How do you grow your newsletter? 👀

1. Publish to my existing audience and ask them to send to a friend 2. Create a Tweetstorm out of the content 3. Make a LinkedIn post to my audience 4. Share post to Medium 5. Reformat the post for Reddit threads 6. Share on site aggregators like Indie Hackers, GrowthHacker, Hackernoon

Good luck with your newsletter, @basv ! Here's what worked for my newsletter: - Create share-worthy content (obvious, but still). And ask for readers to share it at the end. Asking makes a difference. After you get 5,000 subs, consider implementing a referral program. - Experiment a lot with your landing page copy. And don't stop until you reach a 50% conversion rate. This will ensure you don't have a leaky bucket with your traffic. Even a 5% increase in the conversion rate makes a huge difference in the long term. - Make cross-promotions with other newsletters that have a similar target audience. Especially after you have 1,000 subs, you can start cross-promoting with bigger newsletters and get many subscribers. - I see that you use ConvertKit. They are launching the Creator Network feature where creators can recommend each other (like on Substack). You can join the waitlist. It works great. - And if you have products or selling sponsorships, you can consider paid growth. P.S. My newsletter in case you like mental models: https://fronterablog.com/newsletter

Content is king. So focus on your content.

Focus on valuable content, personalize your newsletters, Keep a consistent schedule, Use social media to promote your newsletter, and Monitor and analyze your metrics.

There are several techniques, corresponding to different moments vs your launch, - I love discussions 1/1, - LinkedIn posts, especially posts in dedicated groups (to A/B test) - Twitter can also work if you dive into discussions, not only tweet yourself

I find the best way is to cross promote with other newsletters

I think recommendations and having a social media audience helps the most

Few years back I started http://startup.limited (idea was to share details about early stage startups to subscribers). Without any promotion or posting anywhere on social media, I got 50+ people subscribed to it. Initially I thought its all spam but then I found those are real people. I sent one email to all. But then I neglected completely, dint renew domain. I think at that time startup word was trending and it got me few subscribers. You can try different domains names and place your makerbox subscription box on landing page. Currently anything with “AI” or “GPT” text in domain will get traffic.

I would like to give you some actionable points: 1) Create 1 large piece of content (written or video), cut it, edit it and distribute. Avoid posting same content over multiple platforms. 2) Keeping your newsletter gated (only email) or keeping it open (like ProductHunt) can be your choice based on strategic reasons. 3) Collaborate with other Newsletter. I call it Partnership-led growth. 4) After sometime, collate your content and create an Ebook, Email Course or other digital product that you can use to capture more and more leads. 5) Website popups for Newsletter sign up, with a free digital product on offer, works the best. 6) Promote! Promote! Promote! Promote your newsletter everywhere and anywhere. 7) Reach out to Influential personalities personally and ask them to subscribe to your newsletter. Even if one of them tweets/posts about your newsletter, it might go Viral.

Hey Sveta, I've found the below strategies to be a little more effective: - Posting on LinkedIn/ other relevant social platforms: You can share teasers or snippets of your newsletter content on to generate interest and entice followers to subscribe. Tag the solopreneurs featured in your newsletter and utilise their network as well. You can also tag your inner circle of peers who cheer for you and your team to leverage their network as well. - Posting on micro forums/ communities: You can find groups on Facebook / LinkedIn who are interested in marketing case studies - Offer incentives: Offer a lead magnet or exclusive content to incentivize people to subscribe. For instance, you could offer a free e-book or a discount on your products or services for new subscribers. - Collaborate with influencers: Partner with influencers or industry experts in your niche to promote your newsletter to their followers. Lastly, all good things take time - this applies to building a community of people subscribing to your newsletter as well! All the best! PS: This topic is definitely of interest to me, you can consider a +1 to your newsletter subscriber base :)

Interested in the thread

Great question. I'm struggling too :)

Heyyy ! I've seen since few days that many people like you are struggling to grow their newsletter. What are your main pains ?

Focus on valuable content, personalize your newsletters and promote it on social media.

Honestly, I don't have a great answer to this because I just started my own newsletter and am still trying to learn how to improve it 😅 Mainly commenting to stay in the loop and maybe veterans will let me know if I'm thinking about it the right way I spent 18-20 hours thinking about my customer base and what they would enjoy, then tested multiple design concepts in my community first to get feedback on the content. First iteration, they said it was a bit confusing and there was too much content going on. So I skimmed down the sections to just 2 and simplified the layouts. I started with Mailchimp ended up using Substack for the newsletter because it has a subscribe page and allows for unlimited emails (in case it grows!), but the design customization capabilities are limited. My thoughts around promotion are that content is king, if I focus on quality and increasing the "usefulness" of my email (literally get feedback from readers about how useful each issue is) then I'll be able to identify what to do to improve the content. When the content is super high quality and useful, I feel like people will just share it and recommend it! Even if I do a lot of marketing, if the content sucks, everyone will unsubscribe anyways

I started a newsletter about one and a half years ago called Good Book/Good Bread where I review and recommend a book and then bake a bread that fits with an aspect of the story. I found all the usual strategies mentioned here to be helpful, but I also found a more basic way has been quite effective. I just designed some very small, simple stickers that included a QR code and just stuck them in high traffic places, especially those near bakeries or bookstores. I also put one on the back of my iphone case, one on my skis, and one on the back of my car. People ask me about them all the time and then I can just say oh scan it if you want to subscribe. https://goodbookgoodbread.substa...

We have grown our newsletter to 1000 subscribers. These are things that worked for us 1. Cross promotions 2. Lead magnets and 3. Engaing in communities and plugging our newsletter in our replies

I haven't started yet, but planning to start one by the end of June. My plan is to provide some freebies in exchange of their emails

By Defining the target audience, Creating valuable content, Making it easy to subscribe, Using social media, Offering incentives, collaborating with other newsletters, Using paid advertising, Measuring, and optimizing.