A productivity Newsletter experiment learnings: 0 to 50+ subs with Reddit

Hi guys!
Somewhere like a couple of months ago I started a small experiment - making a funnel to capture a newsletter audience, iterate & improve it.

I'm a fun of productivity, habits and self-improvement, so Reddit communication was more like my hobby - until I noticed some interesting patterns in subs that I used the most.

Another fun fact: I haven't started writing the issues yet :| . That's something I'm working on - my subscribers don't receive any letters, they just subscribe + confirm their email.

So, a bit of general numbers:

• 5500 visitors in ~2 months
• 57 newsletter emails (confirmed)
• 20 blog posts
• 0 newsletter issues (fixing this - to actually start writing)

I think most of those who read till this moment lost interest due to low numbers - I totally get it. However, I'll share just a few points about starting newsletter from scratch (which to be honest had multiple steps that I never thought about in theory).

1. Tech setup
   I use:

• Wordpress (vultr hosting) - for writing posts, seo, all this stuff
• ConvertKit (free trial yet) - for emails collection and forms setup
• Zapier - for sharing when someone subscribed to Slack - helps me track subscriptions + I plan to reach them
• Slack - for reddit listening + notifications about subscriptions
• Python script - for reddit listening
• Sheets - for daily tracking of my comments, visits from GA, subscriptions and all the conversions (eg, comments required to bring one subscriber; or visits per comments, etc). On daily/weekly/monthly basis
• Google Analytics - obvious
• FB pixel - to tag audience & retarget them later

2. A/B testing the forms
   When starting a newsletter, I don't have a clue which magnet will work. In my productivity niche, I can say: "Subscribe to my newsletter and get my free course on how to beat frustration", or I can say: "Join our elite club of productivity and learn tips how to maximize your day".

So, I used a script in wordpress that allows rotate placements of ads - to rotate ConvertKit forms. I made maybe 15 different in-post forms and 15 modal windows. The CR into subscriber is around 0.3% for in-post format and 0.6% for modal window format.

It helps a lot to do the rotation, because I eliminate the angles that didn't bring me any subs.

3. Reddit for acquisition
   Now what I do is I find topics that might be helpful to share with my audience. Then.I write posts regarding these topics in my blog.

Then I use reddit listening tool to pick recent topics from specific subs or with specific title keywords.

In these posts, I leave native comment that should be helpful for other users + sometimes leave a link to my post. In such way, users get help + it's not spam or self-promotion.

4. Tracking
   As I mentioned, I'm tracking everything now. For eg, I know that on average, for some period of time:

• I was writing 4.3 comments/day
• I needed to get 112 visitors to have 1 subscirber
• 2.8 comments were needed to bring 1 subscriber

Stuff like this works on larger numbers, obviously - but gives a good idea later, once you collect some data.

5. Next plans

• I started this as an experiment, but now I plan to organize my content planning & writing regularly. Besides, I finally want to start writing the newsletter itself, otherwise it looks like I'm scamming my potential readers.

• I'm looking for more ways to improve acquisition and CRs themselves without violating Reddit rules

• I also plan checking other social platforms soon, to crack the similar mechanics and possibly delegate some routinous tasks to someone else

Hope it was helpful. If you have any questions - lmk