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Results from Testing Twitter Ad vs. Organic Giveaway for Growing Newsletter Subscribers

To help grow subscribers and audience as well as learn a little about what works, I conducted a test this week on Twitter comparing:

  • $100 TisBest Charity Gift Card giveaway on GivingTuesday
  • $100 Paid targeted Twitter ad

The Winner:

  • Paid targeted ads gave a lower cost per subscriber.
  • Charity Gift Card promo had a better subscriber/impression rate but because my audience is small, it didn't get enough impressions to beat the ads and overcome the $100 expense.

Takeaways:

  • Compared to my current rate of organic subscribers, Paid tactics increased daily subscribers by 4x (giveaway) - 7x (paid ad)
  • If I had had a large enough engaged Twitter following (>2K) the gift card promo would result in cheaper cost per subscriber. My following was too small and got 4X less the number of impressions as the Twitter Ad.
  • I DM'd and personally asked people to retweet the TisBest giveaway, and almost all of them did. Without that personal ask, the results would have been half of what it was. That makes it tough to scale, but was necessary because I had such a small number of followers (<1k).
  • The charity gift card produced goodwill that will have a halo effect I will not be able to measure. Everyone felt great about putting the money to a good cause, as did I.
  • Twitter Ads provided enough volume of impressions that the cost/subscriber was 72% BETTER than the gift card giveaway.
  • Don't run ads on CyberMonday! Too much competition & bidding is too expensive. Cost per click was ~40% more expensive than a regular day and cost per subscriber was 3X higher. I made the mistake of trying my first Twitter ad test on CyberMonday (because I forgot!). Reran on "Regular" day and results were much better.
  • Best ad performed had a $3/subscriber. I could definitely get the $3/subscriber down to about $1/subscriber through testing creative & audiences. You need to know your lifetime value of a subscriber to know what cost/subscriber you are willing to incur.

I hope you can use some of what I learned to apply to your own newsletter growth tactics. I am going to keep an eye on open rates and unsubscribe rates from the people I gained using these tactics v. organic to make sure they don't suffer.

I would love to know what others have experienced with Twitter paid Ads & giveaway promotions.

  1. 2

    My general experience in social media advertising is this -

    Paid digital advertising

    Transcription for the above image.

    That said, social media advertising is beneficial when the expected conversion is within the platform i.e. Likes, Retweets, Shares, CTA to Messenger; But getting conversions outside the platform happens only when the target group can be absolutely nailed and that too usually with high CAC/Budget.

    I've had success with giveaway promotions in my game before, i.e. for high scores and So I think it depends upon the product and what's on offer.

  2. 2

    One important question in my opinion: Will a giveaway generate subscribers who are into what you are doing or will it generate subscribers who only like giveaways?

    1. 2

      Excellent point. Which is exactly why part of the test is to watch the open rates & unsubscribe rates.

      Also, I think the charity gift card giveaway probably attracts less of the people who sign up for "free apple watch" and doesn't care about the content, and maybe more of an incentive to get them to take action on content they are already interested in.

      Don't know for sure. We'll see how it plays out.

  3. 1

    This is great, thank you for sharing and including details! Sounds like your cost per subscriber sounds pretty great and you could just be off to the races with this thing. Are you going to scale up your ads?

    1. 1

      Next thing is to figure out the lifetime value of a subscriber so I know what my target cost/subscribe should be. I really have no idea what a good cost/subscriber is in the newsletter world and I presume the answer is "it depends". So I need to model how to monetize, which will help determine the value of a subscriber. That is critical before I scale up beyond little tests. That is up next!

      1. 2

        I'd just say "whatever margin lets you have a healthy business." That LTV has to pay for hosting, software services, professional services, whatever else you're going to need. If you can acquire a customer for $3 and they're paying $10 for the first month, you've already got a nice healthy margin even before you make a bet that they'll stick around and not churn.

        Looking forward to seeing where you go next. Followed!

        1. 1

          Ditto! Thanks so much!

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