The state of email in 2026, growing your list without social media, and new predictions (Creator Science original episode)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Growth In Reverse – The State of Email in 2026, Growing Your List Without Social, and New Predictions

Hosts: Chenell Basilio & Jay Clouse (from Creator Science, replayed on Growth In Reverse)
Date: February 18, 2026

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Overview

In this special crossover episode, Chenell Basilio joins Jay Clouse from the Creator Science podcast to discuss the current landscape and future of email newsletters through 2026. The pair take a deep dive into what’s working (and fading) in newsletter growth, how creators can build and monetize loyal audiences, and why “insanely valuable content” is the real growth lever. They also touch on referral programs, onboarding, the impact of AI, building beyond email, and creative ways to grow your list without social media. The episode ends with candid, unfiltered predictions and a fun “Kiss, Marry, Kill” of popular newsletter platforms.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Maturity of Email in 2026

• Email is “maturing” but still king.
  • Chenell notes that while email has existed forever, in the context of the newsletter hype cycle, it’s now reaching maturity—successful creators realize email must be paired with other products or channels, not be standalone.
  • “I think it’s maturing for sure…in this newsletter hype cycle, I feel like we’re maturing in a way that people realize you need more than just a newsletter to actually build a successful business with it.” (Chenell, 04:07)
• Newsletter hype has faded:
  • Jay observes a big drop in the “start a newsletter” gold rush, comparing it to earlier NFT and AI cycles. The saturated market has led to many creators moving on to the “next thing.” (Jay, 04:49)

2. Sustainable Monetization & Ad Networks

• Cost-per-click (CPC) ad models:
  • Jay praises new ad networks for making newsletters more sustainable but cautions these only work for creators who genuinely drive targeted clicks via trust and real recommendation.
  • “If you are not truly driving clicks, it’s not really a profitable endeavor...and you’re not going to drive clicks if your audience doesn’t actually trust you.” (Jay, 05:47)
• Downsides for small creators:
  • Chenell warns that running sponsorships with a small list dilutes content for little revenue.
  • “You’re taking away space from your content and building that relationship for maybe 15 bucks—is that really worth it?” (Chenell, 06:36)

3. The Shift from List Quantity to Subscriber Quality

• Onboarding and engagement:
  • Both hosts are focused on creating better onboarding for recommendation/sub-network subscribers to transform passive “followers” into true fans.
  • “How do we actually turn those people into fans right away versus ‘oh, you haven’t opened anything in 14 days, let’s kick you off’—that’s a huge missed opportunity.” (Chenell, 07:28)
• List depth over size:
  • “Deeper relationships on a per subscriber level” is the new focus; impactful newsletters are measured by engagement and loyalty, not raw subscriber count.
  • “Smaller lists are making much more money than the people with the larger list...Having a deeper relationship with the people actually on your list is so much more critical at this point.” (Chenell, 09:27)

4. Newsletter Growth — Then & Now

• The story of James Clear:
  • Jay shares that proportions of what was considered a “big list” have shifted—James Clear had 250k in 2012, probably equivalent to a million in 2026 due to “email inflation.”
  • Many early successes came from organic search (SEO).
• Sustaining relationships has shifted from social to email:
  • “It’s never been easier to reach somebody with your content on social, but it’s never been harder to sustain a relationship there.” (Jay, 11:52)
  • Email allows creators to build the long-term relationship that social can’t.

5. 2026 Predictions & Content Quality

• “Insanely valuable content” as a requirement:
  • As AI and “mid slop” content rises, the ceiling is raised—generic or repackaged insights won’t cut it. True growth comes from content that is uniquely valuable and sought out.
  • “The thing that really helps people grow and makes those growth hacks work better is insanely valuable content.” (Chenell, 15:15)
• The danger of “mid slop” and AI:
  • Jay and Chenell discuss seeing an influx of generic, AI-generated content (“mid slop”)—the lowest-effort content is everywhere.
  • The challenge: do you let AI handle content for reach, or focus on the human process and unique insights that can’t be outsourced?
  • “I definitely want to be a better thinker...writing is like the lifting of weights to become a better thinker.” (Jay, 18:16)

6. Tactics for Growth Without Social Media

• Yes, it’s possible—but slower.
  • If you skip social and YouTube, growth gets harder and much slower unless you pay.
  • Alternative tactics discussed:
    • Paid ads (Facebook) directly to email/paid products — still effective, underused
    • Guest posting/collaborations: Offering high value content to another creator’s audience (a strategy reborn in a saturated market)
    • In-person events and leveraging real-world communities (industry conferences, local events with sign-up sheets)
    • Referral programs—only if the incentive is highly relevant and tangible (e.g., sports newsletter The Dink offering actual pickleball paddles)
• “Try to figure out a way that you can help another creator create something for their audience...I think there’s probably a bigger hole for this than there used to be.” (Chenell, 36:32)
• Collaborations and public challenges:
  • Jay references public “challenges” (Tweet100, Ship30, 75 Hard) as examples of viral flywheels that motivate action while driving organic discovery.

7. Underrated Growth Channels in 2026

• YouTube to Email:
  • Embedding email CTAs into YouTube videos is highly effective, yet still underutilized:
    • Chenell reports 75 new subs from 1,100 video views and 100+ podcast listens simply by inserting a CTA and lead magnet at the 4-minute mark of a video.
    • Tagging and tracking cross-channel fans reveals your “highest signal” subscribers.
  • “There’s just this intentionality that you need to implement… especially from people who have gotten strikes and lost their channels. You own your email audience.” (Chenell, 26:13)
• Instagram to ManyChat for email acquisition is also a current high-growth tactic.

8. On Format, Repurposing, and Newsletter Structure

• The “multi-block” format skepticism:
  • Jay suspects the now-ubiquitous “greeting / in this episode / ad / essay / last thing” format actually reduces deep engagement—too many CTAs, too little focus.
  • Experiments with sending the entire essay in the email have mixed results, but more people actually read the message when it’s all in-body. (50:23)
• Repurposing deep-dives is hard:
  • Much research loses relevance quickly; creators struggle to recycle “evergreen” content in a fast-moving newsletter landscape. (48:43–49:16)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the shift from quantity to quality:
  • “The quantity piece is not as important as many people used to make it out to be…having a deeper relationship with the people actually on your list is so much more critical at this point.” — Chenell (09:27)
• On AI’s impact and the “mid slop” era:
  • “Distribution is never going to get easier to build. It’s only going to get harder. So am I making it harder on myself by not using these tools?” — Jay (18:16)
  • “If you outsource your thinking, are you kind of going back on what you promised when I signed up for this thing?” — Chenell (24:01)
• On creative non-social growth:
  • “Try and figure out a way that you can help another creator create something for their audience… How can you give value without necessarily having an audience of your own?” — Chenell (36:32)
• On newsletter referral programs:
  • “If you’re just giving away a random PDF, I don’t think that’s gonna work.” — Chenell (25:37)
• On deep research and content creation:
  • “If I could just research and write, I probably would.” — Chenell (47:53)
• On holding back from AI short-form:
  • “If I cannot explode my long form ideas into short form formats where people have shown they want to consume, is that serving me?… but something about it, I just can’t get over the hump.” — Jay (22:42)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:36 | "Kiss, Marry, Kill" with Kit, Substack, Beehive—lighthearted opener | | 04:07 | The maturity of email and newsletter business in 2026 | | 07:28 | Turning recommendations into real fans; onboarding woes | | 09:27 | Why list depth now matters more than list size | | 10:41 | James Clear’s early list: What’s “big” in 2026? | | 13:10 | 2026 predictions: more creators will quit; only “insanely valuable” content works| | 15:15 | Rise of “mid slop” content and why only useful, actionable writing matters | | 18:16 | The moral struggle: “Should I let AI write my short form?” | | 24:35 | Are recommendations and referrals dead? Reframing their use | | 26:10 | Underrated: YouTube → email list strategy | | 31:16 | Q: “How can I grow without social?” Strategies besides social/YouTube | | 36:32 | Guest posting, collaborations, and public homework as growth levers | | 43:42 | Public challenges as email growth flywheels (Tweet100, Ship30, 75 Hard) | | 45:38 | Growth through in-person events and real-world community building | | 45:41 | Unhinged Questions: "Kiss, Marry, Kill" platforms redux | | 47:31 | “What’s your biggest content hunch?” Chenell on ‘insanely valuable content’ | | 48:43 | Limits of repurposing deep-dives back catalog | | 50:23 | Why Jay’s skeptical of “multi-block” newsletter formats |

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Tone & Style

The conversation is candid, tactical, occasionally self-deprecating, and always focused on direct value for newsletter operators. Both hosts blend practical tips with existential questions about creativity, trust, and evolving digital publishing.

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Takeaways for Newsletter Operators

• The “newsletter gold rush” is maturing: Success requires more than mass; the focus is on depth, fans, and diversified platforms.
• Building onboarding and true relationship with new subscribers—especially from referral/recommendation networks—is the biggest unmet opportunity.
• “Insanely valuable content” is non-negotiable for growth in 2026; mediocrity is filtered out by AI and shifting algorithms.
• You can still grow without social if you're willing to collaborate, guest-post, invest in paid growth, or grind through in-person/partnership tactics—but it’s slower.
• Use AI as a “junior employee” for repurposing and idea extraction while keeping the strategic thinking human.
• Experiment with new (or old) formats, and don’t be afraid to subvert the multi-block status quo in newsletters.

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Fun Section: Kiss, Marry, Kill (46:01)

• Chenell: Marry Kit (stability, history), Kiss Beehive, Kill Substack
• Jay: Marry Kit, Kiss Substack, Kill Beehive

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For anyone building, growing, or optimizing a newsletter business in 2026, this episode is packed with practical ideas, hard-won lessons, and a refreshing honesty about what it really takes to win—and what’s just noise.

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Transcript

[Chanel Basilio]

Welcome back to the Growth in Reverse podcast. This episode is a little different. We're actually airing a replay of a conversation that I had with Jay Clouse on the Creator Science podcast. In that episode we talked about the future of email marketing. Some of the growth strategies I'm seeing work super well right now and we even played Kiss, Marry, Kill with three of the top newsletter platforms. If you enjoyed this replay, I highly recommend checking out Creator Science and subscribing to the show. You can just search for Creator Science in your favorite podcast app and find all the episodes or check out the link in the description. Hope you enjoyed this one and let me know what you think.

[Jay Clouse]

I know you're not going to want to answer this, but we're going to do it anyway.

[Chanel Basilio]

Oh boy.

[Jay Clouse]

Kiss, Marry, Kill. Okay, Kit, Substack and Beehive.

[Chanel Basilio]

Oh boy. Oh, you're not going to make me do this, are you?

[Jay Clouse]

I'll do it if you do it. Hello my friend. Welcome back to another episode of Creator Science. This week I am joined by my good friend Chanel Basilio. Chanel is the creator of Growth in Reverse, a newsletter that reverse engineers how top creators grow their newsletters from zero to more than 50,000 email subscribers. She spends 20 to 25 hours per deep dive researching one creator, making her one of the most thorough newsletter analysts in the space. Chanel's writing is great. I believe I was the first subscriber to Growth in Reverse and I will hold on to that as a claim to fame. She has a background in paid ads actually since 20122013 and that gives her a really unique data driven lens because she understands both organic and paid growth. So Chanel is definitely one of the voices you should be listening to about email and newsletters. In this episode we give our predictions for what is working and what is to come in email in 2026. We talk about referral programs, recommendations, how you would grow if you do not want to use social media and some of the biggest opportunities you can grow if you are interested in social media. I think I also introduced a new section into this episode called Unhinged Questions. That's fun. That's towards the end. I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I enjoyed recording it. If you do enjoy it, feel free to tag me Clouse and let me know. Or if you're on Spotify, leave a comment. I love reading those comments. Watch that full episode with Chanel right after this.

[Dylan]

Hey Dylan, here. You know what sucks? When your newsletter plateaus and growth completely stalls out. It happened to me last year. But instead of panicking or worrying, I hopped into Chanel's Growth Vault. The Growth Vault has over 30 tactics and lessons on getting more subscribers and keeping them subscribed and engaged. I pulled out a few new strategies and implemented them that very day. The best part is these strategies are super tactical and they even come with video walkthroughs from Chanel. Oh, and the Growth Vault is constantly growing. Whenever Chanel finds a new, proven strategy, she adds it and you get instant access. And for a limited time, the Growth Vault even includes Chanel's subscriber onboarding course, 10 lessons, and a few extra tips and tricks to make sure the subscribers you work so hard to get actually stick around. Check it all out in the growth [e-mail] vault I think the most obvious.

[Jay Clouse]

Place to start is to ask how it feels to be the reigning champion of our inaugural fantasy football league. In the lab.

[Chanel Basilio]

I have the little trophy right over here too. It's fantastic.

[Jay Clouse]

So good. Oh man, I love that it's in the video frame. That's great.

[Chanel Basilio]

It didn't fully fit on the shelf.

[Jay Clouse]

But I'm not salty about it at all.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yes you are, but that's okay. You can't win the first league. It would just be too obvious that you were obviously fudging it a little bit.

[Jay Clouse]

Well, let's talk all things Email let's talk all things newsletter. I have a handful of different ways in to talk about this, but we're sitting here at the end of January 2026 and I'd love to just kind of get a vibe check a pulse check on how you feel about email. Do you think it's growing in importance? Do you think it's shrinking in importance? Where are we in the life cycle or hype cycle of email right now?

[Chanel Basilio]

It's a good question. I think it's maturing for sure. Obviously email's been around forever, so me saying maturing is kind of comical, but in this newsletter hype cycle, I feel like we're maturing in a way that people are realizing you need more than just a newsletter to actually build a successful business with it. I mean, there are caveats to this, of course, but I would say for 90% of people it's going to be more than email, whether that's incorporating YouTube or like your own digital products versus just having like a regular newsletter that's you're making money via sponsorships. I think it's definitely maturing in that sense, but I still think email is Pretty much king at this point. Of course there are platforms that are also important, but email is very, very up at the top for me.

[Jay Clouse]

I feel like the newsletter quote unquote hype has died down a little bit, you know, I mean email's been a thing for forever, but I feel like there was distinctly a 12 to 24 month period where newsletters in particular were so hot and everyone was starting a beehive or a substack and it was like a big thing. And I don't hear that nearly as much right now, I don't think.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah, I'd agree with you. Everyone got really excited about the idea especially. This is funny to think back on. I didn't realize it but like right after the NFT thing kind of died down, like people were like newsletters. And so all the AI newsletters came out, NFT newsletters, crypto, all that stuff. And so I think people just kind of like stayed and were hoping to build another milk road, for example, but obviously that is not as easy or as common as people probably thought. And so I think a lot of people are kind of jumping to the next thing at this point, which I'm all for because just keep all the people that are consistent with it in the space and go do something else.

[Jay Clouse]

Yeah, it turns out that being consistent and sending a newsletter every week is hard and not that profitable quickly. A lot of times it's been funny to see the ad networks that have popped up which are I think a net positive on beehive, on kit. Moving towards a performance model built in. A cost per click model makes a lot of business sense for them, I believe. But if you are not truly driving clicks, it's not really a profitable endeavor for you to have CPC advertising in your newsletter. And you're not going to drive clicks if your audience doesn't actually trust you and believe in whatever you're recommending or believe that you are recommending something out of a place of actual endorsement and belief.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah, totally. And part of me gets a little bitter with those ad networks for the smaller creator because if you think about it, you have maybe like 300 subscribers, 500 subscribers. They might be raving fans of yours, but maybe only three of them. Click one of those things. You've now taken up that space in your newsletter to essentially like take the space away from your content and building that relationship with them for maybe like 15 bucks, 10 bucks and it's like, is that really worth it? So I don't know. I like those models for know, a mid to Larger creator, but for the smaller ones, I just don't feel like it's worth it.

[Jay Clouse]

So talk to me about your relationship to your newsletter growth in reverse. What's on your mind as we enter a new year in terms of how you're leveraging email, what you want to change? I just want to get inside the mind of the actual newsletter operator of the newsletter.

[Chanel Basilio]

I think I'm just trying to get more dialed in on all of the things. So, like, having a more robust welcome sequence. Like, I get a bunch of recommendation subscribers, but how do we actually turn those people into fans right away versus, like, oh, you haven't opened anything in 14 days. Let's kick you off. I feel like that's a huge missed opportunity right now. So that's kind of top of mind for me. So I'm doing some research there to figure out some better ways to kind of onboard those people and make them more, I don't know, more of a quality subscriber when they really are just, like, a follower, if you will.

[Jay Clouse]

I'm literally thinking about the exact same thing right now, just because I have my shiny objects. And we've had some folks in the lab who have had some success over the past year or so building a paid funnel from Facebook ads to email to a paid product. And I think, ooh, that sounds awesome. I should do that. And then I remember that I have a stream of hundreds of subscribers per week that come from these recommendation networks that I'm really not building a great relationship with because it's a hard thing. And I don't know of anybody that's really solved this and done a good job with creator network subscribers and building them into fans quickly. And that feels like an opportunity. Like, things that are hard and haven't been solved. What a great thing to try and solve. So I'm literally thinking about the exact same thing right now of why am I not just solving that? Because if I can solve that, why, wow, would that be a huge lever in the business right now?

[Chanel Basilio]

Totally. And it's one of those things. Like, I've been thinking about this for a while, and I'm like, I need to figure this out, because this just seems like such a waste. Like, all these people keep coming into my ecosystem, and then they're leaving because I'm not doing a good job of explaining why, hey, we might have some things in common. You might want to stick around. And so, yeah, I'm trying to figure that out.

[Jay Clouse]

Yeah. So if I'm reading below the lines here, it sounds like you're saying big on your mind in this coming year is deeper relationships on a per subscriber level.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah. And I think so many people for so long have been just so excited about the huge numbers and like, inherent in what I do of like researching people who have hit 50,000 subscribers. How did they hit that number? And it's like, well, why do they have to have 50,000? Like there are smaller lists who are making much more money than the people with the larger list. So I am part of the problem, I think. But yes, the quantity piece is not as important as many people used to make it out to be and probably still do. But having a deeper relationship with the people actually on your list is so much more critical at this point.

[Jay Clouse]

Inflation is real too. Because now that I'm in this very slow plotting, never ending book journey, I spend a lot of time like researching the pathways of authors. And I think it'd be hard pressed to find an author who gets more airplay than James Clear and just like anywhere in the creator ecosystem.

[Chanel Basilio]

Right, agreed.

[Jay Clouse]

And what is underspoken about is James's email list when he got the book deal. Not only published when he got the book deal. Do you want to take a swing? Maybe you even know how many subscribers he had when he got his book deal in like 2000. What was it, 12? I think he got it.

[Chanel Basilio]

Wasn't it like 20K?

[Jay Clouse]

No, it was like 250K.

[Chanel Basilio]

Oh, wow.

[Jay Clouse]

He had like over 200,000 subscribers in 2012. What do you think 200,000 subscribers equates to in 2026?

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah, I don't know.

[Jay Clouse]

I think that would be equivalent to almost a million subscribers in 2026. Email inflation, you know, it's a huge number. And the question is like, well, how did he get so many subscribers in 2012? And the answer was, I think first accidentally and then very intentionally, he realized that his website was indexing extremely well in search for book summaries. So for a very long time he was just rolling in search results for like book reviews and book summaries on jamesclear.com and it was structured very well. And similarly, Tiago Forte started in a very similar way as well. Yeah, it's just interesting. It's interesting to think about even my numbers now as I'm looking down the book journey and the aspirations I have for it and realizing, man, maybe talk.

[Chanel Basilio]

3J will be like atomic habits.

[Jay Clouse]

We are not the same. But I do think it's important to say, okay, but the people that I am reaching, how Do I build a stronger relationship? Which brings me back to exactly what you're saying. Because when I talk to somebody today who's kind of getting started in the creator world, the good news, bad news, in my opinion, is it's never been easier to reach somebody with your content on social media, but it's never been harder to sustain a relationship on social media. So really it's such an opportunity and a gift to get people in email because that is the ability to sustain a relationship for as long as they permit it. As long as they allow it. And right now you and I are in the privileged position of we're getting recommendations and ultimately not doing a lot with it.

[Chanel Basilio]

It sounds, It's a big opportunity, I think, and I have not found a good example of someone solving this because it's so new. So how would you. But that's the goal. I'll share more when it happens.

[Jay Clouse]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll share notes when we, when we try to figure this out. What are some predictions that you have for 2026 in email? Generally, we've obviously shared what we're thinking about. What else are you hearing or kind of feeling that you think may be on the horizon or changing in the next year?

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah, on the same token of it maturing like the space maturing, I just think there's going to be a lot of people that end up quitting this year. And I don't like saying that, but I think with how AI is evolving and people realizing that you need more than just a sponsor here or a sponsor there to actually make a living with this kind of thing, I think a lot of people are going to give up on it, which is kind of stinks, but I think that's going to happen a lot more. You're going to see a lot of people bowing out of the space. Not even just email, I think just like creators in general. I feel like it's getting harder, it's getting more saturated, if you will. So I mean, I always talk about insanely valuable content. So it's like if you can just create better content, have that rise above the others, like that's only going to get more important. And that's a hard thing to do. And so I think a lot of people are gonna. Are gonna quit.

[Jay Clouse]

Say more about that for people who haven't heard this term or this idea.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah, so insanely valuable. Through doing all the research I've done, I've done like 80 deep dives on people who have hit 50,000 or more subscribers. The one thing that I keep coming back to over and over again. Is that the biggest metric for success, the biggest thing that has an impact is the level and valuableness, if you will, of their content. So if you look at any of the people who go viral on these platforms and they end up with a bunch of subscribers, it's because the content was very good, like insanely valuable, to the point where people are looking for it, they're excited about it, they want more, they can't help but look for this stuff. And so I think that's just such an important piece. And even in the last six to eight months, I'm realizing this far expands past newsletters and online content. It's like everything in the world. Think of the craftsman down the street. You go to that one guy because he does something so specific and he does it so well that you seek that out. And so you want to create something that people are actually going and seeking out versus just another list of articles that's getting sent to your inbox. And so I think that the real growth lever and the thing that really helps people grow and makes all those growth hacks work better is insanely valuable content.

[Jay Clouse]

I love this frame. I think we need it in this moment in time. It's so interesting to me that a lot of the content we saw on social media circa 2023, I would say I'm still seeing that style being posted on social media. And it feels so flat and weird because it just comes across as useless, like there's no value in it. It's the type of thing that, like a confident statement of a belief, but generally doesn't carry anything I can do with, you know, but it was so popular and successful in 2023 by some of the accounts that were growing the fastest. And a lot of us emulated that. And then we realized, like, this isn't really helping anybody. And it just feels so starkly true today when I see it. Like, my reaction to it every time I see it is like, okay, but it's not. It's not useful. I have like, various notes around my workspace now that I'm trying to use to, like, metaphorically grab myself by the shoulders and shake me out of bad patterns. One of them is be useful. Because if you're not creating something that is useful to somebody, like, one, it's probably not going to work, but two, it's not useful, it just doesn't do anything. And two, I feel like this is a prediction I would make with the things we can do with AI in terms of learning. It's never been more important to do things and talk about the things that you do. So I have another note that just says, do something. Because I'll sit here and I'll look at my kit broadcast, you know, the classic cursor on a blank screen, thinking, what am I going to write for my newsletter this week? And sometimes I don't have anything to write because I haven't done anything. And I just keep reminding myself, like, you should do something and you should talk about it. So that's a prediction from me. Not that you asked, but I'm with you. That valuable, useful content needs a renaissance. And that's hard. That's a hard, time consuming, difficult thing to do. But that's kind of the point, I think.

[Chanel Basilio]

Totally. And on the same token, with AI, it's so good at so many things, but like writing, maybe one day it will get to a place where you can have the perfect prompt and it just like pulls the words out of your brain. But even if you get to that point, what's the point? Like, writing is such a powerful medium, not because you're getting words on a page, but because you have to go through that process of thinking and refining and like actually coming up with your own ideas and taking one thing from over here and combining it with another idea and just like creating something new out of that. And I think everyone wants to get the shortcut. Even when AI came out, I was the same way. I was like, this is great, I'm just gonna be able to pump out content. And then I was like, hold on, this is not what I really wanted to happen with this. So you have to do something. You have to go out and actually write something. Go out and create, whether writings or Medium or YouTube or any other photography, go do.

[Jay Clouse]

The thing where I'm struggling right now is I see a lot of people using AI to create their content. I can tell it was written with AI, but it still performs really well. And it's growing their account, it's growing distribution, they're building a brand. And I sit back and I see it. I literally got hit with a video this morning. It was like a green screen style video. Guy was clearly reading off a teleprompter over top a Mr. Beast one of his videos from his new show. But it was good. It was, it was a good video that pulled me in and I was interested. And then towards the end it had the line of, that's not this, it's this. And I went, oh, that's Claude. Claude's in there. And I looked and this video was still crushing, especially for this creator. Like, I looked, I'm like, okay, how is this performing relative to their other videos? And it was doing really well relative to other videos. So I look at that and I don't know what to make of that. Do I say, is that a permission slip to say, okay, if the content is valued and viewed, is it okay to outsource my thinking and scripting on this? Is it worth it? Is it a trade worth making? And I'm really struggling with this right now. I don't know. I'm resistant to it and I'm trying to articulate why I'm resistant to it. At the core. I definitely want to be a better thinker and I agree with you that writing is like. It's like the lifting of weights to become a better thinker. It's hard, it's heavy, it doesn't feel great. But at the end you're like, wow, I'm glad I did that. If you're not doing that, I think you're going to get weaker long term. But we're also in this moment where I think distribution is never going to get easier to build. It's only going to get harder. So am I making it harder on myself by not using these tools that are at our disposal? Do you think about this all the time?

[Chanel Basilio]

I think, and I struggle with this too, because it's like, all right, well, if I give AI some boundaries to help me create the short form pieces that actually get people to the longer stuff, is that bad? I don't know. I won't outsource the longer stuff and like, my, you know what excites me and lights me up, but maybe I'll take a piece of that, of what I've already created and dump it into Claude and have it format it in a way that's like that. Do you know what I mean? So taking what you've already created and having Claude make it sexier, if you will.

[Jay Clouse]

This is the first thing I've practiced with claudebot was I said, okay, Jay's new obsession. Way back. Yeah, way back in the beginning of. Way back in January 2025, Nat Eliason put out his like, build your own apps course teaching you, like, here's how you can use cursor to build stuff with code. It was like an early Vibe coding thing. And I Vibe coded an app to help me repurpose short form. But that was so clunky because now I had like a locally running web app. Where the prompt to actually derive short form, form, long form, I had to, like, really write and sweat over. But now it's way easier than that. And so I was like, okay, let's see if I can text my claudebot virtual assistant to do this and sync it up with Notion. Way, way better. And so now I literally have a job running every week that, hey, on Tuesday, I publish a new podcast episode, go into Dropbox, pull down the latest transcript, pull out short form ideas structured for LinkedIn X and Instagram, and put it into Notion. And it's like, pretty good. And it's at least something I can react to. You know, I can react to, I can edit it, I can update. Does feel like, okay, well, this gives me time back to do long form writing, to read, which fuels the tank for long form writing to spend more time with my family, which is especially important once snow prevents us from having childcare out of the house this week. But I still feel, like, dirty or guilty about it. I don't know if it's saying this is against your values or if it's a story that is no longer serving me or useful, because I'm just holding on to this belief that this is too far. This is where the line has just gone too far for me personally. Everyone has a line. But is this where my line should be? I don't know. I don't know.

[Chanel Basilio]

As you're saying that, I'm thinking, like, if you were a business with like 20 employees, you would probably have someone taking your writing and creating forms. So it's the same thing.

[Jay Clouse]

And also, if I was not a content creator serving content creators, if I was just a business owner, I was like, man, we got to be on social media. I would 1000% be using this. 1000%. So why is it that I feel like my particular position puts me in a place where I do not have the same permission? I don't know if that's actually serving me. And ultimately I don't know if it's serving other people. Because if I cannot explode my long form ideas into short form formats where people have shown they want to consume, is that serving me? I don't think so, but something about it, I just can't quite get over the hump.

[Chanel Basilio]

No, I'm with you, but it sounds like we both need to just kind of like take our foot off the gas with it a little bit. Because just think of it like an employee, they would be writing some weird version of it's not this, it's that.

[Jay Clouse]

Or right I think the greatest fear for me is, like, if people think I've broken a promise to them.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah.

[Jay Clouse]

And so it almost feels like I've made promises that. That somehow I need to just, like, revise with people. And I don't know how to do that effectively, but, like, the last thing I want to do is make people feel like I betrayed their trust in some way. And there's just a part of me that's like, is this doing that? I'd love to hear from listeners of this. Tag me, write me, let me know what you guys think about this.

[Chanel Basilio]

I want to hear what people say too, because one of the things that, like, I think as a creator, we have built these brands of, like, people come to know us and, like, what we're talking about and how we think. And so it's like, if you outsource that thinking, in a way, it's like, well, are you kind of going back on what you promised when I signed up for this thing?

[Jay Clouse]

Let's keep going with some predictions and thoughts about the coming year. What do you think is no longer relevant? What was common advice or things people were doing that you think is no longer useful? No longer working, no longer relevant.

[Chanel Basilio]

Before the last two weeks, I was so burned out on recommendations, I was like, this is pointless. I just feel like they're lowering the quality of my list. Deliverability is going to go down because they're not opening. And now I've reframed that. So I was honestly for a while thinking about just like, turning off all recommendations, and I was like, this is not. There's no point.

[Jay Clouse]

Reframed it. How? Reframed it. Why?

[Chanel Basilio]

Because I'm realizing that it's not a recommendations problem. It's my systems problem of like, hey, these aren't actual subscribers yet, so let's turn them into subscribers. But because they're on my email list, you think they are. Do you know what I mean?

[Jay Clouse]

That's what you're saying when you say they're essentially followers and not subscribers.

[Chanel Basilio]

It's like someone following you on social media versus, like, actually entering their email address into a form. Because in a way, that's what they're doing. And I think Nathan actually said this at your IRL event. Yeah, that's what we're calling it, right? Irl?

[Jay Clouse]

Yeah. Offline.

[Chanel Basilio]

Offline, that's right.

[Jay Clouse]

Started irl. And I'm like, man, it's really hard to say IRL verbally. Yeah, I can get behind this. What do you think about referrals? Are referral Programs dead? Are they coming back ever?

[Chanel Basilio]

I don't think they're dead. I think it's another. Another thing of, like, make sure you're actually giving people what they want. Like, I just did a post recently on the Dink. It's a pickleball newsletter, and they have a referral program where they actually give you pickleballs and, like, pickleball paddles and, like, things that you can use. So it's super functional. And I think that is the kind of referral program that I can get behind. But if you're just giving away a random PDF of something like, I don't think that's gonna work.

[Jay Clouse]

What do you think is underrated in the world of newsletters right now?

[Chanel Basilio]

YouTube to email.

[Jay Clouse]

Okay, say more.

[Chanel Basilio]

I think there are so many YouTube channels and people on YouTube who have built these big audiences, and they're not successfully transferring them over to email. I did this actually recently, two weeks ago with an interview on my channel, and I said, okay, four minutes into the video, I, like, cut it. And I was like, wait, did he just say that? And I had this little lead magnet come up and. And it's converting at, like, 2 to 3% views. So my channel does not get the views. Yours does. But I think I've gotten, like, 75 email subscribers out of, like, 1100 views and some hundred podcast listens. So it's converting. And I think that there's just, like, this intentionality that you need to implement, especially hearing from people like Pat Walls and some other folks who have completely had either getting strikes on their channels or having them not banned, but they can't upload for a while. So I think that being able to take your subscribers over to email is, like, such an underrated thing right now.

[Jay Clouse]

Are you tagging these folks as coming from YouTube? Because I think down the line, it'll be so interesting to see, okay, the people who did come from YouTube. What's the life cycle and the lifetime value of the subscribers coming from that channel?

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah, I am. And I'm also recognizing, like, I clicked into each one, and I'd say, like, 20% of them are already subscribers. And so I'm like, wait a second, you're already on my email list, but you thought this thing was interesting enough? And I was like, okay, cool. So now I'm, like, tagging those people as essentially, like, raving fans because they're on two channels, they're already on the email list, and they're coming through YouTube as well. So I think those are, like, the people That I would say are higher signal on my list, if you will.

[Jay Clouse]

This is an upcoming experiment that I'm going to run because I see this opportunity as well. And actually we had it as a an explicit strategy for the channel last year and successfully ran it on like maybe two videos. But the idea that every video you make should have some clear, obvious, useful resource tied to it that is gated by email, slam dunk, huge win. Should work. It's the creating of the resource alongside creating a video that feels challenging because it's extra time, it's extra effort to do that. Another area where I feel like AI could certainly do a lot of the legwork. Say here's the transcript. What are some ideas that have some obvious follow up questions or teaching that I could do? Let's pull from it. Let's make a resource. I think you could probably do 50 to 80% of the lift there.

[Chanel Basilio]

Two things. So I did actually do that. I threw the transcript into. Actually I think I just used day like the. Not DIA is the browser I'm using. And I had the transcript pulled up and I was like, pull out like five ideas that could be interesting. Because I am one of those people. I go through the episode, I'm like, yeah, that was cool. I think this one thing was interesting. But then you have AI look at it and you're like, oh my God, he did say that. That was so interesting. I forgot that happened. And so I had them pull the idea and then I wrote the actual thing, had the screenshots and all the things. But getting the idea for it was super effective. I think that was a great use of AI. Another thing though is that I think we often overcomplicate this too. One thing that keeps coming back to mind, we interviewed Sam vanderwelen on our podcast recently on Instagram. She started teasing out podcast episodes and she would just say like, if you want the link, like click here. And it was just a manychat bot. And so she's getting their email address and giving them the link to the podcast episode. And I'm like, it's not YouTube, but short form videos. Close enough.

[Jay Clouse]

Totally. This is where I see most people in the lab right now just killing it with email acquisition is Instagram to manychat. And it's a big part of why Instagram is like a huge part of our strategy this year. Hopefully. I mean, we're putting a lot more effort into it than we used to, to middling levels of success. But this is where I'm seeing a lot of email acquisition right now.

[Chanel Basilio]

Personally agreed. So I think that's another thing for this year is just like video is going to be so much more useful and impactful in terms of gaining email subscribers. Or maybe that's just where I'm interested. I don't know. Could just be that.

[Jay Clouse]

After a quick break for our sponsors, we'll be right back to my conversation with Chanel Basilio of Growth in Reverse.

[Dylan]

Hey Dylan here. You know what sucks? When your newsletter plateaus and growth completely stalls out. It happened to me last year, but instead of panicking or worrying, I hopped into Chanel's Growth Vault. The Growth Vault has over 30 tactics and lessons on getting more subscribers and keeping them subscribed and engaged. I pulled out a few new strategies and implemented them that very day. The best part is the strategies are super tactical and they even come with video walkthroughs from Chanel. Oh, and the Growth Vault is constantly growing. Whenever Chanel finds a new proven strategy, she adds it and you get instant access. And for a limited time, the Growth Vault even includes Chanel's subscriber onboarding course, 10 lessons, and a few extra tips and tricks to make sure the subscribers you work so hard to get actually stick around. Check it all out in the growth [e-mail] vault.

[Jay Clouse]

We had a question come up in a Q and A in the community recently and he asked how can I grow my email list if I don't want to do any discovery platforms? So social media or YouTube? Provocative question that I think a lot of people would say, ooh, if I could figure that out. Pretty into that. So where's your head go with that question?

[Chanel Basilio]

A couple things up front like why no social? Like yes, it can be detrimental, but I don't think every platform is as impactful on people as others. So yes, I feel this too. I get this question all the time, but I think that there is a thing of like, you have to recognize you're going to grow a lot slower unless you're putting money behind it, unless you're doing like paid ads or something. That is definitely one way you can grow without doing organic social, but it's definitely going to take a lot longer if you don't use social media. I think 90 something percent of the people that I studied went super hard on just one channel to grow their newsletter and then a lot of them expanded into others. But if you can try and do one, that's great. If not, fine. There are some ways we can talk through, but I would just kind of think through, like, why am I handicapping my growth a little bit? Is it a real reason or is it just like I don't want to do the thing?

[Jay Clouse]

I will say, okay, I'm going to put on the, the hat of the listener here. Maybe they just want to put all of their time into writing the best long form they possibly can.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah.

[Jay Clouse]

Or at least that's the story they're telling themselves. So if that is the case, what is the advice?

[Chanel Basilio]

Okay, so you mentioned, I was going to ask, is YouTube social media? And it sounds like, yes, YouTube is out. Okay, YouTube is out.

[Jay Clouse]

I mean, acknowledged. We talked about it. YouTube has opportunity. But for the sake of this question, off the table.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah. Okay. The second thing is making sure it's like really, really good because that's how you're going to have the best chance of having these things work. But it sounds like if they're going to spend all their time writing the long form, it should hypothetically be insanely valuable.

[Jay Clouse]

I think we should hang out here a little bit more though. I think this is worth pointing out because Are you familiar with Orin on Social, Orin John? He had a tweet recently where he said his team has started referring to a lot of content that they think or can tell is created by AI as mid slope. It's not so overtly an obvious AI where it's like ring camera footage of a cat beating up a deer that came through the screen door. But it's probably made with AI. So we called this mid slop. And when I think about it, I think a lot of content that wasn't created with AI is mid slop. Because what we've seen or what I've seen, because so many creator brands are individuals. We see people like a Cody Sanchez where it's like, wow, she's everywhere. And it's all great. I can do that too. If Cody can do it, I can do it. But we don't have like full awareness of what the team behind that actually looks like. I actually just refound this note I had from craft and commerce 2024 where Cody said that in 2024 she spent $2.9 million on her content team. So that is how you have non mid slap content on every platform. But I think the pursuit of trying to be everywhere as an individual or even a small team results in mid content everywhere. So I think it's important to say if you are telling yourself the story, that I don't want to be on social because I want to make the best Long form writing that I can. That you're actually doing that and not just saying it.

[Chanel Basilio]

100% agree. I like this mid thing. I haven't heard that. I know who Orin is, but I haven't heard that phrase yet.

[Jay Clouse]

I looked at it. This is in the same time period where I'm asking myself like, okay, well these short form bits from my long form that my claudebot put together, they're like better than not posting it is from my stuff. It might not perform super high, but it's something. And I saw that. I'm like, yeah, this would be probably mid slop. And then I thought to myself, but so is a lot of my writing that I'm just doing, honestly. So I think in 2026, you need to hire and resource or reduce the scope of what you're trying to do. I think is the recipe for success in content. Because we're just seeing more competition than ever before and it's difficult to compete in that landscape if you're trying to compete on a bunch of different playing fields.

[Chanel Basilio]

You can't write the best possible thing and create the best possible short form video and do all the other things as well. So you have to kind of choose. But yeah, I would definitely lean more towards creating a better piece of your overarching long form content than the short form. But there is a place for both.

[Jay Clouse]

So to go back to the question of growing your newsletter or your email list in 2026 without social. We've mentioned a couple things so far. Paid spend, which I agree with you is like this actually seems underrated right now. Seems like opportunity referral program that we talked about. If you have good referrals, I think that makes sense in this world and writing extremely valuable, insanely valuable long form content. I have a couple of other ideas, but anything else you want to add to this list?

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah, I always go back to not to date myself too much, but I got started in this space in like 2013 and I go back to what was working then because these things always come back around at some point. They worked because of how human nature works, like how humans work together. So my biggest thing that I always tell people, especially when they're just getting started, is try and figure out a way that you can help another creator create something for their audience. So like guest posting used to do super well. I still think there is a room for this. I actually think there's probably a bigger hole for this than there used to be because so many people moved away from it that now there's probably space for it. So if you can go find, like go through someone's back catalog and see, like, hey, you've never actually written about this one topic. I know this super well. I would love to like write a piece for you or create something for you that you could give to your audience for free. Like, I don't need anything. Just put my name on it somewhere. I think that could do super well. Still on the same token, like get on someone's podcast. Get on their podcast and help their audience in the specific way that you have experience. Like what is your niche, your expertise, and how could you help their audience. So I think it's really just like collaborating and trying to figure out how you can give value without necessarily having an audience of your own.

[Jay Clouse]

Lenny Richicky is so good at this. Actually, Lenny's just good at everything he does. Lenny is an amazing example that I feel is super high integrity, super high quality, really good dude. Love seeing him win. Wish we were friends. And the way he platforms other people and gives them the ability to guest post and they do it at a very high level, I think is really inspiring. And it's something that I want to emulate in the Creator Science brand through the lens of experiments. Because more and more I just think that the best thing I can do is do and then show less teaching. It's teaching in its own way, I suppose. But I think in this moment, if I'm teaching content, it just has to be so tightly coupled to something I've tried in the very recent past. And so I'm thinking that I would love to build a process to facilitate the sharing of experiments from other creators in the Creator Science audience in real time through the newsletter. And I think this is a big opportunity. I agree with you. Cross promotions and collaborations was one of the items on my list too.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah, that's a big one. I found this woman named Maya Voye who was doing this and I just stumbled across her because I was doing a deep dive on this guy named Akash Gupta and she had written, well, co collaborated a piece. So they wrote this article together and it was like a super long article, crazy involved. And I was like, who is this person? And she had like 3,000 subscribers at the time, I think. And then looking back at her year in review recently, she did this like six or seven times. And she explicitly called out that this was the one main way that she grew her newsletter. And I think she's now at like 25,000. And I was like, yeah, it works. And like, I'M sure there were other things involved, recommendations over time, but like, I'm pretty sure that even just doing those articles gets you on the radar of so many other creators that then are like, hey, do you want to refer each other? Do you want to come do this thing? Like, it just opened so many doors.

[Jay Clouse]

Totally. Yeah. The difference of doing that strategy versus starting from zero and only posting through your own channels with these crazy in depth things, the amount of leverage if you are able to collaborate with somebody and get in front of their existing audience is just huge. And somebody like you or I, who already have a platform, what could we do with that strategy? We're going out and writing newsletters to our audience, which. Hugely valuable. But imagine if we go to someone else who's like more loosely connected or a little bit outside of our existing orbit and said, let's try to get in front of their audience with something that we write. Probably a, a step function higher in growth if we went there than just continue to only go through our own channels.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah. And at the same point, like, maybe that's something we should be looking at. Like, how can we give other people the space to like totally post something or share what they're doing? Kind of like experiments, like you said. I've done this a few times, but not nearly enough. It takes all of the work away from me. I just have to go through and make sure it's actually decent and makes sense. Although if you hear from the people who have done a Lenny Ryczycki guest post, it's like a very rigorous process.

[Jay Clouse]

Good. Again, that's why Lenny's stuff is so good. He doesn't half ass any of this. It's not because he's lazy. It's all super well done and he really respects his audience's time and attention. You can just tell.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah, he's great.

[Jay Clouse]

Okay, I have one more idea here on the Growth Without Social Media Train. I can't stop thinking about this idea of public homework. So an example here would be like 75 hard. This workout challenge by Andy Frisella. He has a setup where anyone can sign up for 75 hard. It's 75 days of an intense physical challenge. And each day has a series of gosh, I want to say it's like six or eight checkboxes of things you have to do to be able to say, yep, I did my challenge today and one of those checkboxes is to share your workout on your social media. It's like you have to do two workouts a day. One of them has to be outside. You have to read 20 pages of book. You got to get up at this time and it's like this crazy stuff, but then it's like you need to take a photo of your progress and publish it with the hashtag 75hard. So I think there are icky ways to do this and non icky ways to do this. If the public homework functions in a way that creates a positive tension so the person is more likely to complete the challenge, that's positive if it's purely for your own growth. Flywheel. That feels a little more icky to me, but I can see where it's like, okay, if I'm doing this very hard physical challenge that makes me want to quit every day, but I've posted about it publicly that I'm doing it and I've done it now five days in a row. I would feel a little bit itchy to publish on the sixth day, which is going to make me do the thing. I think everybody wins in that way. But I've been thinking to myself, I mean, when I did the tweet 100 challenge years ago, that was the fastest email growth I've ever done. And there was a world where before Elon bought Twitter and Destroyed the X API, I could have just done tweet 100 for 2 years really hard and probably have twice as many email subscribers as I do today because it was such a wonderful, beautiful flywheel of somebody would tweet, they would tag tweet 100 because that's what I had to have to make the leaderboard work. And anybody seen that, it's like, what's Tweet100? And then they go and they sign [e-mail] and now they're in the challenge. It was an amazing flywheel. So I think about this a lot in terms of what is a way that I can introduce a challenge that positively moves people towards their goals and also self perpetuates itself to new people.

[Chanel Basilio]

It reminds me of ship 30 too. I was going to bring up tweet 100, but you did as well. Ship 30 did the same thing and now it's huge. I don't even think you had to tag ship 30. You just had the ship in your headline on Twitter and people just knew that if you saw that one type of post, it was from that program.

[Jay Clouse]

I feel like that program had so much potential. I know they still run it from time to time, so it's not dead dead. But even the brand itself I reached out to Dickie once and I was like, this doesn't have to just be writing. You could do ship 30 for video, for YouTube, for podcasting, for anything that you are shipping. You could do a 30 day challenge and this would crush.

[Chanel Basilio]

This is random. But didn't Seth Godin have something like this?

[Jay Clouse]

I'm not sure I do. I do think that he used the term shipping before anybody else. Like, that was something that I feel like he coined or at least popularized first.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah.

[Jay Clouse]

Any more ideas on this before we move into a section I call Unhinged Questions?

[Chanel Basilio]

Ooh. I mean, I think there's some other ones, like, in person events. Obviously, you don't have to go the full morning brew route of, like, going in front of a college classroom and, like, handing out a clipboard. But there is a newsletter called Payload. They're in the space industry, which is super B2B. Very, very small. But they actually just go to industry conferences with the clipboard and, like, hand it out and be like, hey, we have this newsletter if you want to sign up. It's free. They grow that way. I know, like, Naptown scoop. Ryan Sneddon does, like, local events, and he'll have, like, you can sign up for the newsletter that way. So I think a lot of the times we're thinking through, like, how do we get the most subscribers? And it's really just like, how do we get the 100 or the 1,000 that are actually going to help me share and share this thing for me? Authors always say you have to sell your own first 1000 books, and then after that, it should spread by itself. So it's kind of the same token. How can you get those raving fans up front who will help share your message?

[Jay Clouse]

Okay, Unhinged Questions. Okay, I know you're not gonna want to answer this, but we're gonna do it anyway.

[Chanel Basilio]

Oh, boy.

[Jay Clouse]

I'm gonna make this question rated on fantasy football. No, I'm gonna make this question rated PG 13 rather than rated R. Kiss, Marry, Kill. Okay, Kit, Substack and Beehive.

[Chanel Basilio]

Oh, boy. Oh, you're not gonna make me do this, are you?

[Jay Clouse]

I'll do it if you do it.

[Chanel Basilio]

I mean, I would probably. I'd probably say Kiss. Kit. No, I don't know. Hmm. Because they all have such good use cases.

[Jay Clouse]

Everybody's got good qualities, but you can only marry one.

[Chanel Basilio]

I guess I'll marry Kit because they have been around longer and there's just, like, I don't know, inherent value in that stability. Kiss, Beehive. Kill substack.

[Jay Clouse]

Interesting. I think I would also marry Kit. Probably not a surprise. I think in this season I would kiss substack Kill beyve okay, and I don't think we even have to say more than that. These are just our hot takes.

[Chanel Basilio]

There you go.

[Jay Clouse]

What is something that you have? A hunch or a belief, Something that you are operating because you believe this, but you don't have the data to support yet?

[Chanel Basilio]

Well, I think inherently the insanely valuable content idea is like, I don't have data. There's no data that a reader loves this one thing because I spent 20 more hours on it than somebody else. But the hunch is definitely there. And I'm pretty sure that that is a thing. So I think that's the one that I don't have data around. That's not something that's easy to experiment with or showcase in a way. But the more time you put into something, the more people can feel the time and the effort and the sweat and blood and tears and everything than if you didn't do that. But again, no data.

[Jay Clouse]

What is your least favorite or least satisfied part of your own newsletter? What do you hate the most about your own newsletter? Right now?

[Chanel Basilio]

That I'm not doing deep dives every week.

[Jay Clouse]

Say more. Why aren't you doing deep dives every week?

[Chanel Basilio]

Because I don't have the time anymore. Where to go, Podcasts, all this other stuff. Community.

[Jay Clouse]

Worth it.

[Chanel Basilio]

It's worth it. It's different. I often think back of like, should I just kill everything and go back to just doing a weekly deep dive and I'll figure it out? And it's like, yes. And there is also something to reader burnout of getting this 4,000 word article in your inbox every week is kind of insane. I think there is a way to do something similar, which is what I've been doing of pulling out this one growth lever and going deep on that instead of a full deep dive. So I'm trying to bring back that in a sense because it was just, you know, I'm spending 40, 50 hours just researching these people and then I have to spend the time to like actually write the thing. It's just not sustainable every week. So if I can kind of scale that back, I think that's going to be more exciting for me because I'm still doing like the nerdy, like research side of it. But yeah, if I could just research and write, I probably would.

[Jay Clouse]

How much mileage do you get out of your back catalog of deep dives?

[Chanel Basilio]

Not enough I purposefully don't. Well, not purposefully. I don't repurpose enough. Part of it is like, okay, Justin Walsh grew this way back in 2023, but now it's 2026. Is that still interesting? Probably a little bit, but I don't know that it's as interesting as it was when I published it initially.

[Jay Clouse]

Do you get search traffic to it?

[Chanel Basilio]

I do get search traffic to some of them. Yeah.

[Jay Clouse]

I wonder what that will look like in the future. Cause I know it's not like easy to even get to your deep dives.

[Chanel Basilio]

Because I'm changing it.

[Jay Clouse]

Okay.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah. So I have a link at the top right corner now on my homepage where you can go read documents. Yeah. People were signing up with expletive email addresses. So I was like, okay, fine. I think that style of landing page served me well in the early days. And now I'm like, well, you know, it's time to have like a more robust homepage and I can create something similar to this that I share on social or whatever where I want people to actually go subscribe.

[Jay Clouse]

Last thing I want to get your take on. I feel like a lot of us have kind of been pulled by the gravity of a format of our newsletters where we have like this multi block approach of like, up here is like a greeting. And now we've got like an in this episode and now we got an ad block and now we got the essay and now we got a like last thing before you go. I have a hunch that this is just not a good format and we're all doing it. Like, I have a hunch that this is not what leads to deep reading or even taking action. Because a lot of times each of these blocks has their own call to action. What's your take on this?

[Chanel Basilio]

I tried experimenting with this a couple weeks ago and I just. I didn't have like an intro and that that week I didn't have a sponsor, so it was perfect. So I just put like the full article in the email. It did get clipped at the bottom. So frustrating. Like, I just. There's this balance between getting clipped on Gmail of like not having the full email show up in your inbox and then they have to click over it can hurt like your open rates, deliverability, whatever. But. So I experimented with this with just like trying to send out the full thing and not have anything else. I don't see any numbers to say that it did better or worse. I actually ran it as a kit test because you can test the content of your emails now and it lost. But they only go based on clicks, so I don't know that that's really a good test.

[Jay Clouse]

Whenever I've tested this, not even close. More clicks on an email that does not have more calls to action. There's definitely a benefit to having the essay hosted on your website because there's all kinds of fun embeds and it can look nice and it's way more shareable, way more referable. But it was always so depressing to me to kind of like give the preview of the article and then the button and then to see like, okay, this had a 40% open rate. 24,000 people clicked open this email. But then only like 1 to 2000 of those people actually went and read the essay.

[Chanel Basilio]

So depressing.

[Jay Clouse]

But they didn't unsubscribe. Like, what are you doing? What do you want from this? Yeah, so I don't know. I guess maybe it feels better to not know and just put the whole essay in the body for me.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah, I mean, if it fits, I think you probably should. And just make sure you have a link so that if somebody does want to go share it, they can. But yeah, I don't know. It's one of those things you just want to like, like I said, burn it all down and start over.

[Jay Clouse]

Yeah, the urge. The urge is strong. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode with Chanel Basilio. If you enjoyed this, please consider leaving a rating or review on Apple Podcasts. It goes so far. I want to get to 500. It's what I want so badly. More than anything else in this world, I want to get to 500 ratings and reviews on Apple Podcasts. So if you are listening on Apple and you have not done so, please consider going and doing so. If you want to learn more about Chanel, links to her website and her social media are in the show notes. You can subscribe to Growth in [e-mail] Otherwise, thank you for listening and I'll talk to you next week.

[Dylan]

Hey, Dylan, here. You know what sucks? When your newsletter plateaus and growth completely stalls out. It happened to me last year, but instead of panicking or worrying, I hopped into Chanel's Growth Vault. The Growth Vault has over 30 tactics and lessons on getting more subscribers and keeping them subscribed and engaged. I pulled out a few new strategies and implemented them that very day. The best part is these strategies are super tactical and they even come with video walkthroughs from Chanel. Oh, and the Growth Vault is constantly growing. Whenever Chanel finds a new, proven strategy, she adds it and you get instant access and for a limited time. The Growth Vault even includes Chanel's subscriber onboarding course, 10 lessons, and a few extra tips and tricks to make sure the subscribers you work so hard to get actually stick around. Check it all out in the growth [e-mail] vault.