šŖ How to scale your startup with a newsletter š
Frontdoor Finds - Issue 7
William Mathews & Frontdoor
March 05, 2023
As builders, we spend a lot of time consuming knowledge on the web. At Frontdoor, we've built a personal librarian for the internet to help. Each week we pick a topic, and ask Frontdoor to curate 3 tweets, 2 articles and 1 book. Here's what we've dug up....
3ļøā£ Tweets
1/ Julian Shapiro's best practices
This tweet from a former YC alum and known investors is a really good high-level introduction to best practices when starting a newsletter
2/ Nathan Baugh's step-by-step process
Nathan grew his newsletter, World Builders, to 50K subscribers in record time. This is a great thread explaining the step-by-step framework he used to grow his newsletter, without any paid ads.
š¤Ā Frontdoor Summary: Nathan optimised for engagement and put out consistent, high quality newsletters. To scale without paid ads, he focused on email platform growth and social audience growth by nailing his value proposition and call-to-action. Nathan uses Beehiiv, which drives hundreds of quality subscribers per week through its recommendation engine, Twitter integration, and referral program.
3/ Shaan Puri's private newsletter strategy
A little off topic, but this was too good not to include. This details how Shaan Puri, used a private newsletter to grow his personal brand with Twitch executives when his company got acquired.
š¤Ā Frontdoor Summary: Shaan Puri shares his 1-2-3 email strategy where he sends an email every Sunday to his close advisors and mentors. He opted everyone on the exec team in automatically, but later gave them the option to unsubscribe. 75% replied to stay on. The strategy works because it's easy, scales well, and there's no obligation for recipients to read or reply. However, it also means that if you're boring, it will show.
2ļøā£ Articles
As new users of Beehiiv, we have found the articles they have put out to help newsletters really helpful. Here are two of the best.
1/ Beehiiv's strategies to reach 1M readers
This article serves as a high-quality, general overview of a handful of easy to implement strategies you can use to scale a newsletter to a meaningful size.
š¤ Frontdoor Summary: To create a successful newsletter, start by defining your niche and focusing on an area where you can share your unique experience. Make your content so compelling that readers will have FOMO if they don't open it.
Leverage referral programs to encourage subscribers to share your newsletter with others, and partner with similar creators to build relationships and expand your reach.
Build a writing habit by reading and consuming content, then personalise your newsletter using subscriber data.
Optimize your newsletter for mobile devices to increase accessibility, and continuously test and iterate your strategy to find what works best.
2/ Beehiiv's Twitter tactics
One of the key takeaways from researching this has been that newsletters are hard to grow in isolation. A social media presence will act as a multiplier to newsletter growth. Beehiiv has a great article on how to scale your newsletter through Twitter.
š¤Ā Frontdoor Summary: To grow your newsletter on Twitter, there are five steps Beehiiv recommends. Firstly, optimise your bio by putting a link to your newsletter blog. Secondly, use threads as a funnel for your newsletter, connecting it to the bigger narrative. Thirdly, engage in relevant conversations with other writers in your niche and drop at least 6 comments a day. Fourthly, launch a free giveaway that aligns with your niche to attract a high-affinity audience. Finally, connect with content creators in a similar niche and provide value first before asking for feedback or sharing.
1ļøā£ Book
The book I read to find out about how to scale a startup with a newsletter was "how a simple newsletter can transform your business", by David Hieatt. It tells the story of how he turned around an entire e-commerce business using just an email newsletter.
It also provides a huge amount of value in the frameworks included for starting and scaling your own newsletter. There is far too much to cover in this format, so here's the 3 bits that stuck out most:
1/ The Summary :
Just before the book concludes, David provides a list of one line lessons from the book. Seems like the best way to give a broad overview of the information in the book.
2/ The Checklist Ritual
A lot of people struggle with attention to detail in the modern age, so a quantifiable list of stuff to check before shipping your newsletter is a resource that can be very valuable. (I know I find it to be!)
3/ How to Write a Hook
If this is the one takeaway you get from this newsletter, this is it.
A great hook in your subject line can make or break a newsletter. Theres loads of conflicting advice about how to write a great subject line, but here is some quantitative details you can use to inform your decisions:
According to Mailchimp, the "sweetspot" for subject lines is between 28 and 39 characters,
The more emotional response you get from a subject line the higher the "EMV" number is, and the higher the open rate will be
You can assess the "EMV" of your subject line using this toolĀ
Key Takeaways:
1ļøā£ Newsletters don't grow well in isolation- create social media content aswell.
2ļøā£ Your subject line is the most important line in your newsletter. Get it right or people won't even open it
3ļøā£ AB test obsessively. Everything in your newsletter can be tested, iterated and improved
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