This story is adapted from the Newsletter Growth Blueprint, a free five-week course that talks through the tactics fast-growing newsletters are using to build a loyal audience. The entire thing has been made free thanks to the team at beehiiv.
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Maybe you’ve built a big audience on a social media platform like LinkedIn. Maybe you’re going on podcasts to share your story and promote your work. Maybe you’re giving talks at small events or big conferences.
Then comes the moment when you try to get that audience to sign up for your newsletter.
The way most people do it is through a super straightforward promotion of the newsletter. They’ll drop a link onto social media or add a line at the end of the podcast: “If you like this, you should sign up for my newsletter!”
That doesn’t drive results — at all.
Social media platforms are really good at making sure that users don’t leave their app. That podcast audience is listening to you while doing something else, like commuting to work. If you’re speaking at a conference, as soon as your talk is over, people are standing up and rushing to the next session.
So how do you convert those audiences into newsletter readers?
The secret is by creating what I call a “middle place.”
Understanding the power of the middle place
Directly pitching your newsletter isn’t quite good enough. You need to find a bridge to move them from one audience over to yours.
The bridge is your middle place.
I’ll give you an example. Imagine you’re listening to a podcast. The host is interviewing an expert in the personal finance space. And at the end, the guest has a few seconds to promote themselves.
But instead of doing the usual thing — “Check out my website and sign up for my newsletter” — they do something a bit different:
“You know, we talked a lot today about money mistakes. But one thing I’ve heard over and over: People don’t want to just scrape by anymore. They want to create the right systems to make enough to retire early. So I created a course to help you do just that. It’s called the 5-Day Early Retirement Roadmap — and it’s completely free. Go sign up here.”
Readers won’t go straight from the podcast to your newsletter. They don’t trust you enough yet. But by promising them something valuable — in this case, a free email course called the 5-Day Early Retirement Roadmap — you’re giving them a clear reason to give you their email address.
So the path to sign-up looks like this:
Podcast appearance → Course → Newsletter.
The course is the middle step in that process — hence, the middle place.
There are a lot of great middle places, but I have two favorites: Courses and lead magnets.
Creating a course
I’ve been a believer in courses almost as long as I’ve been a believer in newsletters. Courses are newsletters that only run for a short period of time. They teach readers a new skill, habit, or lesson over a period of a few days or weeks. These emails are set up as an email automation, kind of like a welcome series. Sign up today, tomorrow, or a year from now, and you’ll get the entire course.
I launched my first course when I worked at BuzzFeed. Our lifestyle team was working on a giant guide to skincare. It had so many good tips, but it was also a bit overwhelming to read through.
So we thought: Why not break that giant guide into smaller, bite-sized newsletters? We called our course the 7-Day Better Skin Challenge. Every day, we sent you a new tip to help you look your best.
The response was overwhelming. More than 25,000 people signed up for the course in the first 72 hours.
Since then, I’ve launched dozens of courses. I’ve learned that when you’re planning a course, you should start with this question: What’s something you can teach someone else? Figure that out, then work to package that into a series of lessons. For instance:
- “I run a newsletter about personal finance, and I can teach someone how to manage their money.” → The 5-Day Money Challenge
- “I run a newsletter that covers my community, and I can guide newcomers to the best stuff to do in the area.” → The 5-Day Live Local Starter Kit
- “I run a newsletter about fitness, and I want to teach someone how to build a daily habit of working out.” → The 5-Day Personal Fitness Kickstarter Plan
Why do these work so well? Because you’re promising readers a specific outcome in a very short period of time, and for free. It’s an irresistibly great offer. (All of the examples above are five-day courses, and that’s often a good starting point for your first course. But if you want to build one that lasts a week or 10 days, or even send an email per week for a few weeks, that’s also OK!)
One other reason I love courses: They’re a great way for readers to get to know you as quickly as possible. It’s a bit like speed dating — you compress that “getting-to-know-you” period into a tiny window of time.
Some of these readers might be skeptical of newsletters. They’re used to signing up and getting something that doesn’t deliver on the promise made on the landing page.
This course proves to them that you’re doing something different.
And at the end of the course, if you’ve taught them well, readers will be ready to learn more from you. Make sure to tell them that they’ll be added to your regular newsletter. They can opt out if they choose, though I’ve found most readers will stick around and engage with the newsletter.
Offer a lead magnet
Another option, one that’s a lot quicker to create than a course: Create a lead magnet.
With a lead magnet, a reader is trading their email address for access to a resource you’ve built. They get that resource, for free, and they can also sign up for your newsletter in the process. What’s great is that you’ve probably already built this resource — you may only need to make a few tweaks to turn it into a lead magnet.
Here’s a great example from They Got Acquired, which shows founders how to sell their business. They covered a series of deals involving newsletters in their newsletter about deals (meta!), and then repackaged that into a lead magnet: a .pdf called the Newsletter Deals Report.
A lead magnet could be pretty much anything:
- Did you give a talk recently at a conference? Offer readers the chance to get your slides.
- Did you create a worksheet for a client? Tell readers that they can sign up to download it.
- Did you record a video teaching a friend something new? Re-promote that and drive newsletter growth in the process.
But the most important thing with either a course or a lead magnet: Deliver on your promise. This is your chance to make a great first impression with a new reader. Hand them something great, and you may get a loyal reader in exchange. But if their reaction is, “This is it? This is the magic thing they promised me?”, you’ll find they’ll be unsubscribing soon from your newsletter.
Other options for your middle place
A course or a lead magnet is an ideal middle place, but other tactics work well, too:
Send a direct message — A middle place doesn’t need to be super complicated. It can be as simple as a social media DM, sent to a new follower, where you introduce yourself and invite them to take the next step of checking out your newsletter. You can also try a multi-step process: Sending a DM to readers with an initial question — this is an icebreaker to get them to engage — and if they reply, then asking them to sign up for your newsletter.
Invite them to take a quiz — I love how a writer like Gretchen Rubin does this. She has a popular podcast where she can promote her personality quizzes. You can go to her website, where she’s got an easy-to-remember URL — that really matters if someone’s listening to a podcast on the go — and take the quiz. Before you get your results, you’re prompted to check a box and sign up for her newsletter.
Ask them questions in a survey — This is a good option for any sort of news newsletter. One of my favorite examples is from the team at LAist. They told me that they put out a survey on their site, social media, and podcasts asking their audience to share feedback about the state of their city. They also partnered with local influencers to expand the reach of the project. At the end of the survey, they asked people to sign up for the newsletter. One out of three readers did.
Invite them to vote in a Best Of — Some publications go all out with an annual Best Of, where readers can vote in dozens of categories. You can start simpler. Take a page out of the Berkshire Eagle’s playbook: They ask readers to vote on restaurant-related questions, like who makes the best pizza or wings in their area. At the end of the poll, readers are invited to sign up for their food newsletter. These sorts of Best Ofs can get hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of votes, and many readers will tick the box to sign up for more newsletters.
Ask them to fill out a petition — This is a great option for a non-profit trying to grow their audience. Tell readers to fill out the petition — something related to a cause you and your readers care about — and then ask them to sign up for your newsletter.
How to utilize these middle places
I mentioned three potential use cases at the start of this article: Converting readers from a podcast, social media, or a talk. So let’s talk through options for each.
For a podcast, go into the appearance knowing what you want to promote. The more connected the middle place is to whatever you’ve just talked about, the better. Every podcast host is going to give you a few seconds at the end to promote yourself. Have your pitch ready: You’ve just listened to me talk for an hour about this topic, so sign up for this course or download this lead magnet so you can keep learning from me. In advance, make sure you create a short URL so readers can easily remember where to go (i.e. “Sign up at mywebsite.com/course”).
On social media, start by optimizing your profile. On LinkedIn, that means updating your cover image to promote your newsletter (or maybe a middle place, like a course), and highlighting that same thing in your featured section. On YouTube, make sure you’ve got links to your newsletter in the description section of every video. On a platform like Instagram or TikTok, add those links to your bio.
You can also think about how to promote this middle place within a normal post. One tactic that’s been effective for a lot of newsletter operators: Teasing a lesson or a few ideas in the post, then encouraging readers to leave a comment with a specific phrase in order to receive the resource you’ve created (i.e. “Drop the word GUIDE into the comments below”). Then you can direct message readers with the guide.
As for a talk: Make sure there’s a slide in your talk where you promote your middle place. Share a QR code and a short URL on screen so readers can quickly get to the page to get access to the resource.
What tools can you use for your middle place?
Pretty much any email platform offers the ability to set up multi-part automations to allow you to run a course. (One notable exception: Substack.) For a lead magnet, some email platforms, like beehiiv, offer the ability to create digital storefronts to promote both free or paid products. You could also use free tools, like Google Forms, to create a landing page where someone can enter an email address, and then you’d share the link on the confirmation page to download the lead magnet.
Canva is great for creating these lead magnets. If I’m sharing a video tutorial, I like to use Tella to record and edit the video.
For the DM strategy, I recommend looking at ManyChat, which can automate the entire process of collecting a reader’s email address and adding it to your email platform. (Note: It works on platforms like Instagram or TikTok. On a platform like LinkedIn, you have to manually reach out to readers.)
If you’re sharing a middle place in a talk at a conference, Canva can generate QR codes that you can add to a slide deck. You’d link these back to the landing page where someone can sign up for your course or download your lead magnet.
I’ve also used a free WordPress plug-in, called Redirection, to set up easy-to-remember URLs that send readers to the right landing page.
A platform like beehiiv has built-in survey tools that you can use to ask questions or run a simple Best Of. I’ve found that Fillout works great for running quizzes, and when in doubt, don’t overthink it: Free tools like Google Forms can work just fine.
