How I got 100 newsletter subscribers in 25 days 📈
For the past 25 days I've been building a newsletter called Unheard Roots where I tell the stories of world-changing startups and share lessons from their journeys.
For the record, I've never tried growing a newsletter before this attempt.
My plan to grow Unheard Roots was to try as many different strategies as possible.
I tried:
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Running cold DM campaigns on Twitter
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Making promotional posts on Reddit, Indie Hackers, Quora, and Hacker News
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Making promotional comments on Twitter
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Posting about it Unheard Roots in Slack groups
What worked best?
Running cold DM campaigns on Twitter.
My first campaign attempts had a 0% response rate with 0% conversion rate lol.
But my luck eventually turned.
"I know you follow X and I know this is a little random but I'm assuming you're interested in startups.
I'm building a newsletter called Unheard Roots where I tell the stories of startups that have changed our lives (i.e youtube, etc). Would you like a link?"
This was the script that ended up converting.
I sent it to the followers of major VC firms & Accelerator like Y-Combinator, A16Z, Sequoia, Techstars, etc.
I've sent over 1000~ DMs at this point.
I now wake up with 20+ DMs asking to check the newsletter out.
That's AWESOME! I've been struggling to find a way to promote a newsletter for my project Eurotripr.com but have ZERO success and only 17 subscribers. I really was just relying on a on-site signup form and trying to draw traffic with traveler interviews and blog posts.
Not working at all.
I have started a twitter campaign of introducing myself to Europe travelers. Nothin aggressive, just an intro and that i like their content. I was thinking after a few interactions asking them to do an interview for my site and hoping more people would then sign up for my newsletter when I promote the interview.
But I love this strategy.
Question: did you legit manually send those 1000+ DMs or was there a tool you used? I have no issues with the manual grind, but if there is a tool I don't know about that can help I'd love to hear about it.
Thanks for this post!!
Hi Neo this is Cameron from the future. I found this post searching for poeple that grow newsletter through cold dm. I was wondering if you still use this strategy today?
I would love a breakdown into how the DM process is converting. Would love to chat offline Twitter: @weedlechamp
Incredible idea
That's really great
That's incredible. Do you include a link to the opt-in page in your DMs or do you send the script first and follow-up with a link if someone is interested?
🧢🎩🎓👒🧢
Why do you ask, "Would you like a link?" rather than linking them to your newsletter in the initial DM?
If I attach a link Twitter marks it as spam and likely will suspend or ban my account.
Ahh TIL. That's good to know.