Mini-reflection on using Sparkloop for my newsletter

Hi friends! I'm the author of Changeletter, a 3-minute actionable climate newsletter from Soapbox Project. We take a monthly topic like fast fashion, food waste, or fracking and break it down in bite-sized weekly modules. (And no, not all our topics start with F.)

The goal of my startup, Soapbox Project, is to make it reeeeeeaaaally easy for busy people to take action on causes they care about. We want to provide anyone, anywhere in the world, action plans that work for them.

Step 1: free actionable climate newsletter.

Changeletter has 1,100+ subscribers so far after launching almost exactly 1 year ago. One of my greatest challenges has been spreading the word. People get really excited about my content (at least when I ask for feedback), but it doesn't occur to them to share it online.

Step 1.1: referral program.

I picked Sparkloop (www.sparkloop.app) because I knew its founder through a Newsletter community and after googling around for a bit, I decided I wanted a product with roots in newsletters, not just generic referrals.

It's only been a week, but here's what I've observed + loved so far:

1. Hesitancy about price. I'm paying about the same for Sparkloop as I am for Mailchimp, my ESP.

2. MINUTES after I launched the Sparkloop referral program, I already got 1 person referred! Today is just Day 1, but it made me feel instantly optimistic, potentially that it's worth the cost.

3. Incredible onboarding process. I love the world of no-code and the independence it gives you, but these products and services can still be a pain to set up. I feel that I got my questions answered immediately and got really tactical advice on setting up my newsletter referral program, including lots of stuff I would have never thought about (e.g. making my lowest tier 2 referrals instead of 3).

4. Great supplemental resources. After our onboarding call, I needed to follow up on a few things -- how do I set up my automation email when someone makes their first referral (also something I learned I should do from the call), etc. It was sooo easy to find what I was looking for, including copy-paste-able templates, social sharing links, and more.

5. Easy to reach team. I've been getting all my chats and emails answered within hours!

It's only been a week of using Sparkloop and a day of actually launching it in my newsletter. I'm going to try it out for 3 months -- whether or not I end up keeping it, it's been a really great experience. Thank you Louis!