AI?
I think we’re seeing an explosion of newsletters right now. It’s one of the only channels where you’re not beholden to algorithms.
In marketing, we have a saying, “Don’t build on rented land.” In other words, don’t build your business entirely on platforms you don’t control.
Facebook used to send publishers huge amounts of traffic, but over time it changed to keep people on its own platform. The same has happened with Twitter and LinkedIn, and now we’re seeing a similar shift with Google and LLMs like ChatGPT, which are increasingly answering people’s questions directly without them needing to visit a website.
Newsletters are much more predictable and resilient. They’re slow to build, and growing an audience takes time, but you’re building a direct relationship with people rather than relying on someone else’s algorithm.
I also think people read newsletters differently. They usually open them because they want to, not because an algorithm happened to put them in front of them. That means they’re often more engaged and paying more attention, rather than endlessly scrolling.
For What’s On Barcelona, I think that’s important. The goal isn’t to keep people online at all, it’s the opposite. If the newsletter encourages someone to discover and attend an event they otherwise wouldn’t have known about, then it’s done its job.
Can you share any insights on using paid ads to grow your list?
Sure. I’ve invested several thousand euros into paid advertising since launching the newsletter in January 2025. It’s been an important growth channel, but it’s only one piece of the puzzle. Word of mouth, referrals and consistently producing something people want to read every week have been just as important.
Do you look at successful local newsletters like the 6AM City and Axios Local for inspiration?
So these newsletters are essentially a network of local newsletters across different cities in the US.
I’ve always felt that local newsletters should have someone, well, local behind it, someone who actually lives there. That’s why my name and photo are on every edition, I want people to know it’s me behind What’s On Barcelona, not an anonymous media brand.
I felt these networks leaned toward building a scalable media business over that personal connection. Some of those newsletters were written by people who weren’t actually based in the cities they were covering. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just not the approach for me. I’d rather focus on depth than breadth.
However, they now appear to put much more emphasis on having editors who are based in the cities they cover and making those people visible to readers. I think that’s a really positive development because local newsletters feel much more authentic when there’s a real person behind them who actually lives in the city they’re writing about.
What do you think the subscriber ceiling is for a medium sized city like Barcelona?
That’s the big question, isn’t it? I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it myself. Right now it’s closing in on 10,000 subscribers. Getting here has taken a lot of consistent work, but it’s been a really enjoyable journey. I spend 5 hours each week putting it together, and I’m often up in the early hours of Thursday morning putting the finishing touches to it.
Reaching that 10,000 subscriber milestone would feel like a significant achievement, both personally and commercially. At the same time, I still feel like I’m only just getting started.
Subscriber numbers are nice, but I try not to obsess over them. I’d much rather focus on making the newsletter as useful as possible. If I can keep doing that, I think the audience will continue to grow naturally.
If I had to put a number on it, I’d be disappointed if What’s On Barcelona didn’t eventually reach 20,000 subscribers. Beyond that, I think somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000 feels like a realistic ceiling.
Maybe we can revisit this question in a few years!
You recently introduced job listings. Do you have plans to reach into any other areas beyond events?
Yes, so the story behind that is my friend had a job opening at his company, and I basically got in touch with them and said “I’ve got this newsletter, why don’t I mention the role and see if it helps you find some candidates?” They were happy to give it a try, so that’s exactly what we did.
When I was looking through my analytics I was kind of surprised to see how many people had clicked on the link for the job. This was a signal to me that people had found it useful, and I found out that someone had applied for the role from seeing it in the newsletter.
So I bought BarcelonaJobs.com (I did say earlier I liked to dabble with domain names) and turned it into a job board, since then I’ve been including a few jobs from it in the newsletter each week. In fact, someone messaged me the other week to say they’d landed an interview after finding a role through it which is nice to hear.
I don’t want to expand into things just for the sake of it. My approach has been to pay attention to what readers find genuinely useful and build from there.
Thank you very much Mark for participating in the interview and I’m looking forward to watch the continued growth and success of your newsletter and websites.
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