30 Creators. 30 Days. 3,700+ Subscribers: How She Did It

Summary

Growth In Reverse Podcast Episode Summary

Episode Title: 30 Creators. 30 Days. 3,700+ Subscribers: How She Did It
Release Date: May 28, 2025
Host/Author: Chenell Basilio and Dylan Redekop

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Introduction to the 30 Days of Growth Campaign

In this episode of Growth In Reverse, hosts Chenell Basilio (Chanel) and Dylan Redekop dive deep into Chanel's ambitious "30 Days of Growth" campaign. Designed as a pop-up newsletter initiative, this project aimed to enhance cross-promotional strategies within the Growth In Reverse Pro community by launching a daily email series over 30 days.

Notable Quote:
Chanel [00:22]: "I'm excited to talk through this."

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Conceptualizing the Pop-Up Newsletter

Chanel explains that the "30 Days of Growth" was born out of a desire to improve cross-promotions among newsletter creators. Traditionally, cross-promotions in her Sunday newsletters allowed only 4-5 opportunities. To gather more data and provide value to the community, she envisioned a daily newsletter that could feature a cross-promotion in every send.

Notable Quote:
Chanel [02:31]: "I just ran with it, built the parachute on the way down, if you will."

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Preparation and Planning

With limited time—approximately two and a half weeks—Chanel rapidly assembled the campaign. She developed a concise template using ChatGPT to ensure each daily send remained short and actionable. Selecting 30 diverse creators, varying in audience size and engagement levels, was pivotal to the campaign's success. Chanel meticulously listed potential collaborators in a Google Sheet, balancing larger audiences with niche, highly engaged subscribers.

Notable Quote:
Chanel [03:58]: "It was a forcing function to get me to shut up faster than I normally would in my writing."

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Launching the Campaign

The launch strategy included multiple touchpoints to maximize visibility. Chanel promoted the campaign through her main newsletter, LinkedIn, and a special podcast episode announcing the initiative. Additionally, she repurposed her website navigation to highlight "30 Days of Growth," effectively turning it into a lead magnet for new subscribers.

Notable Quote:
Chanel [10:12]: "I just wanted to get it out there."

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Daily Execution and Content Distribution

Each day, Chanel crafted a growth lever spotlighting a different creator's strategy. The content was distributed across various platforms:

• Email: Daily sends via her email provider.
• WordPress: Published articles linked from the emails.
• Substack: Replicated the content for wider reach.
• LinkedIn: Shared each piece to leverage professional networks.
• Canva: Designed bespoke images to accompany each day's content.

Despite the intensive workload, Chanel managed to maintain consistency, aided by Dylan’s support in handling the publishing process.

Notable Quote:
Chanel [13:00]: "Write the article. Create a Canva image. Link to WordPress."

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Incentivizing Engagement: The Giveaway

To foster sharing and referrals, Chanel introduced a giveaway component. Participants could win a private podcast feed by referring just one person. Additional prizes included sponsored licenses from partners like Senja and Tele, along with courses from contributors like Justin Welsh.

Notable Quote:
Chanel [14:09]: "This is super simple. And who doesn't want an extra bonus version of the podcast?"

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Results and Metrics

The campaign yielded impressive results within the first 30 days:

• Total Subscribers: 3,714
• New Subscribers: 1,757
• Referrals: 356 (approximately 10% of total sign-ups)
• Open Rates: Started at 77%, with the lowest at 62%
• Unsubscribes: 170 out of 3,700 (a minimal impact)

A standout moment occurred when a single referral led to a cascading effect, ultimately bringing in 36 additional subscribers from one initial share.

Notable Quote:
Chanel [18:39]: "That one share ended up with 36 more people joining."

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Challenges and Learnings

While the campaign was largely successful, Chanel encountered several challenges:

1. Content Overload: Daily emails were overwhelming for some subscribers, leading to higher tracking complexities.
2. LinkedIn Limitations: The LinkedIn newsletter feature proved cumbersome, as it conflicted with her regular posting schedule and didn't effectively convert onto her primary email list.
3. Resource Management: Balancing daily content creation with other commitments, such as attending conferences, tested her capacity to maintain consistency.

Notable Quote:
Chanel [30:24]: "It got annoying in the middle."

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Future Plans and Recommendations

Chanel plans to monetize the campaign by launching a $100 course that delves into the growth levers used during the 30 days. Additionally, she contemplates repurposing the content into a more manageable format, such as a seven-day email course or a comprehensive PDF.

For future iterations, Chanel emphasizes:

• Extended Preparation: Allowing more time to align collaborators' schedules.
• Enhanced Automation: Streamlining content distribution to reduce manual workload.
• Diversified Incentives: Exploring varied rewards to sustain engagement.

Notable Quote:
Chanel [36:35]: "A hundred percent? Yes. And I will probably do it again."

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Key Takeaways

• Strategic Cross-Promotions: Diversifying collaborator sizes and engagement levels can optimize growth.
• Incentivized Sharing: Simple incentives, like a private podcast feed, can significantly boost referrals.
• Adaptability: Being prepared to pivot, as Chanel did by introducing a monetized course, is crucial in dynamic campaigns.
• Engagement Metrics: High open rates indicate strong initial interest, even amidst challenges.

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Conclusion

Chanel's "30 Days of Growth" serves as a compelling case study for newsletter growth and email marketing strategies. Through strategic planning, incentivized sharing, and adaptability, the campaign successfully attracted a substantial subscriber base while providing valuable insights for the Growth In Reverse community. Chanel's experience underscores the importance of meticulous preparation, effective cross-promotion, and the ability to learn and iterate in real-time.

Final Notable Quote:
Chanel [40:24]: "Come join us. It'll be fun."

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Join the Growth In Reverse Community:
For those interested in leveraging these strategies, Chanel and Dylan invite you to join the Growth In Reverse Pro community at growthreverse.compro. Engage with like-minded newsletter creators and access exclusive resources to accelerate your email marketing journey.

Transcript

[Chanel]

Hello and welcome back to the Growth in Reverse podcast. I'm Chanel.

[Dylan]

And I'm Dylan.

[Chanel]

And today we're going to do a post mortem of how the 30 days of growth went. And I figured, actually it was Dylan's idea to just throw some questions at me. I don't even know, I don't even know what these questions are. But I prepared some numbers and some of the results. So I'm excited to talk through this.

[Dylan]

Yeah, I think it's going to be fun. I really thought what you did with 30 days growth, it. From the outside it might look, might have looked like a simple one. Newsletter send every day for 30 days and. But there's like way more behind the scenes going on with it. There's a whole reason you started it. So I thought this would be a good kind of like interview to figure out, pick your brain about why you did this, how you did it and what were the results. So I think people are going to come with some really good ideas around pop up newsletters, why they could run them themselves and maybe learn some lessons from you of what maybe they should and should not do with it.

[Chanel]

Yes, there's a lot of learnings that came out of this.

[Dylan]

Yeah. We'll talk through all about the, how many subscribers this kind of got for you and things that you added to your newsletter and all that fun stuff that I think a lot of people will be able to benefit from. So why don't we get into it? Why don't you start by just explaining for people who don't know, maybe this is the first episode they listen to or they haven't listened in a while, explain just quickly what the 30 days of growth is or was.

[Chanel]

Yeah. So essentially in the growth and Reverse Pro community I was trying to do, we were doing a cross promotions like challenge, if you will, to do like better cross promos, get more results from them. And I really wanted to learn how to do better cross promotions. Like I've done them in the past. Some have done well, some have not. So I was like, you know what, I'm gonna see if I can't do more of these. And I was like, a typical cross promotion, you do one in an email.

[Dylan]

And.

[Chanel]

And since I send my email on Sundays during the challenge, I would've only had four to five opportunities to actually have a cross promotion in there. And I was like, I want more, I want more data for the community so I can share like how to do these better what I'm learning. So I was like, what if I did a 30 day like pop up newsletter, like a daily send, so that I could have a cross promotion in every single send. Which at the time I was like, this is easy, great, so simple. But essentially the 30 days of growth came out of just this random idea. I put it together, two and a half weeks I think. And yeah, I just ran with it, built the parachute on the way down, if you will. Just started it and launched it on a whim.

[Dylan]

Yeah. And I think it's really funny. This is the sacrifices Chanel makes for her community. She's. She fell on the sword of data. I'm going to do this really. Maybe I thought it was simple but really actually ended up being hard thing for, for the sake of getting better data for everybody. So thank you for, on behalf of the community for doing that. So why don't we get into take. Walk us through the prep before the launch, like what you were going through, how you were contacting or deciding who to collaborate with and how you went out, went about reaching out to those people and stuff.

[Chanel]

Yeah. So I figured with a daily send I wanted to have a very clear structure. Every day is the same, very like a short thing. I typically write long form piece. Some are deep dive, some are just like long form posts. So I wanted to make sure it was like quick, digestible. And I've heard from people in the past who read my newsletter that they really would prefer something quick and actionable to a 3 to 5,000 word post. And I'm like, that's just not my style. I'm sorry, I can't. But with this I was like, maybe I could actually do that. So I had to figure out like a good way to set up a template for this. So I was like, okay, I want a couple of clear things like what did they do? Why did it work? What were the results and like how you could implement it. And so I went to good old ChatGPT and I was like, can you help me like build this template? Because I wanted to make sure like I didn't go overboard. Very wordy and lengthy and I want to include every detail. So it was, it was a forcing function to get me to shut up faster than I normally would in my writing.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

So once I had that template, I actually went back to a couple deep dives that I had published and I was like, let me see if I could pull out some growth levers from there and see if this would work. And I did. Eddie Schlanger's Social Proof. He has like a ton of Social proof on his landing page, his homepage. And so I was like, actually this is gonna fit in really well. And I got super excited and that's what made me just jump into it. So I created a Google sheet and I essentially just listed out a bunch of people I was like, that I thought would be good for this. Yeah, some people I know who have talked about like specific tactics they've used and I was like, I wanna include that tactic. Some people I just knew that person had some cool like ninja stuff they were doing behind the scenes. So I was like, all right, I'm gon include them. And so I just thought it was an interesting way to do this. But with the people, I wanted to make sure that some of them are larger audiences, some are smaller. Because one of the things I always hear about cross promos is Chanel, you can go to somebody with 30,000 people on their email list and you know you're going to have better results. And I'm like, yes, but some people have like smaller audiences and get more engaged people on their list. So I don't know that size is everything. So I wanted to include a mix. Um, I'll stop there. Cause I feel like I'm rambling.

[Dylan]

But yeah, no, that's good. So you basically created a list in a Google sheet of people you want to reach out to. You did not skew on. They have to be a certain size of an email list necessarily. You want to get people who have maybe at least a hundred or two few hundred subscribers. But it wasn't like somebody with 3,000 subscribers versus they all have to be my size or larger. So that's great. And then once you had that established, you started reaching out to these people and sharing the idea and what was the trade off? Like you were saying you it basically were like, I'm going to feature your newsletter in this growth lever and you're going to do what for me?

[Chanel]

Yeah, so I saved that one from Eddie Schlaner because I thought it was like super compelling, obvious and like exciting and people would understand quickly like what this was. So I saved that as a PDF that I could share in an email and just to give them example of what I'm going to do and like how I'm going to showcase their newsletter. So in the growth lovers, like in the beginning I'll say, hey, this person who writes blank newsletter and I'll link to it. So that's like a first call out to their newsletter and then towards the bottom I would if they were on kit's creator network. I would embed that recommendation widget if you will. If not, I just have the link out to their stuff. And then depending on what the growth lever was like, some of them were naturally like, hey, go sign up for this person's email list because you'll see how they're doing this thing. Yeah, so that was, I think that was a little bit more compelling for some people. But they at least had two call outs. And then we published these on Substack. In the beginning we published them on LinkedIn. So they were getting a couple different touch points of call outs for their brand.

[Dylan]

Yeah, and LinkedIn, by you mean that, you mean the LinkedIn newsletter feature, right? Yeah, yeah, we can talk about that later on. But how that went. Okay, so you're doing all that for them. What were they doing for you?

[Chanel]

Just a typical cross promo. So they would just share the 30 days of growth landing page so people could go sign up if they wanted to. I wrote out blurbs for them so that they could just like copy paste if they wanted. Most people didn't. I think they rewrote them almost every time. But yeah, I wanted to make it easy for them to do that. And then for each person, I also have a custom link for them to share so that I could keep track on my end of like how many clicks they got.

[Dylan]

Right.

[Chanel]

Kind of thing.

[Dylan]

And why did you decide to get them to share the 30 days of growth? Because you created a whole landing page for it. Bought a URL domain and everything. Yeah, three days growth. Co if anybody wants to go check that out right now, I think it should still be live when this airs. But why would you, why were you getting them to push that and not just Growth in Reverse?

[Chanel]

Because I wanted to like create this flywheel of building out this pop up newsletter, if you will. Um, and I think through the process of them joining 30 days of growth, they'll come to learn about what I do. So I thought it was like, I don't know, a cool way to just promote this new launch of sorts.

[Dylan]

Yeah, okay, that makes sense. I feel like this is like kind of like a lead magnet or like almost like a Trojan horse into sort of the growth and reverse whole ethos and ecosystem. So I think it's smart.

[Chanel]

Yeah, no, I was gonna say the other reason it was a good, like, good way to do that is. Okay, so if Jay Klaus shared it in his newsletter and then the next day he was actually the featured one, it'd be like more exciting for that person. Cuz they're like, hey, I recognize Jay. They came from him, that kind of thing. So I felt like it was almost building a little bit of better trust in a way.

[Dylan]

No, absolutely. I think that makes sense. And that was smart. And. And you did that for all 30 days in a row. Right. You strategically set these up so that everyone was gonna share everything at the same time that you did. Right.

[Chanel]

Oh, you're funny. No way.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

If I had more time, maybe. Yeah, it just happened that way for some of them.

[Dylan]

So you had these. You're reaching out. As you were prepping this, you said it took you about two and a half weeks. Did you have all 30 days created and set up at the point of launching it? The very first day.

[Chanel]

Oh, Dylan, you're so funny. No, not even close. I think I had three.

[Dylan]

Three?

[Chanel]

Is that right? I don't remember.

[Dylan]

No, I. I think you had. I think you had the first week, if I remember correctly, about the first week set created or lined up than I thought. Yeah. So this truly was a parachute. You were. You're assembling as you were falling to the ground.

[Chanel]

Yeah.

[Dylan]

Before we get into the daily, can you just give me a breakdown of how you were pumping this up before you actually launched it? Did you do anything specific social media wise or in your newsletter to get people into it? And also let's quickly talk about if you sent this to your whole email list to start or if this was opt in only.

[Chanel]

Yeah. Oh, man, it's so recent, but so far past. Okay, so in the beginning, I know I shared it in the main newsletter a couple times, just saying, hey, this is coming. Honestly though, I didn't give myself a ton of leeway to launch this, so I really. That's one thing I wish I would have done is like given myself some permission to pump the brakes a bit and wait a week or two to actually launch this thing. But I was just so excited about it. I just wanted to get it out there.

[Dylan]

Why did you want to give yourself a little more leeway?

[Chanel]

So that I could like properly hype it up and launch it. And you're trying to deal with 30 creators sharing your work. So, like, the logistics behind this is just insane.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

I am sure that there are emails in my inbox from some of the creators that I have not responded to yet. And we're done with the 30 days of growth.

[Dylan]

So it's their formal apology.

[Chanel]

Yes, yes, this is my formal apology to everyone.

[Dylan]

Okay, so that sounds good. So you're amping it up a little bit. In your own newsletter to your list of around 40,000 subscribers. And then you also shared it on social media a little bit on LinkedIn, I believe.

[Chanel]

Yes, shared it on LinkedIn. We talked about it on this podcast once. Twice. Yeah. And then we actually had a whole episode about it.

[Dylan]

Yep.

[Chanel]

We actually did an exploding podcast episode. I don't know if that's really the right term, but there's a. There was an audio version on the podcast feed that said this is going to self destruct in seven days.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

And we just. I think it was just me talking about it. I think it was like a seven minute episode where I just announced what was happening and told people to go sign up.

[Dylan]

Yeah. Okay.

[Chanel]

So that was something else we did. And then I changed my substack to be 30 days of growth too.

[Dylan]

Yes, that's right. That's right. And you even changed on your Growth in Reverse landing page. Not. Sorry, not your landing page to sign up, but on your main website navigation menu you had 30 days ago as the main subscribe button, not Growth in Reverse Pro.

[Chanel]

Yep, I totally forgot about that. I gotta change that.

[Dylan]

Oh, there you go.

[Chanel]

Thanks, Dylan.

[Dylan]

No problem. Okay, so we've got the kind of the setup the lead in. Now 30 days of growth is launched. How many people actually, how many people do you know how many people you got signed up prior to actually sending out the first edition?

[Chanel]

I can tell you how many people the first edition went out to and that should be the number. Day one went out to 1440 people.

[Dylan]

Wow. Okay. And that was a combination of new subscribers just new to Chanel Total, and people who opted in from your from the promotion who may have already been subscribed to Growth in Reverse.

[Chanel]

Yes, that was totally.

[Dylan]

So it's a blended subscriber. Okay, cool. So now tell us what. What went into the day to day of pushing out these 30 days of growth additions?

[Chanel]

In the beginning, it was a nice process because I knew who I was writing about. They had shared like essentially what the thing was. So I really just had to compile it together in that template and then send it out, publish it on the website, get it on substack, which thankfully you were there to help with because I would not have done all of those every day. And then in the beginning, again, publish on LinkedIn, which was pretty good. It was like a copy paste situation. So that wasn't bad. Yeah, so it was write the article. I wrote it in kit, which I don't know if that's the best way to do it, but wrote it in the email provider. Then we copied it over to WordPress. I had to create a canva image for each day.

[Dylan]

Yep.

[Chanel]

So I had to create that template before we started and then link to that WordPress page from the email. Because I'm always. I always love giving people the option to, like, read it online, bookmark it, save it, that kind of thing.

[Dylan]

It makes it more. Sure.

[Chanel]

Yeah, totally. So did that. And then publish on Substack and record a podcast episode for each one.

[Dylan]

Yes. That's actually great.

[Chanel]

Talk about that. Yeah.

[Dylan]

Yeah. I think we still have a feeder chord, so just a few. That actually leads me into. That's a real nice segue into kind of how you were promoting this and trying to create this viral shareable flywheel. So we've talked about what three days of growth is, how you structured it, what you were doing day to day. But then there was the whole component of you said to me, basically, I want this to be, like, super shareable and give people reasons to incentivize them to share this. So can you talk through the component of the giveaway? Because that's not something that people are really doing a lot with newsletters these days. Of course, like, when Sparkloop was spun up 5ish years ago, giveaways were kind of all the rage with Morning Brew. But you're like, I'm gonna try to use a giveaway to grow this thing. And then also the let's talk about the private podcast feed as a reward tier as well.

[Chanel]

Yeah. So the giveaway, I was like, this would be cool to share. Not only to share, but also see how many people shared it with others. Because with a newsletter, it can almost be like a black box of, like, where do these people come from? So it's nice to see. Oh, Susie shared it with five people and they signed up and they shared it with you. I just wanted to have that insight again for purposes of data. And then I was like, this could be a really cool way to give people the option to win stuff. Yeah. So the first prize was like a private podcast feed. So if you referred just one person, you got a private podcast feed. It was supposed to be every day you got a new episode dropped. But I think around.

[Dylan]

What were those episodes?

[Chanel]

10 or 12. Just the day that day is like growth lover. So I would just talk it out.

[Dylan]

Yeah. So if people didn't have time to read it or didn't want to read it, they could just pop it in on audio version of it.

[Chanel]

Yeah. And people really enjoyed that. Like, the it Wasn't like a huge number of people who actually signed up for it, but the people who did, like, really enjoyed it. So I feel bad that I was like, really behind after, like day 10. But yeah, so that was the first one. So if you refer just one person, you got that. And I wanted to be like, make sure there was a quick prize people could win just for doing that small action.

[Dylan]

Nice.

[Chanel]

So that's kind of why I did that. Yeah. And then everyone. Yeah, everyone who entered got entered to win prizes. And so there were. I reached out to Senja, which is like the social proof tool. They actually sponsored this podcast early on. They offered to give away some annual licenses and then tele, which is like a loom alternative video alternative, which I actually love. It's like a super professional tool. They offered to match that essentially. So they also gave away five annual licenses. And then Bren and Dunn was kind enough to do the same. So I got those three. And then Justin Moore, who actually wrote one of the growth levers, gave away two licenses to his, like, brand deal wizard course, which is worth like a thousand bucks or something at this point.

[Dylan]

Each.

[Chanel]

So. Yeah, each.

[Dylan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Chanel]

So lots of cool stuff in there. And then I'm also giving away a couple of coaching calls and newsletter audits.

[Dylan]

And have you drawn the winners yet for that?

[Chanel]

I have not. So I was full transparency. I was out of town all last week. And so getting back into the swing of things, especially with the holiday weekend, long weekend, I'm like, this is my Monday and it's Tuesday. And I'm like, oh, boy, we have a lot to do. Yeah, but it's gonna happen soon.

[Dylan]

Let's also maybe mention that you. While this 30 days of growth was going on, so daily publishing multiple platforms, creating artwork, creating a daily podcast for the private feed, you went to New York to interview somebody, like, for the newsletter conference you went on this past week, during the last week of 30 days growth, you were on in Nashville at another conference or retreat. I guess it was. So, like, while all of this was happening, you really set yourself up for some success here by traveling around the United States and trying to do things, do more things maybe than you possibly physically could have.

[Chanel]

Yeah, I. I always give myself ample amount of time to work on this stuff. If. If we've learned anything about me, it's that I just force it and figure it out.

[Dylan]

Yeah, it. That is true. That's true. But you got everything out every day, minus podcast, minus the daily podcast feed, I think we've got about 20 of the 30 days published, roughly. So we're getting there. We're getting there.

[Chanel]

Yeah.

[Dylan]

Okay, cool. Where were we? We were talking about the vowel giveaway. So how did you. Do you have any details on how that went and if that is. If that's something you'd recommend other people trying or doing?

[Chanel]

Yeah, so I think it went really well. I would actually. I don't have numbers to back this up, but I think that the private podcast option alone was the biggest driver of people sharing.

[Dylan]

Wow.

[Chanel]

Because it was just one. It was super simple. And. Yeah, who doesn't want, like, an extra bonus version of the podcast? Yeah, Me talking in their ears for six minutes every morning.

[Dylan]

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so the. And that makes sense too, right? The one. The lowest tier, the 1.1free referral. Some people will just maybe send it to their. From their work email to their personal email just to get access to it, or they'll maybe legitimately share it with a friend or somebody who might be interested. And then in terms of the actual prize giveaway, how did that work out?

[Chanel]

You mean, like how many people shared?

[Dylan]

Yeah, it's. Can you determine how many people shared and then how many people from those referrals came in just by virtue of those people sharing who may not have otherwise?

[Chanel]

Yeah. So overall, I'm just going to break down from the beginning number. So the big number, 3714 was the number of people who signed up for 30 days of growth.

[Dylan]

Okay. And again, that's blended.

[Chanel]

So blended. 1757 of those are new subscribers for me, which is insane.

[Dylan]

Yeah. Yep. That's pretty decent in 30 days.

[Chanel]

And I remember, actually, I think I was sharing this in the community that, like, within the first few days, I had gotten like 700 new subscribers. And everyone was like, oh, my God, you're gonna, like, double your list. And I was like, no, guys, I think this is the excitement in the beginning really happens. But. So it still did grow, but it definitely didn't, like, add 10,000 subscribers to my email list. But this is still, like, a really good number. I'm pumped about it. 356 of those 3,700 came in through referrals. Okay, so that's 10%.

[Dylan]

Okay.

[Chanel]

A little less than 10%. Which is pretty good.

[Dylan]

That is pretty good. I'd say it's almost closer to 20%, because if you count just new subscribers alone of the 1700.

[Chanel]

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dylan]

That would be about 20%, I think, roughly.

[Chanel]

Yeah. So 102 people shared it with at least one person.

[Dylan]

Okay. Which brought in over 300 new subscribers. Very cool. Okay, so the. Would you. So let's end it. End this section off on that. Would you recommend that strategy for people doing a pop up newsletter style campaign?

[Chanel]

Yes. And here's another reason why with the LinkedIn newsletter and substack everyone's why would somebody sign up if they can just go read it somewhere else? Right? Like why would they actually just sign sign up for your email list if they can read it elsewhere? And I think with something like this giveaway, that is the key differentiator. If you were just subscribed to the LinkedIn newsletter, you don't get entered to win any of these prizes. You don't get the private podcast feed. So you have to go sign up for the email list. And so I think even if you're just going to have one bonus in there, I think it's so worth it.

[Dylan]

Yeah. Yeah. And same with substack too. Right? Because you were using substack, but more as just a publishing platform, not as a growth platform. Because everybody who signs up for growth in reverse or 30 days of growth from Substack gets migrated over to your kit list.

[Chanel]

Yeah, exactly.

[Dylan]

Yeah. Okay.

[Chanel]

Yep. Uh, well here's one fun fact. I want to share about the referrals that I, I saw this morning and I was like no way. Okay, so the referrals. So one person, we'll call her B. I don't want to say that person's name cuz it's like a unique name. B was referred to 2:30 days of growth by someone in the growth and reverse Pro community.

[Dylan]

Ok.

[Chanel]

So that they like shared it in their email list and this person joined from that. So B ended up sharing it with 15 more people and then one person that be shared it with came back and had 21 of their own referrals.

[Dylan]

Dang.

[Chanel]

I was like whoa. Because I exported everything and then I could see like in the main dashboard I was using a tool called Viral Loops. In the main dashboard you can't really see a ton of data you have to click through. But once I exported everything, I saw who referred that person.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

And I was like, well there's a little, little thing happening here. It was pretty cool. So I thought that was wild. So that one share ended up with 36 more people joining.

[Dylan]

That is the flywheel effect.

[Chanel]

Yeah, totally.

[Dylan]

That is cool. Way to go, B. Thank you for your support.

[Chanel]

Yeah, that was cool.

[Dylan]

Okay, so let's go into the postmortem. So we talked about New subscribers, I think you said about 1757. And then something around. Was it 3400 or 3700 total?

[Chanel]

3700, yeah.

[Dylan]

Okay, so I guess we can do some really quick math and figure about 2,000 subscribers converted from the growth reverse bulk broadcast email into the 30 days of growth. Like they opted in. Yeah. So let's talk about why you decided to set this up as an opt in only because I'm sure this people will have discussion. Why don't you just blast this out to your whole list? Why didn't you get people to like, force them to opt out? And I think I even asked you that question at first. So what is your thinking around that?

[Chanel]

So I think that's the question everybody's asked me.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

And it was either send people who sign up for a weekly email a daily just randomly without them opting in, which I don't feel great about. If someone just started sending me daily emails for 30 days, I'd be like, whoa, what's happening here? It is super valuable. I doubt they'd be mad about it. But I didn't want to have a bunch of unsubscribes. That's the reason I did that. The other reason is that everyone who enters automatically gets entered to win. And so if I would have thought through this a little bit more, I could have just added everyone to this and then said, if you refer one person, you get entered to win. But I didn't think that through. I was just building the plane as I was flying it.

[Dylan]

Yeah, okay. Okay. Somebody might object to one of your objections and say you could have set up a unsubscribe, just opt out of this sequence right to your mass list. And then yes, I'm sure there's some people who just get annoyed and just unsubscribe from everything. But I would suspect, or I would hypothesize that most people would probably who like your regular content, who don't want the daily thing would just unsubscribe from that sequence if you gave them a nice clear option to do. So did that come into play or would you in the future, would you maybe do that?

[Chanel]

Maybe. Okay, so I did do that for people who signed up just in case someone signed up and they're like, whoa, daily is way too much. I didn't want them to go to the bottom and just like unsubscribe. So I did actually set up like a link to say, if you just want to get the weeklies, do this send, go here and click this link. But I actually flubbed and I never actually set that up to have those people get moved to weekly. I realized that like yesterday and I was like, oh, no, I guess so I apologize for anyone. Click that link.

[Dylan]

And one of the good things. Yes. Sorry to interrupt you. One of the. One of the good things is though, in. During this whole three days of growth, we did recap that past week's all of the additions in your main broadcast. So anybody who is still at least subscribed to Growth Reverse would have gotten. Would have seen those in that email. So they would have been able to see what the last seven days or so of three days growth campaign were. So in a way, you stuck true to your word. I would say it just was wrapped in your. Your weekly Sunday send.

[Chanel]

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It's all like looking back, I'm like, yeah, there's definitely some things I would have changed.

[Dylan]

But yeah. Okay. In terms of unsubscribes, do you.

[Chanel]

Yeah.

[Dylan]

Do you think the. Did this damage your list at all or do you think the growth was definitely beneficial?

[Chanel]

No, I don't think it damaged my list at all. The weekly sends had about the same number of people unsubscribing. And then overall from those like 3,700 or so that signed up, 170 unsubscribed.

[Dylan]

Oh, that's not bad at all. Okay.

[Chanel]

I think that's totally fine.

[Dylan]

Yeah. And this actually leads into engagement for the series. Like, we didn't touch on that at all. People might be curious, what was your open rate like for these. For these broadcasts?

[Chanel]

Incredible. I want my list to be 3,700 people again. No, just kidding. No. The open rate for the first issue was 77%, which is just, wow, I'll take that any day. And the lowest it actually dropped to was 62%. Was at the final day was 62%. So I think that's pretty good over 30 days. And I had a lot of people tell me apologize in an email and say, I'm so sorry I haven't opened your past, like 10 emails because I'm trying to catch up.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

So I know the intention was there. They're just not opened. Yeah, I feel okay about it.

[Dylan]

I want to talk about really quickly too. One smart thing that you did. We should have talked about this at the beginning. But I think in your welcome email for this series, when people first signed up, you shared something about. Send me a question you have that I might address in one of these growth Levers or a question about growing a newsletter that you might have. And I think you told me you were so overwhelmed with responses to that that you were just like, I don't have time to answer all of these. I feel awful. Yeah, tell me a little bit about walk through how you set up that welcome email, because I think this is really important for we know that getting replies to our emails is super valuable, especially for new subscribers. So walk us through what you ask people and. And maybe how many responses? If you have that number, how many responses came through?

[Chanel]

Yeah. So I essentially just said, do you want me. Should I just read it?

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

Okay. We could put it on screen too. But I just said, hey, name. Cuz for this, everyone who signed up had to have their first name. I was like, you know what? I'm gonna make that little buried iron tree there add a little friction.

[Dylan]

I like it.

[Chanel]

So I just said, yes, you're in. And I'm pumped to have you here for 30 days. I'm gonna send you one tactical way to grow or optimize your newsletter. And these will be short, actionable, and proven to work. Some will help you get more subscribers. Others will help you get more from the subscribers you already have. Either way, you'll leave with a stronger, smarter email list than you started with. And then I said, here's what happens Next. Starts on April 23rd. Every day after that for 30 days. You'll get one every morning. Then I said, if it gets to be too much, you can click the thing to get a weekly roundup instead, which I failed on. So I apologize. And then I said, for now, hit reply and let me know what is your biggest challenge right now with newsletter growth? And I am someone who despises this question when I see it in a welcome email. I'm like, no, I'm not answering that. Stop making me think.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

But then at the underneath that, I said, why question mark? Because I might end up featuring a tip that helps you with your specific challenge. That would be pretty cool, huh? And so I'm like giving them a reason to do it. That's like benefiting them. And so I think that two part, like, not just the question, like that second piece actually ended up getting a lot of people replying. And so within, yeah, it stopped working as well as the 30 days went on. But in the first, what is this? So it launched April 23rd. I started getting subscribers on the 15th. So is that eight days? I think I got 200 replies, which I guess now looking back, I'm like, That's pretty good. And then I was like. But the replies aren't just like, I'm struggling with growth. It's like paragraphs of these people's, like, issues and what they're struggling with.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

So it became overwhelming very fast. And I still have to reply to some of these because. Yeah, it was just a lot.

[Dylan]

Yeah. And you are a good person and you feel bad that you said you would reply and you have. Not yet.

[Chanel]

Yes. And I will do it. And I feel really bad that I haven't yet.

[Dylan]

Okay. Okay, cool. So let's talk about things you maybe you thought this is gonna work really well, but didn't like when it turned. When it came to this campaign, something that you like. Yeah. You had a hunch on that didn't work. And whether or not you do it again or how you might do it differently.

[Chanel]

Yeah. The LinkedIn newsletter is a wild card. I don't know if it was good or bad, but it got to be annoying in the middle. So the. So just to give you a behind the scenes. So with the LinkedIn newsletter, you can launch it. It will go out to all of your first connections and say, hey, Chanel just wants just launch this newsletter as a notification. Send it as a notification. Apparently as an email too. I have LinkedIn emails turned off, so I don't know if you get an email or not. I'm sure at least half people don't because they have emails turned off, but. So that actually did get 1611 subscribers, which isn't bad.

[Dylan]

Okay.

[Chanel]

And that's not any. I haven't included any of those in the counts that we've talked about so far.

[Dylan]

And that's just for the LinkedIn newsletter.

[Chanel]

Yes.

[Dylan]

So, like, subscribers on the LinkedIn platform, you don't actually have access to their email addresses. We should mention they're just, like, subscribed on the platform.

[Chanel]

Yeah. Which is pointless. And actually, I was thinking this morning I should go back and DM all those people and say, hey, it's over, but you should come see all the fun stuff over at Growth in Reverse.

[Dylan]

Totally.

[Chanel]

So I think I need to do that. That's like an action item I'm taking away.

[Dylan]

You've seen 1600 minutes of copy and pasting all those. Oh, my God. Okay. So that. That didn't really work out the way you had hoped.

[Chanel]

Yeah. So it got annoying. So here's why. So when you publish a LinkedIn newsletter article, LinkedIn forces you to share that on your feed. And so if you're someone who's trying to post every day on LinkedIn, you're like almost competing with yourself. So if you post a LinkedIn newsletter and then you post something else, it's which one is it gonna show? So I didn't like that. And so I did it for the first seven or 10 days. I should go look back on how many it was. But after a while, I just got frustrated with it. Cause I'm like, I felt like they weren't getting the engagement, the comments, the subscribers from LinkedIn over to the real newsletter. So I don't know, I stopped doing it. And maybe it was just me being grumpy about it, but yeah, here we are.

[Dylan]

Fair enough. And did. So then once you stopped doing that, did you post every day for the rest of the 30 days on LinkedIn for the growth letters?

[Chanel]

No.

[Dylan]

No.

[Chanel]

I think if I had been more organized and set up for this, I probably would have had more time for marketing activities and like promoting this thing better. But after like day seven, I think I was just like hanging on by a thread.

[Dylan]

Yeah, I think some of these were getting written either the night before, the morning of kind of thing.

[Chanel]

So morning of.

[Dylan]

Yeah, kudos to you. I would have probably just collapsed. So. Good for you. Okay, so there's some good learnings there. A little bit more prep. I think you could have squeezed actually a lot more juice out of this if you had been able to create these social posts daily and publish them like a teaser. Yeah, some people would have probably gotten it, maybe a little bit annoyed. It's the same thing over and over. But I still think there would have been a lot of value there getting some conversion. But. Okay, so that's LinkedIn. Why? Oh, actually, people might be wondering, did you monetize this? Was this all just in the. For the. The growth that you were looking for the newsletter, or was there any monetization aspect to it?

[Chanel]

So when I started it, there was no monetization. I didn't even actually the people, the companies that gave away some of the sponsored stuff, like, I didn't get paid. There was no like official sponsorship thing. It was literally that they're giving away five licenses and I'm telling people about it. Yeah, no, I was just trying to like, honestly do this for that challenge in the community. And then about halfway through, I realized that I was not the only person falling behind with this. So a lot of people were reading them and they're like, oh, my God, I don't have time to implement this. I don't know exactly how to do this one. So then they get stuck. So I was like, maybe there's a way for me to go deeper on this and like share videos of how to do some of this stuff. About that time I was like, okay, maybe I should start a small little mini course to help people with this. And I was like, I cannot do this for free. Like I, I'm already doing this 30 days of growth for free. Like I need to monetize this in some way. So I was like, I'm just gonna make a hundred dollar course something small and simple. Yeah. So I was like, oh, I actually think I'm gonna do this and put together a little product. So that's what I did. So I actually did. I'm pre selling that right now. I have not created it, but some people have joined to get it.

[Dylan]

Okay, and where can they people go.

[Chanel]

To to find that 30 days of growth co slash course.

[Dylan]

Okay, and that course is, does that include all of the three days of growth le growth levers or is it more about building a pop up newsletter?

[Chanel]

Great question. So the final day of the 30 days of growth, I had someone I was going to use their growth lever and it didn't work out that we didn't get like it figured out in time. So I was like, I guess I'll just share about the 30 days of growth. So I actually just created my own growth lever as the last day. It actually worked out pretty well. People enjoyed that one a lot. So I just wrote like how I was setting up this pop up newsletter and that kind of thing. So since it's a growth lever that was in the 30 days of growth, I'm going to include some videos of how I set this up and like how I actually like some of the templates I use and that kind of thing. So nice. I think it'll be fun. Yeah.

[Dylan]

Okay, so then what's going to happen with the 30 days of growth? Since this is a pop up newsletter by virtue of the name, it's kind of like it was here for a minute and then it's gone. So what's going to happen with the content?

[Chanel]

This is a really good question. I don't know. I think I can repurpose some of it into a lead magnet. But a 30 day lead magnet is a very long thing. So I think I'm going to have to just pull out five or six, seven of them. Make it like a seven day email course or something. I'm really not sure yet, but I.

[Dylan]

Think you might have inspired other people already without maybe Knowing because I started getting. I got promoted or I got marketed to from a different newsletter operator that I'm subscribed to. About a 30 day is like basically build your audience with AI for 30 days. And it was somebody in kind of the creator space. I won't name names, but it was very. It was like in the middle. It started in the middle of the 30 days of growth. So I feel like this has inspired people a little bit more. Kudos to you on that. Maybe it was just coincidence. It very well could have been. But this is somebody who probably you're connected to in some way, shape or form or has been who sees your content. I would think so. So I think it is cool. I think personally what I would. I don't think that a 30 day lead magnet is especially the way the value that there is with it. I don't think that is a too long of a course I've signed up for. I think David perel had a 55 day like daily tip writing thing as lead magnet for his. For his course. I don't know. Personally, I don't think it's too bad. The other way you could do it is just deliver it in one whole PDF. If people don't want to deal with a 30 day sequence, you just have the option to get the whole thing in a PDF too.

[Chanel]

Yeah.

[Dylan]

And since it's free, you don't have to really worry about people like sharing it and all that stuff. That would be fine. Okay, so based on your experience doing this, would you do this again and would you recommend other people doing it?

[Chanel]

A hundred percent? Yes. And I will probably do it again.

[Dylan]

Yeah. 30 days. Or would you do longer, shorter?

[Chanel]

Now I have the 30 days of growth co. It's gotta be 30 days.

[Dylan]

So you're thinking of running the same like part two, basically, like another 30 days of growth.

[Chanel]

Yeah. I broke the cardinal rule that I always tell people to never put a number in a domain or a title for a URL because if you add a 31st one or you take one away, it like completely messes up your thing. And I just fell right into it. But it has a ring to it.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

Yeah.

[Dylan]

Cool. Okay. All right. Would you think of doing something different? Like 30 days of revenue or 30 days of monetization or maybe.

[Chanel]

Yeah, could be. I'm definitely going to be carrying over some of these learnings, but it'll definitely happen again. I think it was just. It was fun and like I got to talk to other people and now some of these creators are coming into growth in reverse pro to give like full on like how to do these things. So I'm excited. I think it's just like building this flywheel that I didn't know I needed and built some more excitement around what I'm doing. So well.

[Dylan]

I think the other thing it did that sort of a. I don't know, maybe a underrepresented thing is it really helped build your relationships with these people as well. Right. You may have already had some established relationship with them, but this just built that much more rapport. Building a collaboration, going back and forth, all that stuff I think is really valuable. And you're. You are very a proponent of relationships. You've given. I think you gave your. Your crafting commerce talk last year was based on that. So yeah, I think that's a really important point here.

[Chanel]

Yeah. So I'll definitely do it again. A couple other things that I would carry over that I guess I didn't really touch on. So out of the 2029 creators, cuz I was the 30th one, I can't really share my own stuff. Although I did about seven of them ended up. It didn't work out with timing for them to actually share during this time frame. So like I. This is another reason that I would like give myself a little bit more of a launch pad.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

Just to make sure that like other people's schedules worked with this. Because I didn't really take that into account at all.

[Dylan]

Like I have this window of time. You must fit into it.

[Chanel]

Yeah. And I was like fetal. It's totally fine. It's not a big deal. But that's a definite learning that I had that I would take away from this.

[Dylan]

Cool. One last question. Is there a difference between a pop up newsletter and an evergreen email sequence?

[Chanel]

Ooh, yes. I think the evergreen is something. Okay. So I think the pop up newsletter can become an evergreen piece of content. But the pop up newsletter is like it starts on this day, it ends on this day. I don't know, I feel like there's like a launch to it. Whereas like at the evergreen thing it's like you can launch it, but I don't know. That's a good question. As I'm talking this out, I'm like, maybe they are similar.

[Dylan]

I think they can be the. I think the value with the pop up nature of it is that limited kind of creates some scarcity urgency behind it. So it's like you better. If you want it, you get in now that being said, you have to be pretty Clear that this is like actually only a time limited thing or you gate it at the end and you put it behind a paywall or something like that. So if people want it for free, they can opt in now to get it. So I do think there's a little bit of a difference. But the way you structured it, 30 days growth, it can be something you consume once a day for 30 days or like you said, if you create a evergreen sequence with it, people could opt in and get it for 30 days straight. Or maybe even like I, I had maybe suggested putting it into a PDF or some kind of maybe a notion database where people can just sift through it.

[Chanel]

Yeah, no, I think it's. Yeah, it's similar and maybe like the pop up newsletter creates an evergreen resource. I'm not sure tbd but cool. Yeah.

[Dylan]

Any other part, Final parting words or thoughts?

[Chanel]

No, if you want to grab the. Cuz we're actually recording this the day before this goes out. So if you want to grab the course it's still going to be like a cheaper price than what it will be eventually because I'm still building this out but so if you go to 30 Days of Growth Co course I'm going to be having video walkthroughs of all of the growth levers and how I set this up and some more bonus stuff in there. So I think it'll be really good like how to set up, how to make sure the people that join your list stay, how to get more people to join your list. All that good stuff.

[Dylan]

Yeah, and templates and resources and stuff like that too. So I think this is going to far surpass the value, the $100 price tag value at least currently. Because that I think is going up a little bit every week. Isn't that.

[Chanel]

It actually went up this morning, so it's 25 now. Every week it goes up by 25 bucks. So until I launch it.

[Dylan]

There you go. Growth and Reverse. Or is it sorry, 30 days of growth co course.

[Chanel]

Yep.

[Dylan]

Yeah, there you go. And people in the Growth and Reverse Pro community get this for free as being part of the community. So just another and pretty much any anything Chanel offers front end paid people in the Growth Reverse Pro community get for free. So if you are interested in checking out the community, it's people like me and Chanel who are running newsletters and people of all different newsletter shapes and sizes in there and it's a great time. We've got about 80 members going strong and you can go to growth reverse.compro to check that out.

[Chanel]

Perfect. Yeah. Come join us. It'll be fun.

[Dylan]

Yes. Join us. All right. I think that's the bod I think it is. All right.

[Chanel]

Talk to you soon.