Growth Stories: James Clear And Nick Wignall
We love a good email list growth story. Here are 2 we came across last week:
1. James Clear
Learn how James Clear attracted over 1 million readers from this issue of Create and Sell. Tips include “write emails that legitimately help people” and “send them out regularly.”
2. Nick Wignall
Nick Wignall just passed 30,000 subscribers after 5 years on his “side-project.” His Twitter thread shares how he did it and what his goals are moving forward.
How Did Newsletters Change This Year?
This episode of the Media Voices podcast (53 minutes) explores newsletter strategies and the way they evolved in the past year. They discuss
Should You Start A Newsletter?
If you’re on the fence about starting your own newsletter, this 41-minute YouTube video with Josh Spector and Dylan Redekop could help to answer your questions (plus explain why not to start a newsletter, how to grow quickly, pricing information for newsletter ads, and more).
Discovered via For the Interested.
In 2015, Daniella Pierson sent out her first issue of The Newsette, a daily newsletter for women “designed to bring the experience of a magazine to email” to 8 people. Now, she sends to over 500,000 people and has made $220 million. Mar Manrique documents her story in this article.
Discovered via Inbox Reads.
Newsletter Insights From “Not A Newsletter”
This month‘s edition of “Not a Newsletter” by Dan Oshinsky is once again full of helpful links, tips, and news on all things newsletters. He includes:
Read the full October Google Doc here.
To Personalize Or Not To Personalize…
Is personalizing your newsletter worth it? In this case, personalization = “tweaking newsletters to serve readers’ specific interests and behaviors,” at least in This Digiday article.
Sara Guaglione reports that reviews of the tactic by publications like NYT, The Washington Post, The Telegraph, etc., are mixed.
There seem to be 2 sides:
As with most personalization tactics, I think knowing your audience and understanding what they want is key.
Discovered via The Rebooting.
Is Your Newsletter Doing Its Job?
“You need to assign a job to every piece of content you create.”
This Tweet (includes a 1-minute video) by Jay Clouse encourages publishing with purpose. So, quick reminder: make sure to ask “what is my newsletter’s job and is it doing it?” every so often.
The likely answer: It’s trust-building, with a pinch of product/service education. And it’s also likely it’s not working if your content is more than 10% promotional. Earn the right to be promotional by including 90% (actually valuable) editorial content.
Discovered via For the Interested.
Meta’s Newsletter Platform Is Calling It Quits (Early Next Year)
After just 18 months, Meta is shutting down its newsletter platform Bulletin. Looks like they’re restrategizing to focus on short-form video content. Andrew Hutchinson with Social Media Today takes a look.
Discovered via Social Media Today.
Plan Content Like A Showrunner
Robert Rose encourages content strategists to stop fruitless brainstorming sessions and instead approach their content marketing strategy like a TV showrunner: create an overarching story that unfolds over time.
Newsletter creator Josh Spector For the Interested sat down with Daniel Murray on The Marketing Millenials podcast and discussed:
Listen to the podcast (38 minutes) and/or check out the notes here.
