30 Days. 30 Emails. Was it a Mistake?

Summary

Podcast Summary: "30 Days. 30 Emails. Was it a Mistake?"

Podcast: Growth In Reverse: Newsletter & Email Growth
Hosts: Chenell Basilio and Dylan Redekop
Episode Date: June 3, 2026
Episode: Deep-dive discussion on running a 30-day cross-promotion newsletter experiment for the second year, analyzing results, learnings, and actionable insights for newsletter growth.

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Episode Overview

This episode is a postmortem of "30 Days of Growth"—Chenell’s ambitious annual project where she runs 30 cross-promotions with different newsletter creators in 30 days. Chenell and Dylan candidly unpack what went differently in the second iteration, the toll it took, audience and growth outcomes, and the best newsletter growth tactics surfaced from the experiment. It’s full of practical advice for newsletter operators—from referral tactics to leveraging quizzes and AI, to the importance of opt-in strategies and collaboration.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Concept & Origins of "30 Days of Growth"

• Origin Story:

  • Started in 2025 as a data-driven side quest and community challenge to test if frequent cross-promotions could rapidly grow a newsletter list.
  • "The best idea I came up with was to run 30 cross promotions in 30 days with 30 different creators." – Chenell [00:00]
  • The mechanism: Feature a creator’s growth tip daily and require/encourage mutual sharing for exposure.

• Incentives & Tools:

  • Private, “Hello Audio”-powered podcast feed unlocked via referrals. [03:40]
  • Referral prizes and gamification boosted sharing.
  • Resulted in a "9% increase in subscribers from 30 days of growth." – Chenell [04:25]

2. Changes Made for Year Two

• Content:

  • Entirely new guest contributors this year, but unclear communication led to missed promotional hype.
  • "I think I did a bad job explaining that before we launched…good learning experience." – Chenell [06:38]

• List Management:

  • Shifted from opt-in (year 1) to sending the 30-day series by default to all subscribers unless they opted out.
  • Led to higher unsubscribes and lower engagement.
  • "I wouldn’t do that again…sending a daily newsletter is hard." – Chenell [07:26]
  • Midway correction: segmented non-openers out after Day 7. [08:29]
  • Next year advice: "Get people to opt in for sure." – Chenell [09:38]

3. Key Results and Metrics

• Audience Growth:

  • Year 1: 1,757 new subs, 3,714 total signups [07:10]
  • Year 2: 2,086 new subscribers (beating last year by ~300) [13:54]
  • Referrals: Increased from 388 to 571 year over year [14:00]

• Takeaway on Opt-In:

  • Explicit opt-in lists foster higher excitement and more sharing.
  • "Having people explicitly opt in is helpful, because they’re more excited about it, they’re more likely to share." – Chenell [15:17]

• Reflections:

  • The daily content creation grind was significant; most issues stemmed from wrangling 30 contributors and creating daily content. [15:28]
  • "Every time…I'm gonna get so far ahead that this doesn't matter…and I was publishing them all day of." – Chenell [15:47]

4. Favorite & Noteworthy Growth Tactics from the Series

a. AI-Driven Optimization

• Dan Cumberland: Used Kit MCP + Claude to analyze email performance, surfaced unexpected subject line patterns [19:05–20:11]
• "He used his broadcast email data, pulled out subject line patterns he wasn’t even thinking about…super cool." – Chenell [19:05]
• Brandon Smithrick: Built a Claude-powered dashboard to optimize newsletters [20:20]

b. Simple Copy Tweaks

• Max Bidna: 5x landing page conversions, biggest impact from changing button text to “Continue” [21:05]
  • "The overwhelming majority of…growth…came from him changing the button text to just say continue." – Chenell [21:18]

c. Reader Collaboration

• Justin Jackson: Sent an in-progress Google Doc to subscribers, invited realtime reader feedback, turning readers into collaborators [21:37]
  • "I call that like turning readers into collaborators. People loved that one." – Chenell [22:06]

d. Quizzes as Lead Magnets

• Multiple case studies: Ellen Yin, ADHD Weasel, etc.
• ADHD Weasel gained 1,400 subscribers in a week by launching a quiz after seeing Chenell’s strategy at a conference. [23:34]
  • "They ended up with 1400 subscribers in the first week. And I was like, what?" – Chenell [24:09]
• Quizzes praised as both potent list growth tools and means of acquiring first-party audience data. [22:49]

e. Welcome Sequences for Deliverability & Sales

• Matt Ragland: Structured tripwire offers in welcome sequences to 3x sales for clients. [24:25]
• Tyler Cook: Seven-email onboarding took a 300K list from 40% to over 90% inbox placement. [24:25]
  • "He had a seven email welcome sequence that helped…get into about 40% of inboxes to over 90%." – Dylan [00:18, 25:58]

f. Reddit as a Growth Channel

• Michelle Rueda: Grows a local newsletter by targeting and subtly promoting in Reddit forums relevant to her city (Austin, TX). [26:10]

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Top Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the grind:

  • "Because enough time had passed and I forgot how much work it was. The short answer." – Chenell, on why she did year two [05:25]
  • "It's like childbirth…you forget and then you do it again and you're like, oh, yeah, this hurts." – Dylan [05:30]

• Discovery:

  • "I think just building those relationships is the biggest piece. Which goes against everything I just said about like creating it yourself." – Chenell [12:57]

• Unexpected subscriber stories:

  • "They ended up with 1400 subscribers in the first week. And I was like, what?" – Chenell [24:09]

• On burnout:

  • "Last year...you kind of started getting burnt out by day 19...same this year. Day 19." – Dylan [31:41]

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Practical Takeaways & Advice

• Opt-in > automatic onboarding: Only send intensive series to those who explicitly opt in for higher engagement and retention.
• Referral engines work: Private reward (like a private podcast) and simple prizes can bump sharing—notably when combined.
• Don’t bite off too much: Instead of wrangling 30 collaborators, consider fewer people or do the content yourself for manageability.
• Repurpose content smartly: Big sprints can be broken into weekly/biweekly drips for longevity and less stress.
• Test simple tweaks: Small UX/copy changes (like button text) can unlock outsized conversion wins.
• Leverage new channels: Don't overlook Reddit or quizzes for list growth—even outside “traditional” platforms.

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Notable Segments & Timestamps

• [01:03] – Origin of 30 Days of Growth
• [03:40] – Impact of launching a private audio feed and referral gamification
• [06:00] – Year-two changes, miscommunications, lessons learned
• [07:10] – List management: opt-in vs default subscription
• [13:54] – This year’s growth numbers
• [17:32] – Breakdown of behind-the-scenes work and workflow
• [19:05]–[21:37] – Most effective new tips: AI, copy tweaks, reader collaboration
• [22:49] – The power and resurgence of quizzes
• [24:25] – Welcome sequences and their impact
• [26:10] – Reddit as an acquisition channel
• [28:39] – Was the ROI positive? Chenell: “TBD. It was helpful... but maybe there’s a better way.”
• [31:41] – Burnout and the importance of pacing: “Day 19...the falling off.”

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Final Thoughts & Where to Access Resources

• The Growth Vault houses detailed versions and expansions of the best strategies: growthinreverse.com/vault
• Community for tactical help and peership: growthreverse.com/pro
• 30 Days of Growth sign-up & archives: 30daysofgrowth.co (delivery format TBD, but likely less than daily in future)
• Open invitation: Share your success stories of applying these tactics!

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This episode delivers both a raw look at the reality of running ambitious newsletter growth projects and a toolkit of proven tactics that creators can use (or repurpose) for faster, smarter subscriber growth. Whether you’re just starting out or want to refresh your approach, the lessons from Chenell and Dylan are actionable and candidly delivered, with their trademark balance of strategy and real-life humor.

Transcript

[Chanel]

The best idea I came up with was to run 30 cross promotions in 30 days with 30 different creators. They ended up with 1400 subscribers in the first week. And I was like, what? I think the overwhelming majority of like the growth for that came from him changing the button text to just say continue instead of something else.

[Dylan]

He had a seven email welcome sequence that helped basically get a 300,000 email list go from getting only into about 4, 40% of inboxes to over 90% of inboxes overall. Do you think this year's 30 Days of Growth had a positive ROI for me?

[Chanel]

Welcome back to the Growth in Reverse podcast. I'm Chanel.

[Dylan]

And I'm Dylan.

[Chanel]

And today we're going to walk through the 30 days of growth round two that just wrapped up last week and talk through if it was worth it, what happened, how it went, and all that good stuff.

[Dylan]

Yeah, I think, I mean, first off, we'll talk about what it is because there might be a few people like, what are you talking about? So why don't we start there? Like, let's give Context to what 30 days of growth is and where it all began.

[Chanel]

Yeah. So 30 days of growth originated last year in 2025. I was kind of getting bored with my content and it was like, you know what, I want to do a lot more cross promotions with people. We were running a challenge in the growth and reverse pro community and people were saying that they weren't getting good results with their cross promotions. And so I was like, all right, let's get some more data around this. How do I do more cross promos? Get more data. And the best idea I came up with was to run 30 cross promotions in 30 days with 30 different creators. And I felt like that was going to help me understand them better. So that's what I did. We had like two or three weeks to set this up last year, and essentially I just went out to 30 different creators, asked them for one tip on growing or optimizing their newsletter, and then I sent out a daily newsletter for 30 days. And so that's where the name 30 Days of Growth came from.

[Dylan]

Nice. Nice. And so that was a. Every day for 30 days. We'll get into this. But you did something things differently. But the point of this was to twofold, to better execute at collaborations and get some data behind it and then also to, you know, inevitably grow your list. Right. Because part of the collaboration was the creators that you reach out to. Your. Your trade off was, I'm going to feature your tip and your Newsletter or whatever website profile they wanted you to feature, and then in exchange they were going to shout you out or shout that, sorry, the 30 days of growth series out to their audience. Correct?

[Chanel]

Yeah. So essentially, cross promotion is typically when I share your thing, you share my thing. That's how it all works. It's kind of like a collaboration. And so this was just doing 30 of those in 30 days.

[Dylan]

Right. And it worked relatively well. Correct. Last year?

[Chanel]

Yeah, it worked super well. I didn't actually pull up my numbers from last year, which I probably should have done before we started this. Let me see if I could get that real quick.

[Dylan]

Yeah, no worries. I think also while you're getting that, a few things that were. That you did last year was you also incentivize people to share it. So a few ways you did that was. And you did some of these again this year. You had a private podcast feed. So, um, if people didn't have time to, you know, read all of these 30 days worth of email tips, newsletter tips, growth and optimization hacks, they would be able to listen to them. If they shared basically just your 30 days of growth series with one other email address and got one other email address to sign up, they had access to that. So that was one way. The other thing you did too, is you incentivized it with some referral prizes. So if you got, you know, five referrals, you got.

[Chanel]

Yeah, we can talk through the referrals too. I think the podcast was the most important thing, and I definitely did that again this year because it was so impactful. I think people, a daily newsletter is a lot of content. And so the daily podcast idea was just like a stroke of genius. I had one morning, I was like, we should do this. And I remembered hearing about this tool called hello Audio that lets you set up a private podcast really simply, and it integrates with Zapier. So I was able to say, like, have it automatically. Like if someone refers someone, they automatically get access to this private podcast feed. So it was like super beneficial. I think last year it added a 9% increase in the number of subscribers that we got from 30 days of growth.

[Dylan]

Nice.

[Chanel]

Yeah. So it was a lot.

[Dylan]

It was. And it's not. It's not a ton more effort too. You've already written the content. You basically are rereading it for people who just want to listen to it, and then essentially hitting publish on hello Audio. So for the little bit more of effort, I think you'd agree that it was probably worth it.

[Chanel]

Yes, I would definitely Agree. It was worth it.

[Dylan]

Okay, so let's go to this year. So why did you. I know at the end of last year, you're kind of like, oh, my God, this was so much work. Like, yeah. And for. It all worked out in the end because you, you grew the newsletter. You turned a lot of this stuff into the growth vault as well, which we should shout out the growth vault. If you have not checked out Chanel's growth vault, she's taken all of like 30 days of growth last year, plus more content that she's found for growth and optimization tips, and she's added that to the growth vault. So you can go to growth.com vault to check that out. Um, but so that there's a lot of bonuses from doing this really hard 30 day sprint. So that being said, it was tough. So why did you decide to do it again this year?

[Chanel]

Because enough time had passed and I forgot how much work it was. The short answer.

[Dylan]

It was like childbirth. Like, that's what I, I. Women tend to say. Like, yeah, it was, it was brutal in the moment. But then, you know, you forget and then you do it again and you're like, oh, yeah, this hurts.

[Chanel]

Yeah, I'm not doing this again. Yeah, Yeah. I need to send myself a note for, like, Chanel in March of 2027 to say, like, don't do it.

[Dylan]

Okay, well, that's a lot of foreshadowing that we're about to get into.

[Chanel]

So.

[Dylan]

So why. What made this year different than last year? Well, or let's say, what did you do differently?

[Chanel]

A lot of the stuff was the same, all of the content was new. And I think I did a bad job explaining that before I started because. Okay, I, like, I asked Jay Claus to share it. I was like, hey, you were in this last year. I'm gonna do it again. And then he shared it in his newsletter. And then I was talking to him otherwise, and he was like, wait, it's 30 new people? And I was like, yeah, this is a whole new setup. And he was like, I had no idea about that before I shared it. So I'm sure he would have, like, been more excited to share it if he didn't think it was like a repurposed sequence. Um, so I'm sure he's not alone in that. And so I think I did a really bad job of explaining that before we launched, which is fun and a good learning experience.

[Dylan]

Right.

[Chanel]

For someone else who wants to do this in the future. But yeah, so I think that was the big thing. I would have done differently, but.

[Dylan]

Okay.

[Chanel]

Yeah.

[Dylan]

Okay, cool. So what kind of results did we get here with this year? I know. Maybe talk. Actually, you did a few other things differently last year. People had to opt in to get this right. People on your current email list.

[Chanel]

Yes.

[Dylan]

Needed to like opt in. So you gave them. You kind of like use this as a bit of a product launcher, a sales promo, and said, hey, I'm doing this thing. Click here to opt in. And yes.

[Chanel]

Yeah. So last year I pulled up the numbers. We had 3714 people total, got those emails for the 30 days. 1757 of them were new subscribers to me. So that was the total list growth.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

And then this year what we did instead was subscribed everybody to this thing and you had to specifically say that you didn't want to get it right, which I wouldn't do that again.

[Dylan]

Go on, say more.

[Chanel]

Well, I mean, enough people said they didn't want to get them, but it wasn't like a ton. And I lost a lot of subscribers along the way. So sending a daily email, you're always going to have unsubscribes even. I had a link at the bottom. I had a link at the top. Like if you want to switch to weekly and only get my Sunday emails, click here. But you. I just, yeah, sending a daily newsletter is hard. And I did not think this through all the way before sending it to everybody. But yeah, it was, it was still good. And I just like, over time I started sending it to less people because my open rates were dropping and I didn't like that. So I wanted to make sure that didn't last very long.

[Dylan]

How did you determine who to send it to versus who not to send it to?

[Chanel]

I set up a segment of people who had opened an email in the last. Like this was kind of manual because the Kit MCP didn't exist yet. But I set up a segment of people who hadn't opened an email in the last 30 days. I think it was. Oh no, actually. So I decided on like day seven, I was going to change this. So if anybody hadn't opened the first seven, I stopped stop sending it to them because I'm like, well, if you didn't open that many, I just, I stopped sending those people the daily emails and just started sending weekly.

[Dylan]

That makes sense.

[Chanel]

So yeah, it's not like super scientific, but I wanted to do something right.

[Dylan]

So that whittled down the list that got your deliverability up a little bit. Open rates improved from just sending it to everyone.

[Chanel]

Yes.

[Dylan]

And so let's say we fast forward a year from now and you, you didn't email yourself or you ignored your past advice. This childbirth all over again. You're like, I want to have another baby in the form of 30 days of growth round three. What would you do next year if you were to do this again in terms of that, that sending strategy, Would you get people to opt in or what would you do?

[Chanel]

Yeah, get people to opt in for sure.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

And promote the heck out of it more to the whole list beforehand.

[Dylan]

How about in terms of leading up to this? Because some people might be thinking, I know somebody from our community from Growth Reverse Pro decided to do this themselves last year after see yours. So I'm sure that's one case that we heard of, of people, of somebody kind of replicating this strategy, 30 day sort of pop up newsletter. What would you advise them? Like, what would be like your number one tip of advice before somebody goes into something like this?

[Chanel]

So I, I think it's based on your goal. Like if the goal is to collaborate with people, great, do it that way. But if the goal is just to put out or to create a launch style event where it's a content series where you're getting people to sign up and that kind of thing, I would just do the content yourself or most of it. I think wrangling 30 people is just craziness and maybe like seven or 10 would be fine, but 30 just, it got to be a lot. So I think I would just create the content myself. Like Jess, who's in our Growth and Reverse Pro community, I think is the one you're referring to. She actually did this for her, her audience and she created all the content herself. And I was like, well, you're super smart for this because it removes so much pressure and like having to find people to actually say that they're going to do it, then follow up, get the content, then follow up, have them share on their end like it was a lot. So I think if you can contain it to just be like focus on your stuff, that would be great. However, I do think this is a great mechanism, like a growth mechanism for someone starting a newsletter or like revamping their newsletter.

[Dylan]

Yep.

[Chanel]

But maybe just don't do 30 days, maybe do like 10 or 14 or something.

[Dylan]

Something more digestible and approachable. I think one thing I just want to be clear on too is when you said doing the content yourself, you did write the content for the 30 days, your pieces, but you had to rely on other people to give you the tips. So just a clarification there. If anybody's like, thank you. Yeah, you didn't write this content. So it wasn't like Chanel didn't write it. It was more that we needed the actual tips and the details because we wanted to have results. We wanted to share these tips that had, like, I keep saying we, but, you know, you wanted to share these results that had tips and like proof that they worked. Right. So you had to get all of that, all of those details from these creators. So it's. Yeah, it's. It can be kind of like pulling teeth. So it is.

[Chanel]

And some of them are like, well, I have these three ideas. Which one do you like? And I'm like, okay. Or they're like, I don't think I have anything. And I'm like, well, I've seen you do this thing. How about we do that? So it's just like, Yeah. I think the first year, what I forgot to realize for this year is that I also had seen some of these things from doing deep dives. So I was able to just rattle off and almost create them before even reaching out to the creator and say, hey, I wrote this thing because I saw you do this tactic. I want to share it. And so I was able to speed. Go through it faster. I guess you should.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

And so this year it was kind of starting fresh all over again and I didn't have a lot of lined up. So that's another thing I would change too.

[Dylan]

Okay, what do you think the biggest benefit of doing this kind of collab pop up newsletter is?

[Chanel]

I think it's just the relationship building, being able to collaborate with creator. Yeah, the growth is good. I think this year, well, we'll save the numbers for a minute. But yeah, I think the collaborations is most beneficial because I can go up to someone at a conference that I go to, I'm like, hey, I have this thing going on soon. Do you want to like, contribute something or afterwards I can, you know, it's just like a talking point with these people at live events or even just a future call or something like that. So I think just building those relationships is the biggest piece. Which goes against everything I just said about like creating it yourself. But yeah, well, with collaborations, that's like, what's your goal?

[Dylan]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, so do you have the numbers handy in terms of, like, how this worked out? I know, like you said, there's a lot of attrition because of, you know, unsubscribes from the mass list. But do you have any, like, how many new subscribers people got on your list from it?

[Chanel]

2086.

[Dylan]

Okay.

[Chanel]

Subscriber. Like, new subscribers from this.

[Dylan]

Nice.

[Chanel]

Okay. Which is great. So that means we beat last year. Yeah, yeah.

[Dylan]

But like, 300, which is awesome.

[Chanel]

Yeah. Last year we had 388 people got referred by someone else. And this year there were 571. So it's a big percentage. That too.

[Dylan]

Now, just be clear on what you mean by referred, because some people might be like, oh, well, that could just be like.

[Chanel]

Yeah. So we were just talking about the podcast situation. So if you. Everybody that signs up or that I signed up, got a custom referral link, and if you shared it with one or more people, you got bonuses or whatnot. So 571 was the number of people that got referred by another person who had already signed up.

[Dylan]

Nice. So 25% of the growth came from referral.

[Chanel]

Well, yeah, kind of. So obviously I was like, yeah, that's huge. But then I was thinking about it, because last year we had 388 out of. What did I say was 3700. And that was about 9% growth. But if you really take into account the total number of people that I had signed up for this, I think it's, like, comes out to, like, 2. Maybe a little less than 2%, so. Which is another reason I think having people explicitly opt in is helpful, because they're more excited about it, they're more likely to share.

[Dylan]

Attitude's totally different.

[Chanel]

I don't know.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

Yeah. So who knows?

[Dylan]

Okay. What do you think was the hardest part about this?

[Chanel]

Creating the content, for sure. Like, getting the content ready to go. Of course. Every. Every time I'm like, I've done this twice. Every time I'm like, I'm gonna get so far ahead that this doesn't matter. And, like, you know, I won't be publishing them day of. And I was publishing them all day of, except for, like, the first four maybe.

[Dylan]

I feel like there's like 10 or so that were sort of.

[Chanel]

Yeah, they were, like, kind of finished.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

But they still. You know, we still have to create images and put them up on the site. So it was never, like, fully done. But it was funny because when we had a. A community call the one day, and everybody's like. I was like, guys, I have to go. I have to send out my 30 days of growth for today. And they're like, you don't have those all ready to go? And schedule? That was like, no, yeah, so I, I think that's just my personality. Like I'm not very good at being that scheduled and I work really well off of a deadline. So. Yeah, yeah, I think that's, that's what happened there.

[Dylan]

That makes sense. I am very similar in that regard in terms of context for how much work this is. People might just think, oh, well, you just, you have a piece of content, an article and you're sending it out to your newsletter. But I think people should know that like there's the audio aspect of it, like you have to record these. There is. They're getting published on your WordPress site. Correct? They're getting published in kit, which is kind of a copy paste, but it's not necessarily, you know, there's a little bit of formatting that has to be, you know, rejigged Then we are also copying and pasting these into substack for the Growth Reverse Substack newsletter we started by. I think you were doing for the first half of them or so you're publishing them as articles on LinkedIn as well. And with every single article we're creating custom images too. So there's templates of course, and you know, information gets swapped in and out. But it's still, it's not just, you know, writing a piece of content and publishing it. So there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes to get this sort of thing ready and trying to maximize, you know, different platforms so that people can see it. So I just wanted to add that context so people think, oh, Chanel's complaining about this being so much work. It doesn't look that hard. There's, there's a lot behind it.

[Chanel]

Yeah, it's, it's a lot. Um, but it's good, it was good. I think now I can, you know, still repurpose these into something. In the future I plan to put some of them into the Growth Vault as videos and like do full walkthroughs and give away automations that we can set up and that kind of thing.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

So there is definitely some good stuff to come of it. But yeah, and it was a good, it was a good reminder that the Growth Vault is like super valuable because I actually, couple days I didn't have anything and I pulled some stuff from the Growth Vault and put it in as an email. Obviously there was no video aspect of it, but people, those were the ones that got the most engagement and people were replying and be like, this is so cool. So it's just like a good reminder that The Growth Vault is valuable. I just need to get it in more people's hands.

[Dylan]

Yeah, absolutely. And the Growth Vault is a nice lead into Growth Reverse Pro too, because if you buy the Growth Vault, you get a discount on coming into the Growth Reverse Pro community too. Or if you join the Growth Reverse Pro community, you get the Growth Vault included in your membership. So just wanted to give that a shout out too. Okay, so when we get to the content, I think, you know, people might be curious about how this, how this went this year. And so we've kind of talked about that a decent amount now for the last 20 minutes or so. But what, what were either your favorite growth or optimization tips from this year's 30 Days of Growth, or what do you think were like, you know, the, the audience's favorites or the ones that you thought you heard the most comments from or got the most opens or engagement?

[Chanel]

I think some of the ones that got the most comments are the ones of how people are using AI in their content, which. Not in their content but in their workflows. Which is funny because everything with AI right now is just like gets. It gets so much engagement, which is fine. It's just like, it's a sign of the times. I guess so. Yeah. So Dan Cumberland had given like a full breakdown of how he used like his broadcast, like his email data, his broadcast emails, and pulled out subject line patterns that he wasn't even thinking about by using the Kit mcp. So if you're not familiar with an mcp, it's like a really cool way to like link an AI tool like Claude with your Kit account or whatever software the MCP is for. And it just like lets you natively pull in content and like data that you can kind of use in conjunction with the other things you have going on in Claude. So, yeah, super cool. And yeah, that was a good one and I really enjoyed that one. I actually used it for a couple of the emails that I sent afterwards.

[Dylan]

So there you go. And I think Brandon Smithrick also had a. Claude sort of optimized the way he built a dashboard as well, I think.

[Chanel]

Yeah, I don't think we are. I don't think the article I put together on that one explained it super well. So I think people were almost like too confused by that because there was so much going on because it's so good. It's like, I don't know what to do with this because there's like seven things in there that you could do.

[Dylan]

So.

[Chanel]

But that's a really good one. If you're looking to go down the rabbit hole there a bit.

[Dylan]

Nice.

[Chanel]

Yeah.

[Dylan]

Um, any others that maybe you thought were like really cool? You're like, I gotta try this.

[Chanel]

Um. Oh, a bunch of em, I think. Well, Max Bidna with the marketing. Max is his moniker, I guess you'll call it. Um, he shared a bunch of how he like 5x his landing page conversions just by making a bunch of small tweaks.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

So that one was cool because I think the overwhelming majority of the growth for that came from him changing the button text to just say continue instead of something else.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

And so I actually implemented that this morning.

[Dylan]

Nice.

[Chanel]

We'll see.

[Dylan]

But yeah, that's cool.

[Chanel]

So that was a cool one. Obviously the AI stuff is fun. Justin Jackson from Transistor fm, he actually did something super cool. This, this came from the growth vault. This is one of the ones.

[Dylan]

There you go.

[Chanel]

He sent out an email with a Google Doc of an article that he was actively working on and he said, hey, I'm not done with this but I want your feedback on it. And so I show in the, in the article I wrote is like screenshots of this thing and you can see his readers like writing comments and saying like, hey, there's this other source you might not have seen before. You should go check this out too. And so I just call that like turning readers into collaborators. People loved that one.

[Dylan]

Wow, that's really cool. And it's surprising too because you never know what's really going to resonate with folks. Like I wouldn't have honestly suspected that that was going to be like, you know, a hit. But it is a cool strategy and I can see why people really gravitated towards that.

[Chanel]

Yeah, it just reminded me that like the things I find interesting, people often do as well. So I need to lean into that more. Yeah, when I initially saw this, I was like, this is so cool. And so like being able to surface that kind of thing. And the growth ball is fun. And now doing it publicly is as well.

[Dylan]

So I love it. Some common themes that I really enjoyed that I thought were interesting was that kind of showed up a lot were quizzes, like quizzes as lead magnets.

[Chanel]

So many quizzes.

[Dylan]

Right. And so people might be a little bit burned out by this topic, but I mean it really is working and it's a really great way to both get people onto your email list but also like get some data, some first party data about them too, which is super useful. So there were a few people like Ellen Yin who's done this. We've obviously talked ad nauseum about Millie Tomati, who has used quizzes to really grow her general newsletter in the past. She wasn't included in here, but I think we included her last year in 30 days of growth. The ADHD weasel guys used a quiz after seeing your talk at New Media Summit this past February. So that was another strategy, a quiz strategy. And then the other thing I would call, I would call out is unless you have if you want to comment on the quiz.

[Chanel]

No, I just the ADHD Weasel thing, like for context, that one they sent me just a random email and they were like, we follow. I think the subject line was like, we followed your advice and it worked or something. And I was like, what? And then I opened it and they had this full long article of how like they heard me talk about Millie and Charlie using a quiz and they implemented it and they ended up with 1400 subscribers in the first week. And I was like, what? And so this was like a couple days before 30 days of growth launched. And I was like, can I use this? And they're like, absolutely. And so that's how that one came to be. So please, if anything we have said on this podcast or in the newsletter has helped you, please send an email and let us know. I love hearing these stories. It's just so fun, like closing the loop and making sure that like, we know these things are working for you. And I think it's just fun to surface that stuff.

[Dylan]

Yeah, I mean, the whole point of everything we're doing here is to help other creators grow their newsletters. Right. And genuinely we want that success for you. So, yeah, we'd love to hear success stories from things you've tried and done, or if there's advice that you've heard on the podcast or seen us talk about on social media or in the newsletter, like send it our way. We'd love to hear about it. Yes, please. So the other theme that popped up a decent amount was welcome sequences and various types of welcome sequences. Not as necessarily. These are more retention plays or engagement plays. But Matt Ragland talked about how he basically introduced some low ticket offers that gradually leveled up as the welcome sequence went for his clients. And he found that those ended up tripling sales for his clients. So that's a really interesting one. That was day six. There was also a welcome sequence from. I'm going to pull it up here, Tyler Cook. He had a seven email welcome sequence that helped basically get a 300,000 email list go from getting only into about 40% of inbox. It's not even open rate. Just like getting into 40% of inboxes to over 90% of inboxes. So that's really huge. And so he's got a pretty, a decent, you included a decent template for that or layout of what you can do. And I think this would be a good one to add to the growth vault in terms of like, here's the actual, you know, structured template of these emails that you could, that you could copy.

[Chanel]

Yeah. And he came into our community and shared this and that's where we first heard about it. And so we could even. I could even include part of that video into the growth vault. It's a good idea.

[Dylan]

And then one other that wasn't, I would say that wasn't necessarily welcome sequence related or, or quiz related. But that I thought was really interesting was I really liked Michelle's. Michelle Rueda, who also came into the growth and Verse Pro community. Talk about how she's basically used Reddit to grow her newsletter and she's growing a local newsletter. So the Reddit strategy could probably work for just about any type of niche. But for hers, it worked really well because she was able to target people who are in Austin or who are asking about Austin, Texas and what's going on there, where to eat, what kind of things to do on the weekends and that sort of thing. And that's what her newsletter covers. So she was basically going to Reddit forms and making suggestions and then kind of casually dropping a very, very subtle nudge to be like, oh, I write about this actually in my newsletter. And so she's all, she's built a tool as well to help people grow via Reddit so you don't have to spend time, you know, yourself, manually scouring these forms. So I thought that was a more unique and kind of cool strategy too.

[Chanel]

Yeah, I think they're all. Most like, I would, I'm. I want to implement a lot of these.

[Dylan]

Yeah, I know, right?

[Chanel]

Going back to them, I'm like, oh, yeah, I said I was going to do that. I didn't do it yet.

[Dylan]

Yeah, I think there's like, I mean, with all of this content, you could, most people could execute a lot of them and there's a bit of an overwhelm. I think something that would be fun to do, whether it's in the community or even just publicly, is like, hey, for the next two weeks we're going to all focus on doing this one strategy or we're going to actually implement this. Tyler7 email welcome. Sequence strategy or do you know what

[Chanel]

I actually heard from people saying, can you do it for me? And I was like, well, probably for free.

[Dylan]

No. But yes, I can.

[Chanel]

No, no, no, no, not free. Yeah, yeah. But if that's interesting, let me know. Chanel reverse.com and we'll see. Maybe me, there's a little cohort we could set up or something.

[Dylan]

Yeah, no, that would be really cool. I think. I think there's an opportunity to really. A lot of people see this stuff and they think this is great and I want to do this, but I either don't have the time or I don't have the know how to do it. And so that's definitely something we could help solve. Yeah, love it. Anything else to add on the 30 days of Earth? Like, do you think I have a question here? Um, I queued up a few questions before we obviously hopped on this call or this podcast episode. And overall, do you think this year's 30 days of growth had a positive ROI for you?

[Chanel]

I don't know. TBD.

[Dylan]

Okay.

[Chanel]

Um, it was helpful. Lots of good stuff happened. I think people really enjoyed it. So in that respect, yes. Um, part of me wishes I. I would do sprints like this and just like release them. One, one a week and then I have like almost half a year's content, like fold Philly fully, fully created.

[Dylan]

Yeah, I can't talk.

[Chanel]

Yeah, so I think that would be a good test to do, like 30 days of growth. By the way, you only get it for the next six months, not in 30 days. Obviously wouldn't publish it as like a promotion type thing, but yeah, I think just creating all this content was eye opening into how quickly it can be done. But also, I don't know, I just feel like sometimes you overwhelm people with daily emails or how many things go out. So I think it could be interesting to just drip these out over time too.

[Dylan]

Yeah. Okay. Well, that leads me into maybe the final question. People might be wondering, well, I missed out on this, or I only caught the last week of it. Can they still get access to 30 days of growth? And do you plan on putting this behind any kind of gate or paywall? I mean, it's obviously behind the email gate. You have to sign up to get it. But what does this content look like? How's it going to live and where can people access it if they want to?

[Chanel]

Last year I had it as a full sequence that you could go through again. But I think, I honestly think 30 days is a lot of Daily emails. So I don't know, I think maybe instead I'll just do like send one email a week for four weeks and say, here's this week's seven or something. I don't know.

[Dylan]

Right.

[Chanel]

TBD.

[Dylan]

I like that. Sign up 30 Days of Growth Co and you will get the full list for now until Chanel comes to her senses and puts us behind a paywall in the growth vault. So we'll see. We'll see if that happens. I like it.

[Chanel]

Nope.

[Dylan]

I do think the, the I do like the idea of like getting maybe like five a week for like six weeks. You would get, you know, 30 days of growth. Five. Here's five tips is just thinking through, like how you could send this out as opposed to like a, you know, 30 days straight of content or that sort of thing. So I think that there could be something there. But yeah, I also think there's a lot of these things that should, should go, that should go into the growth vault that definitely would benefit from, you know, a little bit more detail and templatizing and that sort of thing. Like, you know, Brandon's, we just talked about, about his Claude system that he's got set up. Like, that would be almost worth, worth the price of admission if, if he was willing to give us kind of sort of the back end details for how he built that.

[Chanel]

I'll put in there what I can and what I know he did give a lot that I didn't include in that article. So I don't even think we need to reach out to him again, honestly.

[Dylan]

Yeah, fair enough. Cool. Well, thanks for being willing to do this postmortem of 30 days of growth. I think the time had passed enough that you're like, okay, I can talk about this now without feeling exhausted.

[Chanel]

And I still haven't finished the private podcast.

[Dylan]

That's right. That's right. I think we. Last year, I remember you kind of like, you kind of started like getting a little bit burnt out by day 19, I think it was last year. And just sure enough, just like, you know, it was almost like science. You Day 19 this year was the, was kind of the falling off.

[Chanel]

Was it the same?

[Dylan]

It was the exact same. Yep. Day 19.

[Chanel]

That's fun. Yep, that's super fun.

[Dylan]

Good times.

[Chanel]

Well, Maybe I'll do 19 days of growth next year and then I don't have to worry about it.

[Dylan]

You know what you can sustain? You know what you can sustain.

[Chanel]

That's great.

[Dylan]

Sweet.

[Chanel]

Awesome.

[Dylan]

All right, well, go to three days of growth co. Check it out. If you also want to check out the Growth Vault we mentioned earlier, growthreniverse.com vault and we also have a newsletter community that we would love to have you join, that is growth reverse.com pro to check that out. And if you have any questions about any of that stuff, send Chanel or myself an email. Chanel reverse.com and Dylan reverse.com and we'd love to answer any questions you have. So until next time.