Should you ask newsletter subscribers if they own a business?

Yes. Somewhere between 15% and 20% of my local subscribers say yes when the signup survey asks if they own or run a business, and probably more in some areas. Trenton Hughes told me on my podcast that 16% of his list are business owners. That's your advertiser prospect list, and they handed it to you.

The math adds up fast. About 45% of my subscribers fill out the survey, so I get that data on roughly half of everyone. At 1,000 subscribers you'll have 100 to 150 people who told you they own a business.

Why is it such a good question?

1. You get a segment. Everyone who says yes can get emails about advertising, partnerships or coming on a local podcast.
2. It advertises your ads. The people who say no still saw a question implying businesses buy space with you.
3. It feeds offers. If your post-signup page shows offers, business owners can see an advertising offer while everyone else sees something else.

In my 2025 solo episode I called it a killer question. I still think so. The hardest thing for most local newsletter people is getting a business interested at all. This puts the idea in front of them, inbound.

Why doesn't a plain yes/no question produce advertisers?

Because when they click yes, nothing happens. My old survey, like most, just asked "are you a business owner?" Yes or no. That tells you who owns a business. It doesn't tell you who wants to advertise.

The fix is a follow-up card that only shows up after a yes: "We have 37,000 readers in Vegas. Do you want us to feature you? Want our media kit?" If they say yes, the system emails them the media kit automatically. You pre-write that email once and it just goes.

"We've gotten six or seven of these in the last week, you know, people to say yes to this. Before we were getting zero."

Keep the ask low pressure. The card offers a passive email with information, not a sales call. Nobody wants to say yes and then get hard-sold on the phone, so promise the media kit and nothing scarier.

Should it be yes/no or an open text field?

I chose yes/no on purpose. Nobody has to type anything, and the answer becomes a clean segment in Beehiiv I can target later. I'll admit Beehiiv's standard survey is limited, and some of my choices came from those limits. With a fully custom form I might decide differently.

Louis Nicholls of SparkLoop suggested a different approach on my podcast. He suggested asking whether someone is involved in a local business or project and what it is, so the question offers clear value to the reader, and said AI enrichment can fill in role and company details from the name. Worth considering if your tool can handle it.

My own custom survey now uses conditional logic. If the first answer is owner rather than manager or employee, the rest of the survey asks ownership questions. It also works well on a phone, which matters because that's where most people subscribe.

What do you send business owners?

Start with something like this:

Hey, we hope you're loving the newsletter.
We noticed you own a local business.
Would you be interested in advertising with us,
or coming on our local podcast?

A few other ways to use the segment:

• Early guests. At 1,000 subscribers, email just those 100 or so owners: thanks for joining early, I'd love to feature you on my podcast for free, and I'll put it in the newsletter and on the website. That's your guest list and your warm sales list in one email.
• Your own services. If you're also a business broker, for example, tell owners you're happy to do a free consulting call if they ever want to sell.
• A monthly business-owner email. Some operators send one only to owners: what last month's advertisers got, plus a couple of unsold ad slots at a discount for the first people to reply. I'm not doing it myself because I don't have the capacity, and it takes extra effort.

On my podcast I suggested that monthly email to a newsletter consultant too. Show what you did that month, like your impressions and reach, and share things you wouldn't send the regular list. He agreed, and said once a month makes them feel part of the community.

Survey answers can also sell sponsors on their own. Run a one-question poll at the top of the newsletter on something a sponsor cares about, like bugs in Austin. Then go to a pest control company and show them how many readers answered. Beehiiv also lets you target follow-up surveys by earlier answers. Justin Moore told me on my podcast that psychographic data, like interest in skincare, interests sponsors more than plain demographics.

Can the business-owner answer pay for growth?

Maybe. Here's the math I walk publishers through. Say 15% of new subscribers are business owners. Show them a post-signup offer like "first ad 50% off this month," a $100 or $200 purchase. You only need about 1% of people to take it to cover your acquisition cost. I wouldn't promise it, but that's the logic.

In a B2B newsletter, it goes further. For the insurance newsletter I'm launching, nearly every survey question is a lead question: do you want to buy or sell an agency, do you buy leads, how much do you spend on them a month, are you hiring?

Why add it now?

Because you can't add it later for the people already on your list. My older brands don't have it. Beehiiv's built-in survey wouldn't let me edit a survey after I created it, and I hadn't thought to ask early on because I didn't know what I was doing yet.

If you're building a survey today, put it in. Word it plainly, "Do you own or help run a local business?", and keep the follow-up to one or two clicks so it doesn't slow down everyone else.