Newsletter growth

Every answer 36 answers

• Are cheap newsletter subscribers lower quality?

  In my experience, yes. The faster and cheaper a list grows on Meta, the worse it opens. In my six-market test, the fastest grower opened around 28% to 30% while the slowest growers opened best. Cheap subscribers can still be worth it: remove non-openers within a month and count that in your real cost per subscriber.

• Can I use my own subscribe page and still send newsletters with Beehiiv?

  Yes. I treat Beehiiv as the email-sending engine only. Ad traffic goes to a subscribe page I control, the survey and offers run there, and the subscriber and their answers get pushed into Beehiiv by API. Beehiiv still sends the welcome email and every issue. The catch: if your page breaks, the whole funnel breaks, so test it end to end.

• Can a 'best of' contest grow a local newsletter list?

  Yes, once your brand is established. Make people subscribe to vote, and every nominated barber shop and restaurant pushes its own customers to your site so they can vote for it. The businesses do the promotion and you collect the emails. Run it before people trust your brand and it falls flat.

• Can a signup survey add subscribers to a second newsletter?

  Yes. Put one yes-or-no question at the end of your post-signup survey: want our other newsletter too? Every yes gets pushed to the second list. When I moved this offer out of a pop-up and into the survey, survey fill-out went from about 35-40% to about 70%, and roughly 15-20% still say yes.

• Can you change newsletter signup survey questions after launch?

  With your own survey tool, yes. Get it as right as you can at launch, then change it as you learn. A new question just has fewer answers on file, because earlier subscribers never saw it. Beehiiv's built-in survey was the problem for me: editing it effectively meant starting a new survey, so plan before you launch.

• Do Meta ads for a newsletter also grow your Instagram followers?

  Yes, if you send new subscribers to your Instagram page after the survey. Roughly 30% to 40% of them follow. One brand I grow has about 6,000 Instagram followers with zero posts, from 12,000 newsletter subscribers in a year. One ad dollar buys a subscriber and a follower.

• Does a registration wall grow a newsletter list faster than a pop-up?

  It can, and the wording matters as much as the wall. Hearst's SFGATE newsroom swapped a polite 'sign up for free' article message for the headline THIS IS NOT A PAYWALL and reportedly converted 10x their normal newsletter pop-ups. Same offer, different words. A vendor I met claims required walls beat optional pop-ups 2x to 7x.

• Does asking for a zip code hurt newsletter signup survey completion?

  Not in my experience. A public nonprofit newsroom made a typed, required zip code its first question and still saw about 75% to 80% of new subscribers finish the whole survey. Location first also tells people the newsletter is truly local. Put it on page one so you keep it even if they quit later.

• How do I get new subscribers to open and reply to my welcome email?

  Send it within minutes of signup, put the city name early in the subject line, and ask for a reply that takes no thought. Asking "what's your favorite restaurant?" got us very little. Asking people to just reply "yes" brought a flood. A bold reply line wrapped in stars took us from one reply a week to one to three a day.

• How do I launch a niche newsletter with an industry influencer?

  Find the biggest influencer in a lucrative niche and split the business. In the deal I'd pitch, I take 60% and run the back end and the Meta ads; they take 40%, give me ideas once a week and talk about it publicly. The back end took me about two days. The content is the part nobody can skip.

• How do I send different emails to different groups of newsletter subscribers?

  Ask at signup, store every answer as a tag or field in your email platform, then send each group its own welcome, offer or follow-up. A homeowner can get a lawn-care offer on day 17; a reader who asked for restaurant deals gets restaurant deals. None of it works unless the survey answers live where you send email.

• How do I turn Instagram followers into newsletter subscribers with ManyChat?

  Set ManyChat (about $15 a month) to DM every new follower: thanks for following, we also have a free local newsletter, subscribe here. Reported signup rates run from about 10% to 50%. Collecting the email inside the DM converts best, but sending a link gets them into your survey. Pair it with comment-to-enter giveaways.

• How do you grow a local newsletter without paid ads?

  Mostly with trades and word of mouth: post in local groups you own or buy into, put one newsletter link everywhere you have followers, trade free promotion for outcome-based help from partners, and auto-DM Instagram followers. Free channels got me a couple hundred subscribers at launch. Meta ads are still my proven engine.

• How do you run a newsletter giveaway that actually gets results?

  Make the prize big enough to excite people, $500 to $1,000 in value, and package it as an experience people can picture. Sponsors often donate it for promotion, using open inventory or gift cards that cost them a fraction of face value. Put $50 to $200 of Meta ads behind it, and give non-winners a discount so the sponsor gets leads.

• How fast should a new local newsletter get to 10,000 subscribers?

  My target is 10,000 in the first three to six months. That's where a local newsletter looks legit and gets more local impressions than almost anyone. At about 50 cents a subscriber on Meta, that's roughly $5,000 in ads. Reach 5,000, start selling ads, and put that revenue back into growth.

• How long can you run ads for a new newsletter before sending the first issue?

  About three weeks. Start ads with a welcome email, send short "we're getting ready" notes at day 7 and day 14, and publish the first real issue around day 21, ideally to 1,000 or more subscribers. When I waited eight weeks on one brand, its open rate started 10 to 15 points below my other launches.

• How many custom fields should a newsletter use in Beehiiv for survey answers?

  Keep it to about 10 to 12 custom fields per brand. Map survey answers to the fields you already have from earlier surveys, and only create a new field when a question is genuinely new. Use custom fields, not tags, for answers like zip code and interests. Automate the mapping so nobody has to configure it by hand.

• How many questions should a newsletter signup survey have?

  Six to eight is what I recommend. My current survey asks about eight and gets about 70% completion, and my older 11-question version still got 50% or more. Page clicks, long option lists and question order cause more drop-off than question count. Put the easy and valuable questions first, and keep only ones you'll use.

• Should I remove unengaged subscribers from my newsletter list?

  Remove the people who have never opened, after warning them first. I used to be against purging, because local advertisers ask about list size, not open rate. But inbox providers read low engagement as spam, so dead weight can hide you from your real readers. Send a 'click here or we'll remove you' email, then cut.

• Should I use Beehiiv's built-in survey or build my own signup survey?

  I moved off Beehiiv's built-in survey. With it my brands averaged roughly 40% to 50% completion. With my own one-question-per-page survey they average 65% to 75%. The built-in one shows a long form and, in my experience, wouldn't let me edit questions after launch. A free Google Form placed right after subscribe is a fine cheap start.

• Should a YouTuber or creator start a newsletter?

  Yes. You don't control when Instagram or YouTube shows your stuff, but a newsletter lands in the inbox. If you can only start two channels, pick short-form video and a newsletter. Put a free-newsletter call to action at the top of every video description and in the first comment, then sell your own products and sponsors to that list.

• Should a local newsletter send one welcome email or a welcome sequence?

  A short sequence beats one email. With a single welcome, a weekly reader can go eight or nine days without hearing from you and forget who you are. Aim for three or four emails in the first week. Start with a short welcome that asks for a one-word reply like "yes"; that change got me far more replies than asking a question.

• Should a local newsletter use Substack or Beehiiv?

  Beehiiv, if you're building a business. You control onboarding, you get a signup survey and your own first-party data, you keep the fees you charge, and nobody emails your readers on your behalf. Substack wins only on being free, easy and discoverable, which suits a marketing newsletter that exists to get found.

• Should you ask for a phone number when people subscribe to a newsletter?

  You can, and a lot of people will give it: anywhere from about 15% to over 50% of new subscribers, depending on the flow. But collecting numbers is easy and using them is not. Texting carries TCPA liability, so I stopped asking until I could store real proof of consent. I'm not a lawyer.

• Should you ask newsletter subscribers if they own a business?

  Yes. Usually 15% to 20% of my local subscribers say they own a business, and that segment is your advertiser prospect list. Don't stop at yes or no, though. Show owners a follow-up card offering a feature or your media kit. With that card I went from zero raised hands to six or seven a week.

• What is a good completion rate for a post-subscribe newsletter survey?

  If the survey sits on the page right after subscribe, 50% or better is normal. Across my locations I see about 55% to 80%, usually 65% to 70%. Around 40% means something in the flow needs fixing. A survey sent by email or linked in the newsletter gets 1% to 3%, so placement matters more than anything else.

• What is a good open rate for a local newsletter?

  Typical email open rates are about 25% if you're lucky, and 30 to 40% is very good. My local newsletters usually run 40 to 55% opens with 3 to 8% click rates, and a good one gets around 50%. Fast, cheap paid growth pulls opens down 5 to 10 points. If a list falls to about 30 to 33%, I send mainly to recent openers.

• What is negative CAC for a newsletter?

  Negative CAC means new subscribers earn back more than they cost to acquire, usually through paid offers shown right after signup. If a local subscriber costs 50 cents on Meta and a lead pays $30, you need 1 in 60 to say yes to grow for free. I wouldn't promise it, but even cutting acquisition cost in half is huge.

• What questions should a local newsletter ask new subscribers?

  Start with location, then ask things you can segment or sell on: which local deals they want, age, gender, own or rent, kids, pets, business owner, real estate plans, income, optional phone. Put write-ins last. Drop anything you can't act on, like a favorite local restaurant question. You only get one shot, so plan first.

• What should I do when my newsletter open rate drops to about 30%?

  Switch to sending mainly to recent openers. My rule is that any newsletter at or below a 30% to 33% open rate should send primarily to people who've opened recently, and I had my team audit every brand against that line. Low engagement tells inbox providers you might be spam, which pushes you further down.

• What should a newsletter subscribe page look like?

  Stupidly basic, on purpose. Brand name, the word free, one sentence on what they get, an email field and a Subscribe button. No name field, no navigation, no links, no newsletter picker, no 'let me read it first' button. When I removed that one escape link from my Beehiiv page, my cost per subscriber dropped in half.

• What survey questions should a newsroom ask new newsletter subscribers?

  Only ask what you'll act on. For a newsroom that usually means zip code first, business owner, donate yes, maybe or no, interest in events, and maybe a second newsletter or daily digest option. Four or five questions is plenty. Skip 'what should we cover' unless you'll actually change coverage based on it.

• When is the best time to survey a new newsletter subscriber?

  Right after they hit subscribe, on the very next page. People are roughly five times more engaged in that moment than they will ever be again. My surveys placed there get 50% or more completion, and one early list hit 87%. The same survey linked in a welcome email gets about 2%, and you can't go back for that data later.

• Where should a newsletter send people right after they subscribe?

  Never to a dead-end 'thanks, watch your inbox' page. My flow is subscribe, survey, then the brand's Instagram page, which picks up a follow from about one in three people. If you have a paid plan or take donations, send them there instead. With no survey, at minimum use a custom, human thank-you page.

• Why do people abandon a newsletter signup survey?

  Usually it's friction you added, not the survey itself: too many answer options on one question, two dropdowns on one page, too many Next clicks, a long form shown all at once, or a new pop-up in the flow. Fix those, save partial answers so drop-offs still count, and watch completion after every change.

• Why push social media followers to a newsletter instead of a story link?

  Because a newsletter gives you permission to reach someone every issue, and a link gets you one read. On social, an algorithm decides who sees you: 100,000 followers can mean 600 views. Email reaches everyone who asked. Use social for discovery, push people to the signup, then put your stories, asks and offers inside the newsletter.