I bought & rebranded an email newsletter

I bought & rebranded an email newsletter

| My history with buying & rebranding |
This actually isn’t my first rodeo when it comes to buying & rebranding businesses.

Back in 2017, I bought a struggling coffee & frozen yogurt shop (remember when fro-yo was a thing?).

I planned and built out a new brand for the company, changing the name and logo, dropping the frozen yogurt, focusing on a premium coffee experience, and throwing a launch party.

It was a ton of grueling work, but a total blast.

After exiting that business, I took a gig at a digital marketing agency where I created branding for dozens of businesses over several years.

Okay, enough backstory. Now, on to the meat.

| Buying marketing on monday |
I’ve been searching for businesses or digital products to acquire since the beginning of the year (2024) – scouring marketplaces, newsletters, webinars, etc. Waiting in the shadows for my opportunity to pounce.

Then, I saw an email newsletter for sale: marketing on monday.

It aligned on two axes that are very much in my wheelhouse: email marketing / written content, and a focus on marketing.

Almost perfect.

The only downside was that it had zero revenue so far. Yikes.

The price would be a pill I could swallow if it had revenue, but I knew I’d have to build that revenue engine from the ground up. So, I used this as a bargaining chip in negotiations.

The seller and I agreed on a price (a good deal in the end), and I was off to the races.

| Brand & product research |
It’s tempting to jump right into a new acquisition and change up everything, but that can shock the system and tank the business.

So, I focused on preliminary research: surveying the audience (and yes, incentivizing them with Amazon gift cards).

I gathered quantitative and qualitative data on what the audience liked and disliked about the brand and product. What they wanted more and less of. How passionate about the product they are. And how long they’ve been a subscriber.

Armed with this data (plus some analysis with my good buddy ChatGPT), I made a plan to:
Land
Expand
Rebrand

The newsletter was primarily faceless and had little affinity for the actual branding – very basic with no esoteric language, etc.

But, how do I create this ingenué?

Step 1
I introduced myself as the writer and began to put my name and face in the newsletter and the reply-to field, so the audience would learn who I am.

Step 2
As I created the idea for the new brand (marketer gems), I began to seed my newsletters with esoteric language (like “hidden gems”) and added more editorialization to my newsletters, which allowed me to include more personality and tone of voice.

Step 3
The new brand couldn’t be a severe departure, but had to be a “translation” of the previous branding. So, I used a similar logo idea (a single large “emoji”-type icon) and color palette (kept the yellow, and added a blue) and kept the font stylization of using all lower-case.

| Launching the new brand |
The promised day finally came.

I teased it to my audience – they knew something was coming.

I already had my new domain, new platform, logos and brand identity, socials, etc.

The time came to make the transition – not a “switch” to be flipped. A cold start from a brand new domain sending tons of emails would be devastating, so I used an email domain warmup service to start ramping up sends and receives from the new domain as soon as I registered it.

I imported all my old content into the new platform so it wasn’t a blank canvas, but to move my entire email list (over 20,000) to the new platform would require time.

In the usual weekly content, I told my audience to expect to be receiving emails from @marketergems.com very soon. I exported my most engaged 1,500 subscribers and sent them a welcome email from the new domain.

I’m doing this every few days, slowly migrating the list over while operating newsletters from both domains at the same time. Welcome emails are automated, so as soon as a new batch comes in, they are welcomed with a short email.

Subscribers that sign up organically receive a “confirmation” email prompting them to reply with a single word to help send positive signals to the email gods.

| Expanding the new brand |
I’ve had many content/collaboration/partnership ideas but I told myself to wait until the new brand is launched to act on them. I don’t want to build up brand name awareness only to toss it into the gutter weeks later.

Additionally, I’ve started gathering sponsors to actually get *some revenue, but with a steep discount so that I can make some contacts.

And lastly, I love building products. So, I’m using this newsletter not only as a media outlet, but also a platform for me to launch new ventures with a built-in audience. I’ve still got many subscribers to migrate over but crossing my fingers that there aren’t too many unsubs! 🤞