Scrappy MarTech Newsletter

I just published the 20th issue of Scrappy MarTech newsletter! The issue is a collection of 20 favorite and hidden gem articles since the beginning of the newsletter launch.

Wins:

• 239 subscribers and 45% open rate.
• met some amazing people in communities like twitter, indie hackers, swipefiles, and newsletter crew.
• champion indie martech tools every week to share with growth marketers

Challenges:

• growth is still linear and slow
• looking for a way to monetize
• newsletter articles might be getting too long & detailed. am I losing my audience as a result? not sure.

Have you ever had an irrational fear that held you back?

I did. I know how important video is in growth marketing and building an audience for Scrappy MarTech newsletter - yet for some reason, I’ve been irrationally avoiding taking the plunge.

If you have ever avoided creating something because you were a little uncomfortable, let me share with you the 5 things you can do to trick yourself into taking the plunge.

1. Publicly take on a dare / build in public
2. Don't reinvent the wheel
3. Plan a blooper reel
4. Have fun with family & friends
5. Don't let perfect be the enemy of "good enough & done"

I'm so relieved to have launched the Scrappy MarTech YouTube channel. It's not perfect and there are things I will do better moving forward, but it broke down the irrational barrier I had about making videos. Whew!

My dad is an 80-year-old indie hacker, entrepreneur, and retired software engineer. He wanted to know how his daughter's Scrappy MarTech newsletter project was going, so I sent him the latest issue. With love in his heart and pride in his voice, he told me how much he learned from reading it. And without telling me, he subscribed. How sweet is that?

1. My dad is awesome. 😭
2. Always be learning. 🎓

What a surprise! After publishing 11 weekly issues of Scrappy MarTech I received a message from @clickpop wanting to support the growth of this newsletter.

I have a little less than 200 subscribers, ~50% open rate, ~15% click through rate. I wasn't planning on monetizing until I had at least 500 subscribers. How great for someone in the community to reach out and offer support.

AWeber is my email marketing service, and I love that they are so supportive of entrepreneurs and small business. They are active in communities for newsletters, startups, and entrepreneurs. Over the past few months, I have worked with their product team to provide input on new features and you can tell they care about their customer's success.

I am so delighted that they are my first sponsor.

After submitting two issues of Scrappy MarTech newsletter to Mereku this week, one received the most upvotes ⬆️ one was tagged as "Hot" 🔥.

Mereku is a newsletter discovery platform for quality newsletter content that is insightful, personal, and diverse. Readers upvote content worth reading. Writers get exposure and subscribers.

To help grow audience & subscribers as well as put some good into the world on GivingTuesday, I did a $100 TisBest Gift Card giveaway on Twitter.

The $100 charity gift card was selected from randomly from anyone who retweeted a message or subscribed to Scrappy MarTech.

The feedback from this promotion was very positive. The click thru rate & subscriber rate was 35% higher than a paid Twitter ad. It helped increase daily subscribers by 4x compared to a normal day.

On the downside, I didn't have enough Twitter followers or reach to really make this tactic a success in significantly increasing audience or subscribers. Running the numbers, I would need 2K followers (or twice as many as I currently have) to make this tactic perform better than a paid Twitter Ad.

But I consider this win. There is a nonprofit cause that is $100 better off, and the good feeling it gave the winner and myself was totally worth it.

To accelerate understanding if there is a demand for Scrappy MarTech newsletter, I tested a small ad run on Twitter. I learned a lot, but not what I thought I would learn.

First, I forgot it was CyberMonday. There was too much competition & bidding was too expensive. When I reran the test on a "regular day", it turns out the cost per click was 40% more expensive and the cost per subscriber was 3X higher on CyberMonday than a "regular" day.

Second, I want to see which target audience Scrappy MarTech had better traction with. I tested 5 audience segments: Indie Makers, MarTech, Growth Marketers, MarTech Apps, General Marketers. I had a very small budget but enough to be sure that the results were significant. The problem I ran into was the Twitter Ads algorithm decided very early from the first 2-3 clicks which audience to over-serve the ad to, leaving the others behind. Key takeaway - don't let Twitter take control. Break up the audience (or creative) to test within its own budget to ensure it gets its fair share & significant data to compare.

After 4 weeks and 4 issues published of Scrappy MarTech for Growth Marketers, the milestone of 100 subscribers has been achieved.

This has been done through organic growth on Twitter and with help from my community, particularly @coreyhaines SwipeFiles marketing & entrepreneur community and with @Janel platform Newsletter OS.

Community Rocks! 🎸

After 3 published issues, 3 weeks, and 75 new subscribers, I got my first unsubscribe to the Scrappy MarTech Newsletter.

It was one day after publishing the third issue "Stick the Landing" on the topic of Landing Pages. Included in the issue:

• MarTech Hunt on the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer
• How to A/B test a Landing Page
• Checklist on High Converting Landing Pages

It was bound to happen at some point. I will try not to be sad and remember "If you try to be everything to everyone, you will be nothing to anyone."

Google Analytics, with over 1M followers, gave me some love and tweeted about me and the Scrappy MarTech newsletter.

So excited! I sat there and waited for the subscribers to roll in. Or at least the followers.

And I waited...and waited...and nothing.

Final tally. 3 new followers. 0 new subscribers.

As a comparison, previously that week, I doubled my subscribers when a member of a close knit marketing community with 1K followers tweeted about my newsletter.

Takeaways:

• The twitter algorithm is a black box, and just because someone has 1M followers, doesn't mean all followers will see a tweet.
• Smaller knit communities trust each other's tweets and will take action at a higher rate
• Individuals > brands
• Emotionally, it was so exciting to see my name tweeted by Google. But I can't run a business on the thrills alone. It didn't result in conversions.