How do I get more subscribers for my niche newsletter??
Hi everyone. I'm about 50 days into launching my free weekly newsletter for b2b sales reps.
So far I have 115 subscribers, open rates consistently 40% or higher, and I've only had 1 unsubscribe while getting a lot of positive feedback otherwise.
The only promotion I've done is manually dm'ing people on LinkedIn.
I want to start pumping up the promotion to get more subscribers now that I have a little more confidence in myself and the newsletter.
I've found that common growth hacks of posting in FB groups, reddit threads, and Twitter don't work as well for this niche as the audience (for the most part) isn't on those platforms.
Two ideas that I have:
- Launch a referral program
-Start posting on LinkedIn with a link to my landing page (https://www.commissionbreath.co/)
Would really appreciate any other suggestions!
Also as a side note - cold DMing people has worked well (5-7% conversion) but it is tedious and don't think it's a scalable long-term strategy.
If where you hang out is LinkedIn then I'd consider occasionally sharing public LinkedIn updates based on content or ideas of the newsletter.
Newsletters are often slow to grow, it took me 6 months to get my first 100, another 6 months to get to 850.
6 months for 100 users? That is slow. How did you know it was "more grind" and not "lack of validation"?
Agreed - I need to get used to the idea of self-promotion.
Cheers to you for sticking with it! I guess I'm partially just getting impatient, so I will buckle down and keep at it for now!
I feel referrals at this point won’t be great unless you have an amazing cult-like audience. The maths doesn’t really work.
Posting content on social maybe a better use of time. But also post to your own site so you can start building SEO benefits in the future (playing the long game)
Cross promotions with other newsletters. Works well. Who has similar audience and similar size? Reach out to them.
There’s a weekly thread in the Newsletter Creators group on FB https://www.facebook.com/groups/NewsletterCreators to show you’re interested in connecting with other newsletters.
What about paid ads? TLDR newsletter used ads on quora and Reddit as well as FB to get traction. https://growthlessons.co/tldr-newsletter-how-a-simple-email-newsletter-became-a-350k-a-year-side-hustle-in-just-20-months/
Awesome thanks for providing the links! I'm torn on referrals, but at this point I've done all the work to get it set-up so will likely launch it even though I agree it's probably too early.
Going to look into paid ads as a few others have suggested that as well!
Hi Patrick,
have you tried google ads ?
i pay about 50 cents for a new subscriber when i advertising it on google search
20 cent cpc , a bit less than 50% subscribes
Those are some impressive numbers, are you adverising locally in cheaper markets? Because if you do that in the US it'll definitely be a lot more expensive.
for subscribers , you are not in a hurry , do enhanced cpc and start with a low bid even way under your first page min
I have not but that's a great conversion. Assuming there's a minimum ad spend with google though? i.e. could I start with say $500 ..?
you could start with $50
Hey Patrick,
Launching a referral program at this moment with a small base might not yield great ROI.
@pauldmet has collected a useful list of resources on Growth that you can refer to here: https://letterstack.co/category/grow
Just be consistent and keep writing. I wrote to 25 people for weeks but now am adding 40-50 subs per week to my newsletter, 22 weeks in
Appreciate the link, thanks Janel! I agree I need to just keep at it for at least a few more months and I think the growth will start compounding faster
Thanks for the mention
Hi Patrick! I think you need to send a message to the users by an email when they push a “try now” button. Otherwise it is not clear if I am subscribed)
I believe that growing your newsletter will require time, other than the efforts you're trying to put out there.
Mostly because it's very niche, you have to start by introducing yourself and your newsletter to smaller niches in places like LinkedIn groups (I know they're mostly dead, but it doesn't hurt to just post there), Facebook groups, Quora, Twitter is also a good spot.
Having a large following on LinkedIn also helps, so look into how to grow on there.
This one also sounds very cliche, but you should provide some value in the form of answering questions asked by these people in groups and on Quora while hinting to your newsletter and how it can be useful to your audience.
Label your newsletter as something of a required educational tool that will help B2B folks advance their careers, tie it to a benefit.
Paid ads work too, but it shouldn't be your first go to strategy.
Well, that is decent growth rate. At first it was hard but eventually it will subtle
Hi Patrick
My target market for ScrapeDiary is also B2B sales people ( currently is mostly marketing professionals but going to pitch more to sales people, lets connect and put our heads together, I'd be open for some cross posting if we can find some content that makes sense
I'm answering questions like these over here, if you're interested.
It sounds like you have something that works okay in the cold outreach space. I wouldn't be so quick to give that up, especially since you might have the opportunity to optimize your message and get to >10% conversion, which is great!
The other route I'd explore is re-purposing your content on Linkedin and other places. The best guide/example for this is from Marketing Examples: https://marketingexamples.com/content/sharing
Agreed, I'm going to keep it up with the cold outreach. And big fan of Harry Dry as well, cheers!
Do you have a link for your newsletter?
Yes - link below is to my landing page!
https://www.commissionbreath.co/
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Yeah I think that's the unfortunate reality lol. I'm just impatient. I think if I can do what I did in August for another 6-12 months then I will have a nice little side hustle on my hands so I'll keep at it!
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This^
Cheers Dinesh - thanks for providing these!
Thank you Dinesh 🙂
Thankyou, I've just added it to my list