← Growth In Reverse: Newsletter & Email Growth
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- [00:00]
Chanel
This one was something that I actually really wanted to do in the early days of Growth in Reverse, and I didn't do it. So feel free to steal this for whoever's listening. I don't often have a ton of time for this, which is probably not the best strategy, but I will try and, like, quickly write out, like, five or 10 different angles that this piece can take.
- [00:17]
Dylan
Just have one thing somebody can do on that page. Watch your conversions increase. I think it's that simple.
- [00:23]
Chanel
The Google overlords want to see you and your readers engaging with each other. That's another thing you can set up once, and people will get that, like, warm, fuzzy feel feeling every time they subscribe to your newsletter.
- [00:34]
Dylan
This takes a little bit of upfront work and thinking, but once you've got this set, this is where you can really stand out.
- [00:45]
Chanel
Welcome back to the Growth in Reverse podcast. I'm Chanel.
- [00:49]
Dylan
And I'm Dylan.
- [00:50]
Chanel
And today we're going to talk about some of the easy changes that you can make that can have a big impact on your growth and just your retention of your subscribers. This topic actually came from someone on LinkedIn. Jake Carroll sent over this idea. Um, Jake has a newsletter called Good Fortune Labs, and you can find that@goodfortunelabs.com where he breaks down strategies and insights behind impact businesses and the founders who built them. And Jake actually said, you know, you do a lot of these episodes about mistakes and some of the cool ways people grow, but are there different things that you can do, like smaller changes you can make that have a big impact? So I said, dylan, I think this is a good challenge. Let's do this episode.
- [01:28]
Dylan
I think it is. I think it is.
- [01:29]
Chanel
Yeah. So we put together some notes, and then we're just going to kind of riff on some things as well. And, yeah, I'm excited to jump into this. We're going to kind of break this up into a couple parts. So we'll talk about onboarding, things like your welcome email, et cetera. Then we'll talk about some growth stuff and then revenue, because everyone wants to make some more money. And then we're going to talk about retention and engagement, and there might be a couple bonus ones at the end, so stay tuned.
- [01:53]
Dylan
Ooh, love that teaser bonus tips. Stay tuned.
- [01:57]
Chanel
All right, so let's jump into onboarding. We talked first about having, like, a good, minimalist landing page for your newsletter. Yeah, this is something I saw through Drew Riley with Trends vc, and I pretty much copied his homepage and stole it, and it still is the same. I'll probably change it up a little bit. But I think there is something to be said about just having one box for the email address. And that's all you can do on that page, is sign up.
- [02:24]
Dylan
I think, like, the easy change here is just deleting your nav menu. Like, you can still host it on your website, but just, like, delete your navigation menu. Just have one thing somebody can do on that page and watch your conversions increase. I think it's that simple.
- [02:38]
Chanel
And Drew, actually, in the deep dive I wrote on him, he had like, 17 iterations of the homepage, and most of them were, like, changing around different. Different elements. But the whole time, he essentially left the form as just like, email address button to subscribe. That's it.
- [02:52]
Dylan
I mean, it's that simple. And it's not, of course, you want to, you know, leverage copywriting and make sure people know what your newsletter's about and all that stuff, like have. Have all those elements buttoned down. But just make it super focused and not. Don't give your subscribers any distractions. Make it, like, really obvious what they need to do and how to. How to get access to your newsletter.
- [03:12]
Chanel
Yeah. And so with his. I know he said it converted at like 40 to 50%. So I think that's a pretty good benchmark if you can get it up there.
- [03:20]
Dylan
It's pretty.
- [03:21]
Chanel
Especially if it's. Yeah. So I say anything above 30, 35% for a page like that is doing pretty well. All right, what do you think next?
- [03:30]
Dylan
Well, I think so. Once you've got somebody to subscribe, you know, there's. There's a few places, a few things they can do, or a few options that you can have. One of the things I've seen a mistake I've seen. I know we weren't supposed to talk about mistakes, but one thing I see, people make the mistake of just a default success. You have been subscribed, like just a default message, and there's nothing else for them to do, especially if they're on one of these minimalist landing pages. It's kind of a dead end. Right. So you want to drive people to an almost there page or a thank you page. Let's talk through an almost there page. One of the reasons why I think it's pretty important to have an almost there page is really because. Signifies that, like, you are making progress towards being a subscriber to this newsletter. And it can really give you the opportunity to, like, drive people to their inbox. Saying almost there just got to do this one step. You see this oftentimes with double opt in newsletters who have turned double opt in on. So they need to confirm their email address to actually get on your email list. But you could even do this for if you don't have a double opt in turned on. You can drive subscribers to their inboxes to engage with your welcome email that you're sending them by having an almost their page. So it's kind of like a, I'd say almost like a decoy page to some degree. A decoy thank you page. Just really driving people to take that next step.
- [04:44]
Chanel
And the guys over at Growth Dot Design have a really good example of this. Um, it's just like a little animated character of one of them and it says like, go check your Gmail inbox. Um, and I actually kind of snagged that template for mine as well. So there's a link for, you know, if somebody is using Gmail, they can click on that. It goes directly to the inbox. It focuses their inbox on only Getting emails from Chanelrowth in reverse.com kind of removes all the noise. It makes it more likely that someone's going to open that first email from you as well. And they call that like a sniper link, I think was the term.
- [05:18]
Dylan
Yeah, yeah, that was it.
- [05:20]
Chanel
Yeah. Those guys are super smart with that stuff. Um, and then, yeah, if you want to do a thank you page instead and you're not doing double opt in, that's fine as well. And I know you had a good example recently of one of these, so why don't you tell us about that.
- [05:32]
Dylan
And I'll just give a shout too. If you are not watching this on YouTube, check it on YouTube because we'll throw examples of these on the screen too. So make sure you check that out, including that Growth Design one. So in terms of thank you pages, one thing I saw recently was again, this is a thank you page is another opportunity, right? You've got a subscriber, they've just subscribed. They're essentially fully engaged to, you know, hearing from you, what you have to offer. And oftentimes, and I've, I'm guilty of making this mistake too. Your thank you page is like, thanks for subscribing. Go check your inbox. Like, that's fine and that's good, but it's not really spurring anybody on to do anything. And I think what you can do is really, there's an opportunity to upsell here. There's an opportunity to make sure they Follow you on social media, on your, on the channels you're actually active on. And one thing that I saw Mark Manson do actually recently I subscribed to his newsletter and he had a great double opt in email. I clicked on his, on his opt in button in his email and then it got taken to his subscribed page and is essentially a thank you page. And he said thanks for subscribing. I think this newsletter newsletter has the opportunity to change your life. Follow me on all these social platforms and then if you really want to have an impact on your life or have my newsletter have an impact on your life, check out all of these great features and these benefits from my pro membership essentially or my basically his upsell tier. And so he listed us all these, all of these bullet points, what you get when you subscribe to his basically his paid subscription for his newsletter. And then he's got a price at the bottom saying it only, you know, only 667 I think per month to basically get all that. So I thought that was a really great way that he used his thank you page to upsell and drive some revenue for, for himself as well.
- [07:17]
Chanel
Yeah. And I think the thank you page, the welcome email, these are things that so many people just like overlook. I've done so many newsletter audits where it's just like the default option that either kit or beehive sets you up with and it just doesn't leave someone excited about what they just joined. So if you can really, you really stand out if you take the time and like customize these a bit, you know, maybe throw your face up on a couple of them. Just kind of show the people that you care about this whole newsletter thing and that you're taking this seriously.
- [07:48]
Dylan
Yeah. And it gives you, gives you a chance for even to get people down. Like get the rabbit hole, go down the rabbit hole of your content or the, you know, binge your content. I think Jay's really, Jay Close has really tried to optimize this as well with his website to make like a binge page. So there's, there's lots of ways you can do this, but the point is don't just leave people kind of at this boring dead end page.
- [08:09]
Chanel
Definitely. So the next one that we want to talk about is the welcome email. I've seen a lot of good welcome emails in my day, but I came across one recently that was just so good. I'm writing a deep dive on CJ from mostly metrics and I signed up for his paid newsletter just So I could do the research and see what's behind there. And the welcome email on this is just amazing. So he themes it like Breaking Bad. And so the. The subject line is thank you for Breaking Bad and going paid. Um, and then the first headline says let's cook. And it's like a picture of the two guys from that show. Um, and did you get the trademark newsletter? I don't know. Probably not. That's okay. Um, and then he says, like, this is where all the dope stuff will live. The free subscribers, well, they'll just get the Snickle Fritz. And then, like, it's just like, goes on and on. He's just showcasing his personality in this. Um, and then at the bottom, like, throughout his content, from what I've seen and he talks about on his podcast, he's a big Miller Light fan.
- [09:10]
Dylan
Like the beer. Okay.
- [09:12]
Chanel
Yeah. So at the bottom it says cheers and more to come. And then it has like, a gif of like a Miller Light can flying across the table and it says cheers. It's metrics time. Because that's. This whole thing is like, mostly metrics. It's the name of the newsletter.
- [09:26]
Dylan
Right.
- [09:27]
Chanel
I was just like, this is. It's so good. It's so customized to him. It's like showcasing he spent time. He has a good personality and he can, like, convey that in his content.
- [09:37]
Dylan
And again, this is a lot. Like, this takes a little bit of upfront work and thinking, but once you've got this set, this is where you can really stand out. And I think this does. People might be listening to this and think, oh, that's a lot of work to figure that out. But this is the email that goes to everyone. Right. Spend a little bit extra time, and the payoff is just. Is just so much bigger.
- [09:54]
Chanel
That was a. One of the better ones I've seen lately. And it's stuck in my head because it's just. It's so good.
- [10:00]
Dylan
I'm definitely going to have to subscribe and experience that. The metrics time.
- [10:05]
Chanel
So funny.
- [10:06]
Dylan
Oh, that's good. I think the to kind of follow suit with that a little bit like, surprise and delight is a big thing that I think people can leverage in welcome emails. I know we've talked about Caitlin Burgoyne a lot with this. She has a great, you know, reply and I'll send you a free gift sort of thing. Other people have just said, basically, you know, here is a free gift is kind of like the reverse lead magnet. You subscribed and now you're Getting like an added resource. And I think that's one way you can really prove some trust and credibility to your audience. You know, they're gonna, they're gonna like you for it. They're gonna trust that you're gonna keep providing them with great content. So it really sets you up on the right foot. And it doesn't take much.
- [10:40]
Chanel
You.
- [10:41]
Dylan
Most of us have some kind of resource that we can share or access to something in that first email. And so I think there is an opportunity there to really surprise and delight people too, for sure.
- [10:51]
Chanel
And I think the other thing people kind of skip is asking for a reply. I mean, this is just the Google overlords want to see you and your readers engaging with each other. If way emails the whole time, it's potentially going to not go to the inbox every time. But if you can get someone to reply, that really does help them see it as like something this person wanted to sign up for. So if you could just ask, you know, hey, reply. What I say is like reply and let me know where you found the newsletter. Or say, hi Chanel. And people can just like copy that because my name's hard to spell. So they could just like copy and paste it, which is what most people do. But the benefit of the other part is like asking people where they found the newsletter. It's helped me a lot in being able to go thank the people who sent other folks because I don't always know like where people are coming from. So like there's not good tracking. If someone shouts me out in their newsletter and they don't link to it correctly with like UTM parameters or anything, like I won't know where those people came from. So it's pretty cool to have that come through as just like bonus material for me to see where people are showing up from.
- [11:57]
Dylan
That is, that is cool. I think you could even combine these two strategies of the surprise and delight and get reply and say, please reply. Copy this text and hit reply and then I'll send you, you know, the surprise gift. So that could be, that could be one strategy that you could use too. Do you want, do you want to talk about what Nathan does for his invite only newsletter? I think that's interesting. I hadn't heard of this before.
- [12:17]
Chanel
Yeah. So Nathan from Feed Media, he's a friend I met at the newsletter conference last year. He actually has invite only newsletter. So his whole thing is he's running an agency helping people with paid ads for newsletters. And so he doesn't need, you know, 15, 20,000, 50,000 subscribers. Like, he just wants a very curated list. And so he actually seeks out the people he wants to read his newsletter. And so I remember he invited me the one time, actually, I think it was after we jumped on a call after meeting at the conference, and he invited me to his newsletter and I was like, oh, well, this is cool. Um, and then at the very top, he like, says like, hey, welcome to so and so from, you know, growth in reverse or whatnot. Um, because he's only adding a couple people every week, as far as I know. But yeah, it just makes people feel special. Um, yeah, I don't know, it's like a different way to do business. And his newsletter is very good. It's like high signal in a way, because he's sharing, like, how his client works going and that kind of thing.
- [13:17]
Dylan
So that's cool. It's very, very like scarcity, you know, like VIP line sort of approach to a newsletter which most people like, begging people to come join the newsletters. And he's kind of like, nah, I've got this newsletter that's kind of a secret that it's like invite only. So, I mean, there's some reverse psychology going on there that people could use for their own newsletters too. I've heard the idea of people like, basically capping a newsletter. I'm only going to have X amount of subscribers and using that as like a scarcity tactic to get people to subscribe to. So very limiting in some ways, but an interesting concept to at least think through.
- [13:50]
Chanel
Definitely.
- [13:51]
Dylan
Nice.
- [13:52]
Chanel
The other thing that could be cool to include in a welcome email, I actually put together a whole carousel on LinkedIn about this recently, but Jay Clouse includes a welcome video, which I really enjoy. I think that does quite well for people because you've either probably found him on the podcast or his YouTube channel, and if not, you're like, getting that first trust touch point with him, which is really interesting. So I think that's another thing you can set up once and people will get that like, warm fuzzy feeling every time they subscribe to your newsletter.
- [14:25]
Dylan
And obviously you can't play an email or, sorry, a video in email, so he's must be showing like a thumbnail with a, you know, play button, so encourages you to click through to. To where it's hosted.
- [14:35]
Chanel
Yep, exactly.
- [14:36]
Dylan
Okay. And it's not personalized for every new subscriber, of course, but, you know, it's a general, like, you know, thank you so much for subscribing and what to expect kind of thing. It's kind of like a welcome email video. Uh, well, like, obviously that's what it is, but like the, the video is basically like everything you'd hear in a welcome email. But you know, like to you more personal, you're seeing the person's face, just that, that builds the trust. Right.
- [14:57]
Chanel
Uh, I know we're still like going hard on this welcome email thing, but one other thing I did want to mention I do in my newsletter, I call out like, hey, if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, go. Like, please feel free. And I get a lot of connections on LinkedIn of people saying like, hey, I just subscribed to the newsletter, just wanted to connect and I think that's a cool way to stay, stay in touch with your audience. Yeah, I don't know. I think a, it has the benefit of like growing your follower count if you care that much. But also like you're getting people who obviously enjoy your content. Like they subscribed and now they're following you on social media too, which is going to help with engagement there and building trust with that person as well.
- [15:36]
Dylan
Yeah, I think even just that invitation to connect, you know, with LinkedIn, you can follow someone, you can connect with them. It's almost like, you know, becoming friends on Facebook back in the day where you had to like get approved to become someone's friend. It kind of sends, I don't know, it's a. So definitely some feel good vibes there when somebody's invited you to connect and you're connecting with author of a newsletter like yours. So I think that's. That could go a long way too. So one thing that I've seen people maybe make the mistake of doing and that I've unsubscribed to many newsletters because I just simply don't remember subscribing to them like ever. Or they haven't send me and sent me a newsletter in a long time. And I just, I just don't know where it came from. So one thing I started doing is adding basically a, a what I'm calling a context block to the beginning of my newsletter so that people are like, why am I getting this email? And so I just send them this quick reminder, like you may have signed up on my homepage or with one of my free resources or you maybe were referred here by friends newsletter. If not, then just feel free to unsubscribe at the bottom. So it's just like kind of calling out the elephant in the room, like, hey, I'M in your inbox. And you may not know why, especially in this day and age of so many different ways that people can be signed up to a newsletter, like I said, with recommendations, referrals, lead magnets, all that kind of thing. I think it's pretty important and probably more important than ever to make sure people know how they got on your list and why they're there, and then also giving them the option to not be. Because nobody likes a cold subscriber. And I think it's important to just call that out right at the beginning.
- [17:05]
Chanel
Totally. I think that's a big missed opportunity for quite a few people who are leveraging recommendations or beehive boosts or those kinds of things.
- [17:14]
Dylan
Yeah.
- [17:14]
Chanel
And you're not kind of saying, like, where these people came from? I think that's a big miss if you're not doing that. Um, I've found just personally, like, people who come through recommendations aren't always the highest quality, so I end up unsubscribing a lot of them. However, if you don't tell them, like, where they came from, maybe they don't remember and then they end up unsubscribing or just not opening your email. So.
- [17:34]
Dylan
Yeah.
- [17:35]
Chanel
Yeah, it's a good reminder.
- [17:36]
Dylan
Yeah. And it, it'll, it'll save you a lot of headache in the. Down the road. Like you mentioned having to unsubscribe people yourself or who knows what. So, yeah, I think it's good. I think it's, it's a low, a low lift thing that you can do.
- [17:48]
Chanel
Okay. This one was something that I actually really wanted to do in the early days of Growth in Reverse, and I didn't do it. So feel free to steal this for whoever's listening. Send out a custom video to each subscriber. So, you know, in the early days, you might be getting 1, 2, 3 subscribers a day. How much time would it take you to, to record a Quick Loom video and say like, hey, Dylan, I saw you subscribed, really appreciate it. Um, maybe you can go check out their LinkedIn profile, like, sneak around, like, figure out some cool things about them and say like, I saw that you write this newsletter, I saw that you do this. Really excited to have you on the list or something. You don't even have to go that far with it. But I think getting an actual custom video like that is going to go so far in terms of building trust.
- [18:31]
Dylan
Yeah, I think that's huge. I think that's huge. That's kind of like we talked to Justin Moore recently and how he was like DMing people when they'd subscribed. And he'd like, yes, if they didn't have his, if their name wasn't in their bio, he'd like go snoop their YouTube or Instagram and find out where they, you know, shared their name so he could like make sure he included that. I think just going that extra step really built a long Runway of trust for him with his subscribers. And I think it's like those things that, yeah, it's, it's not scalable, but I think those things do actually scale in the long run. You're going to have way more people invested. You're probably going to get that, you know, 1,000 true fans number a lot faster if you're doing that than if you're just trying to kind of take this shotgun approach of just getting as many subscribers as you can from every, from every direction and sending them all just the, the same welcome email. Yeah, that works. But I think this way, especially if you're selling a certain product or service this way is going to get you further ahead in the long run.
- [19:25]
Chanel
Yeah, I wish I would have done this, but things took off a little too quick for me and I never actually implemented it. And so here we are.
- [19:32]
Dylan
There's a humble break if you've ever heard one. I just got too many subscribers. I didn't have time.
- [19:38]
Chanel
I know, that's so bad.
- [19:40]
Dylan
Champagne problems.
- [19:43]
Chanel
Maybe I could go back and do this like once a day. Like pick one subscriber actually. That could be fun. Maybe I will do that. Well, if you're listening to the podcast and you haven't subscribed, go subscribe and maybe you'll get a custom video for me.
- [19:54]
Dylan
You might, you might. You should pick one person this upcoming week who subscribes after we publish this. That'd be great.
- [20:00]
Chanel
Definitely. All right, I'm sort of reminder to do that.
- [20:02]
Dylan
There you go. One other thing, I last thing. I think this is the last one we'll touch on because we're going on this for a while. These are very important though. That's why I think we wanted to really focus on this. The four hour email which Jason Resnick who came into the Growth Reverse Pro community talking to us all about a lot of this onboarding stuff that we've been discussing. And then also like automations and stuff, he does a four hour email which is like a automated email when somebody basically subscribes to your newsletter through like a lead magnet or free resource. And if they haven't clicked to download that free resource from the initial email that comes out. He sends an email four hours later just basically reminding people, you know, you haven't downloaded your resource yet, just reminding you to do that. And so I created a lead magnet shortly after he came into the community to share that with us. And I added that for our email and sure enough, it's like every time it went out, I think it was like nine out of 10 people clicked through and downloaded the resource. So I think that would be. It's like low hanging fruit. And people are always busy. They don't necessarily always get it the first time. And I think just a friendly reminder to make sure they get your free resource is something they would, most people would appreciate.
- [21:11]
Chanel
And what you said like 90% of the people clicked that second email?
- [21:14]
Dylan
Yeah, it was around there. It was almost every single. I was pretty surprised. Like for the people that didn't click the first time got that email, the open rate was super high and just about everybody clicked through. I'll have to, I'll have to double check the metrics on it. But it was, I was kind of like anticipating, anticipating this will just, you know, if they didn't download it the first time, they'll ignore this. They'll didn't seem to be the case at all.
- [21:35]
Chanel
That's awesome. Yeah, I need to try this out.
- [21:38]
Dylan
Yeah, it's a good one. Especially with, yeah, the growth levers library that you have as your kind of your main lead magnet. I think there's a good opportunity for people to. Or for you to remind people that they have access to this or even like a week later. Hey, how's the growth lovers library treating you or do you have any questions or you know, just spur some, some engagement that way too? Could be, could be an interesting strategy as well.
- [21:59]
Chanel
Totally.
- [22:00]
Dylan
Yeah.
- [22:00]
Chanel
Okay, let's move on to some growth stuff. Let's do it. I feel like we've been on onboarding for a very long time, so yeah, let's move on to something new. So growth things that you can kind of set up, not necessarily forget, but for the most part you could set it up once and it'll keep running for you. First one is a referral program. I know a lot of people like, I don't know, I hear pros and cons to this, but I think a referral program is a great way to kind of set something up. Have it running in the background, maybe gets you some incremental subscribers over time and you don't really have to think about it. Going forward a ton, you know, maybe every couple months you change the rewards or something. But I think for the most part this is like a really good way to kind of get those extra subscribers without doing much more work.
- [22:45]
Dylan
I think you, you showcased one from Ali Abuletta, I believe it was for first 1000. He had an interesting, more unique referral program which included like shoutouts in his newsletter if you, if you recommended or shoutouts basically to your product or your website in like a, a custom section in his newsletter. If you, you know, recommended five or 10 people, he had some other really interesting ways to do it. So it's like not just a referral program, but something that's a little bit, a little bit different, that doesn't necessarily cost you money or too much time, but that would encourage people to, to actually refer your newsletter.
- [23:20]
Chanel
I think it's a good way to kind of get those incremental subscribers. Okay, so this next one, people are probably going to yell at their screen or phone. But cross promotions, I think, yes, they are work. However, friend over, a friend named David Aliglu, he runs a newsletter called the Knowledge and he had a cross promotion set up that like, made my jaw drop when I saw it. It was an email. It was a dedicated email. He said, hey, love the newsletter. It was actually like a good cold email. Do you want to do a cross promotion?
- [23:52]
Dylan
You didn't say it pissed you off or anything like that, or pissed him off?
- [23:55]
Chanel
No.
- [23:55]
Dylan
Okay.
- [23:55]
Chanel
No. And so he has an email that goes out and says, like, hey, I want to do a cross promotion. Here's a little bit about my newsletter. I have 20,000 subscribers or whatever the number was. And then he links off to a form that essentially captures everything he would need for that. And then also I think he just assigns the date on the back end for like when you're doing the cross promotion. So it was like your name, your newsletter, the link you want to include, the form, full like blurb that you want. Anything else. Like if there was an image in the newsletter, like, it was just so set up that like, you didn't even have to really engage with each other as much. Uh, there was no back and forth emails or anything like that. So I think if you can get a process like that set up and just like maybe you do one or two cross promotions a month, I think that could be another way to just get some more subscribers without a ton of work.
- [24:44]
Dylan
I did, I think for my 1Ks roadmap, I believe I created a template for basically I can't remember exactly what I called it. This is great podcast material right now. But it essentially was like a setup form. Whereas, like how you could exchange, basically exchange your cross promotion details, like either in a docker on a form. I can't remember what it was, but it was, it was this idea like cross promotions take time because there's back and forth and all this stuff. But it's like, hey, we both agree we want to do cross promo. Like, here's the, here's the link to a form, fill out your details there. And it was, it just asks basic questions like your. The link that you wanted to share the details about your newsletter, the name, etc. So that you can, you can definitely automate some of this process and make it a lot smoother and less of a lift for you than the tediousness of going back and forth on email.
- [25:33]
Chanel
Totally. Um, so if there's any way to like just systematize it even more, go for it. I think that's a good way. Um, and yeah, it's not completely hands off, but for the most part, recommendations we kind of just touched on with the welcome email getting sent afterwards. But again, recommendations can be a great way to get some extra subscribers. I know people love them, they hate them, but I think if you do it well and you're. And you're promoting and like recommending other people who actually have good content and are in like they have similar audiences, I think it could be beneficial.
- [26:05]
Dylan
So here's a hot tip for anyone listening who is on Kit, for example, boost. I'm sure in Beehive you could probably do this as well. Find people who you want to just cross promote with, reach out to a few people, like basically do free cross promotions with these people. I think that is going to be one of the best ways that you can leverage these pop up widgets, these recommendations widgets. If you can find somebody who is very much aligned with your content, your niche, not necessarily competition, but complimentary, I think that is kind of the best way to do this because you can really drive a lot of subscribers to each other and these can be valuable subscribers. So I'm not gonna give examples of who I'm doing this with, but I found this to be a really successful way to drive new subscribers and then send people basically subscribers their way as well. So find people, cross promote. Basically use the recommendations widget as like a cross promotions tool.
- [27:05]
Chanel
Yep. And then if the cross promotion does well and you're seeing good subscribers come from it, why not see if you can set up a recommendation swap with that person. It's almost like a test, right? Like true. Test the waters before you actually, like, dive in and swap recommendations. I think that could be cool.
- [27:19]
Dylan
There's one other kind of cool thing. I saw Nathan Barry from Kit almost said convertkit sharing. If you go into the creator recommendations creator Network section, you can scroll down and actually see who. I believe it's like, who you have the most overlap with for subscribers or similar audiences. Also, who's like who from who subscribed to your newsletter? Who's in like the Kit Creator Network. And so like, these are just a bunch of different ways that they're kind of like unearthing some of these connections that you didn't maybe didn't realize existed. So go check those out. I think that a really good opportunity to reach out to some people who are maybe subscribed to your newsletter that you didn't know and create some of these collaborations with.
- [27:58]
Chanel
Awesome. Love it.
- [27:59]
Dylan
All right, should we talk revenue?
- [28:01]
Chanel
Yeah, let's jump into revenue.
- [28:02]
Dylan
How do we make easy money?
- [28:05]
Chanel
Tell me, please.
- [28:06]
Dylan
Yes, exactly. I got one example. It's not necessarily easy money, but one way you could if you're struggling with sponsorships. I think I've seen this. I've seen this. A few people do this a few times. And that's basically offering super cheap sponsor slots, like, let's say a couple thousand subscribers. And you're trying to sell $250 sponsorship slots in your newsletter could be a tough sell. What you could do instead of trying to get a really high number for these spots is basically just say, I'm going to blow these out at say, 50 bucks. So almost, you know, 75. I'm not going to do public math, but 75% say reduction on your price, 75% off sponsor slots. You could put a limit on how many you're doing, but basically blow. Blow through some inventory that you want to get rid of. And a few things this does is obviously it lowers the barrier to entry for people who want to advertise, it's a little bit more enticing. There's lower risk on the advertiser's part. It also lowers pressure on you to, like, make sure that you get the ROI for your advertiser. Of course, you want people to click through and you still don't want to, you know, slack off on the promotion of it or the copywriting, but it just lowers that pressure a little bit on the performance. You get better at sales, you fill out your inventory. You know, all these things Happen and you get better at copywriting because you're having to write more ads. It's a forcing function for you to publish. So there's a lot of reasons why just getting more sponsored slots in your newsletter, even if you're not making money, hand over fist with them, a good thing. And then from there, if you're getting good results for advertisers and you start increasing, you can start increasing the prices and they're like, well, I advertise, got good results, prices going up. I get it. Yeah, it's not gonna. They might not be convinced that easily, but it's an opportunity for you to slowly start increasing prices and sharing. I mean, you've got all these metrics now that you wouldn't have had otherwise if you're trying to sell a way too high flat rate for your, for your sponsor slots.
- [29:58]
Chanel
Yeah, I think this could be good. But I hesitate. I don't know. I feel like if you start super low, it's going to be really hard to increase the price. So maybe there's like a. Yes, cheap, but not super cheap. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do think there is something to be said about filling out inventory and getting momentum. I did this in the early days too of like, okay, you know, sold out four and then I raised my price and I was like, hey, they're booked out until March or whatever the timeframe was.
- [30:26]
Dylan
Yeah.
- [30:27]
Chanel
And it was like one or two months out. And so I think that just kind of shows advertisers like, whoa, there's demand. Like I should maybe jump on this if I want to test it out. So I think there is something to that aspect of it. But yeah, don't tell Justin Moore about these cheap spots.
- [30:40]
Dylan
No, no, no, he'll. He'll strangle you. I think the part of the thing I like about this is especially somebody who's never run ads in their newsletter or have a smaller audience. Basically what they do is they'll, they'll validate that they can actually earn revenue from sponsorships and then this, they can set a benchmark as to how many clicks they're getting on an ad and how well the ads converting, maybe testing out different areas in the newsletter that you can do it. And it's kind of a low risk test too because you're not charging in Arm and Lake for this sponsorship. So I like the idea of somebody who's just starting out and who's growing their list. Wants to see some of that momentum and validate the idea of having a sponsorship in your newsletter and whether or not it could actually work with your audience. I think this is a really low lift, easier way to do it. Lower pressure on you and on the advertiser as well.
- [31:26]
Chanel
Yeah. And so what Dylan's saying there, just to clarify is that, like, so if you have a super cheap sponsorship or two or three, then you can say, okay, my audience clicked through on each one of these like 50 times. So then for future sponsors, you can go to them and be like, okay, the average ad click rate is, you know, 2% or 3% or whatever that is. You can expect to get around 50 clicks. And that kind of helps the advertiser take some pressure off because they know what they're paying for and what the average quote, unquote response might be.
- [31:56]
Dylan
And it doesn't matter what you sold that ad for. Like the clicks relay that. Right? So you just, you, you set yourself a benchmark now for what the, What a spot like that will get for clicks. Technically, you could do this with any link. Like, you could have your own makeshift ad if you wanted to, and test it that way, if you don't even have a sponsor, and then you could go to a sponsor and say, hey, you know, I had this sort of featured slot, and this is, this is the how much, how many clicks it drove, etc. Etc. So there's definitely different ways to do this too.
- [32:27]
Chanel
I think the other thing that could be interesting for people, for revenue is like setting up a survey for subscribers. So then when you go to sponsors in the future, you have some data as well. And you're not just saying, hey, it's 50 clicks. It's 50 clicks from people who live in the US and Canada or, you know, they work at these places, et cetera. And then you have more data for the sponsor to be like, oh, these are actually my target audience, folks. Let me go ahead and, you know, subscribe or buy more of those. So this is.
- [32:58]
Dylan
Well, I mean, it's huge, right? Like, we. I mentioned Justin Moore earlier, and I'll mention him again because he was just on the podcast. If you haven't listened to that episode, please go check it out because it's so good. But Justin basically is like, you know, you need to tell advertisers who is in your audience when you're making your pitch. But you have to back back up a little bit because if you don't know who's in your audience, you can't make that pitch. So questionnaire survey, finding out who is in your audience, who they are what they do. Even if you can get like their household income, you know, details like that are going to be more valuable to advertisers. And then also like the, the psychographics of where they are in a particular journey, what problems they're facing, what challenges they're having in their business, all those things are going to be important too. And Justin gave us a great example of, you know, like an accounting software. You didn't realize that you're small to medium sized business operator that was in your audience was having troubles with accounting software and now you've got a pitch for, you know, an accounting product that you could pitch a brand on. So those are just things that you kind of, you don't need to know to sell sponsorship, but they're definitely going to help you sell your sponsorships and potentially get more for them.
- [34:02]
Chanel
And so you can even set up something like a Google Doc to collect some data from people. You can use a tool like Right Message if you have the budget for it. It's a great option. Connects directly with your email service provider. But again, like a Google Doc is just as good in the beginning as well.
- [34:17]
Dylan
Do you mean Google Form?
- [34:18]
Chanel
Google Form, Yes.
- [34:19]
Dylan
Okay. Okay.
- [34:20]
Chanel
Yes, yes.
- [34:21]
Dylan
Google Doc could work as well, but Google form would work.
- [34:24]
Chanel
Maybe a little messy.
- [34:25]
Dylan
Yeah, it might be.
- [34:27]
Chanel
Yeah.
- [34:27]
Dylan
All right, let's, let's. Do you have anything else on revenue?
- [34:31]
Chanel
I don't think so. I feel like that could be a whole episode in itself. So let's keep it there for now and we'll move back to that in a future.
- [34:38]
Dylan
Um. Okay. Retention and engagement. How do we get people to. What can we do? Little things we can do to get people to both open our emails and stay on our email lists.
- [34:48]
Chanel
I know this one you have in here for subject line and I'm like, yes, but. But also like. So subject lines are definitely important, especially in the early days of your newsletter when people are still deciding whether or not they enjoy your newsletter. If they want to trust what you're writing about, I think they could have a big impact. I. We've mentioned this before on the podcast, but you know, when I always run. Not when I always run, when I run subject line tests, like oftentimes it doesn't have a huge impact. And I know people like Ann Hanley say that the name, the send from name is actually more important. People are more likely to open it because it's you versus what the subject line says. But I do think there is something to a good subject line, at least getting it past the Point of like, going from bad to good.
- [35:33]
Dylan
Yes. Yeah. I think there's a lot of things you can do with subject lines. And I agree with Anne and you, like, once you've built up the credibility and the trust in your reader's eyes, it kind of doesn't matter what your subject line is. To some degree, they know that it's coming from somebody who's publishing great content that they enjoy that they get value from. So to some degree, that subject line can be not moot, but not have as big of an impact. That being said, though, you're constantly adding people to your newsletter. Hopefully new people are coming on all the time. You might not have built up that trust and relationship and rapport and credibility with them. So I think you do still need to really consider what, what a new subscriber want to open rather than somebody who's been subscribed to your newsletter for two years and who opens every edition. Right. So I think keeping that in the back of your mind when you're putting together your subject lines is pretty valuable. So you don't want to just kind of necessarily spend all this time. Yeah, spend all this time that you put into, like, you should know, putting hours and hours and hours into research and publishing, writing a deep dive, and then being like, ah, the first thing that comes to your mind. Yeah, that's good enough. Subject line. You know, you wouldn't want to. If you've spent a little bit more time in thinking through the subject line and it gets like 15% better open rate because of it, you'd probably kick yourself. So there's a few tools you can use to even analyze your. Your subject lines. There's cheap chatgpt bots that you can use. There's different websites. We can maybe share some of those in the show notes. But the point is, like, don't just publish the first subject line that comes to your. It might be the best, the first one might be the best, but give it more than like one second of thought is, I guess, my point.
- [37:17]
Chanel
Yeah. And even I say that testing them isn't great. However, I don't usually wing it either. So I'll try and write like 5 or 10, like just really quickly off the top of my head, even if I'm in like a pinch. Typically publish like right before I send out the email. Um, so I don't often have a ton of time for this, which is probably not the best strategy. But I will try and like, quickly write out like five or ten different angles that this piece could take or the. The newsletter could take. And then I'll just kind of, you know, pick which one sounds the best and run with it.
- [37:50]
Dylan
Nice. I like it. Yeah, it's. It's something that definitely can, I think a small change that can have a big impact. So it.
- [37:57]
Chanel
There you go. Definitely bring it full circle here.
- [37:59]
Dylan
Subject. Yes, exactly. Um, I got just a couple more here for retention. One thing that I think can be, I guess, interesting. I don't see a lot of people doing it. It's kind of like a. We've talked about surprise and delight earlier when we're talking about onboarding, but doing it in, like, anniversary stages of your newsletter. So, like, if. If somebody's been subscribed for 14 days or 30 days or, you know, a few months, you can send them an email with a discount code, a free trial on something. Maybe like a free call, if you wanted to offer that up. I know Josh Spector offers a free skill session course to subscribers when they've been subscribed for 30 days at least. He used to. I'm not sure if he still does, but I got that email from him. And so really what that does is it. That's kind of like a version of a free trial. Because he offers his skill sessions, you can basically have to buy them in a year's pack or a year's yearly subscription. So he's kind of teasing you with a free version, and then if you find value in it, you might opt into the whole thing. So stuff like that, I think is a really interesting way to kind of keep people's engagement and kind of, again, give a little bit more value than you're taking from them.
- [39:06]
Chanel
Totally. I think that's a great way to also show, like, the people who have been on your list for a while, like, hey, there's benefit in subscribing and sticking around. So I like that.
- [39:15]
Dylan
I think it's. I think it's. There's tons of different ways you could do it. Even just sending them, like, a fun gift, saying, hey, thanks for sticking around for, you know, a month. Hope you're enjoying it. Let me know what your thoughts are. You know, something like that you can. You can have fun with it. It doesn't have to be necessarily you're giving them something away, but just acknowledging it and personalizing it a bit could be fun.
- [39:33]
Chanel
Good one. Just some bonus tips. Like, we've gone through a couple examples from deep dives and other creators just doing cool stuff, but I think if you can just, like, take the research mindset and be like, okay, how can I get better at welcome emails? Go sign up for 10 of your favorite creators emails, see what they're doing, take pieces from what you enjoy, leave out what you don't, and kind of create your own little research doc around these different elements. I think that can have a huge impact. Like you and I look at this stuff all day, but we'll still find new exciting examples all the time. So I think if you can kind of take the ones you like, make it your own and kind of build off that, there's like a big benefit to doing that. Whether it's subject lines, welcome sequences. Even if you sign up for people through recommendations, like sign up for a newsletter, get the recommendation, pop up, subscribe to all of those, you get their subscriber email for that. I think there's something to be said about just having this curiosity and going to figure it out on your own and making it your, your own customized onboarding and yeah, that kind of thing.
- [40:41]
Dylan
So I think that that's a good tip too. And I haven't really thought of it this way before, so you just kind of shine a light on this. People who are paying for you to subscribe to their emails via these recommendation widgets, chances are they probably put a little bit of thought into how they are going to onboard you and how that experience is going to go. So even just as a research, it's tempting to just toggle, maybe later or turn all those off and not subscribe to any of them. But I'm not saying doing it every time, but try it a couple times where you subscribe to all those newsletters and see what they're doing. And I know that's. That has highlighted a few things for me in the past. This context block that I talked about, I got that idea from a newsletter that I opted into via a recommendations widget. And I was like, why isn't everybody doing this? It was as simple as being like, hey, thanks for subscribing. You were referred here by such and such. And I'm like, yes, that is so obvious. That's what more people should do. I think that's a great tip is, you know, people who are paying to get you onto their email list probably have thought this through maybe a little bit. Hopefully a little bit more thoroughly than, than others. So I think that's a, that's actually a really sound tip.
- [41:49]
Chanel
I mean, you think about it, they're paying, they're probably getting some free consulting from the platform they're paying through. Whether it's Sparkloop or BI Boost. I'm sure they have best practices that they're sharing with those folks. Um, so you can kind of get some inside baseball just by subscribing to those paid recommendations and seeing what's happened, what's going on in the backend. So I don't want to annoy all the people who are paying for email subscribers of getting these people on there, but I think that's a really good way to do that.
- [42:15]
Dylan
Yeah, it is. One other thing like you could consider is just subscribing to big ish or bigger newsletters and see what they're doing because they've got a lot more at stake when they've got a massive email list and just see kind of what, what kind of things, what kinds of things they're doing. So like James Clearer is an example. We've. You've deep dived like the Gist and TLDR and a bunch of these newsletters that have over a million subscribers. Check them out, see what they're doing and that you might get some ideas on sort of what to do in your onboarding and in the inbox experience as well from them.
- [42:48]
Chanel
Totally. I've been doing a kind of a deep dive into different sponsorship stuff because we're planning on having February be like sponsor month within the growth and reverse pro community. So I've been going through and just like going hard on research of like best practices, different types of sponsorships. Like, where are people actually putting sponsorships? Like I found some in welcome emails and like onboarding surveys. And so I'm just trying to compile all of these like, and even finding like a bunch of media kits to build a swipe file out for the community. Like, it's just fascinating. Like all the stuff that's hiding in plain sight when you actually take the the time to focus on that one thing, you start seeing all these other little things pop up and you're like, oh, that's so smart how they're doing that. Yeah, yeah, I'm excited to kind of keep doing that and share more.
- [43:35]
Dylan
But yeah, I think it's going to be a really exciting month for. I guess when people are hearing this, it's already going to be February, but we'll be going hard into sponsorships and kind of like ad revenue for the month and having some great guests come in too. So really excited to be part of the growth, growth inverse pro community. Gi. Let's call it GIR Pro. GIR Pro. Yeah.
- [43:56]
Chanel
Flows right off the tongue, doesn't it.
- [43:58]
Dylan
Exactly. Yeah. No, I think it's gonna be fun. It's gonna be a great month.
- [44:03]
Chanel
I'm excited. Starting to, like, almost put together a whole little mini course inside there with all the stuff I'm finding. So I'm excited to see what that looks like. Yeah. Spoiler. So, yeah, that's, that's fun. But I think just the focus research is really, like, the takeaway here is like, you and I can talk about this stuff all day, but go find what you enjoy and what feels right for your brand, and I think that's going to have a big impact. Yeah. I mean, if you want to check out Growth in Reverse Pro, you can go to growth in reverse.com pro. And who knows, maybe we'll have a little 30 minute call if you sign up.
- [44:37]
Dylan
Oh, call with Chanel.
- [44:39]
Chanel
That'd be fun.
- [44:40]
Dylan
Sold. Right there. I'm in.
- [44:43]
Chanel
There you go. Awesome. Awesome. This is fun. I'm excited that Jake sent us this idea. So if you have thoughts or ideas on future episodes and you want to potentially get your newsletter shouted out on air, let us know. Feel free to DM me on LinkedIn or send me an email. Chanel. Reverse dot com. Yeah, it's a great place to do it.
- [45:03]
Dylan
Yeah. We'll definitely be taking more of these questions in the future and using them for podcasts, potentially even newsletter content. So, yeah, don't be.