How to Grow Your Email List | Inbox Collective

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There’s one question I get on a near-daily basis: “How do I get more subscribers for my newsletter?” Practically everyone I talk to — from the person launching their first newsletter to teams operating some of the largest brands on the planet — wants to grow their list.

I’ve led the newsletter teams at BuzzFeed and The New Yorker and have worked with hundreds of news organizations, non-profits, and brands through my consultancy, Inbox Collective. Over the past decade, I’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to growth.

The tactics here have helped many newsletters acquire millions of subscribers. I can’t guarantee that kind of return on your newsletter — but implement some of these tactics, and I promise you will see your list grow.

I’ve got a few thoughts and best practices to consider before you dive into the list — but if you can’t wait to get into the tactics, click here to skip ahead to the list of 52 ideas.

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Seven things to know before we get started

But before we delve into the tactics, I wanted to share a few overarching thoughts:

1.) When it comes to growing your lists, nothing beats great content — Exceptional work — strong reporting, exclusive content, outstanding storytelling, remarkable writing — is crucial to growing your lists. If your content isn’t great, it doesn’t matter how good your strategy is. Mediocre newsletters don’t grow.

2.) What works for one newsletter may not work for you — You may have read a case study where one newsletter raved about a particular growth tactic, but remember: Their audience isn’t your audience. Test out different methods from this guide and see what works for your newsletter. Don’t force tactics that don’t feel right to you.

3.) Sample aggressively — Some of these tactics require a massive investment of time; some take less than a minute to implement. If you’re going to grow your list in the long run, I’d try several of these tactics — maybe even a few dozen of them — to give yourself the best chance to grow. The best newsletters use dozens of different methods to build their audience.

4.) It takes time to implement these tactics — Be patient. You’re not going to be able to put all of these ideas into action right away. Pick a few to test every month or every quarter. Do this, and over time, you’ll see results. One more note: The larger the audience, the faster you’ll be able to get test results. In most cases, I’d encourage you to run a test for at least a month before you decide whether it works for you.

5.) Be honest with yourself about the potential size of your audience — Not every newsletter will reach a million readers (or even 10,000 readers), and that’s OK. You don’t have to achieve massive scale to successfully monetize — you just need a loyal and engaged audience.

6.) Track as much data as you can — Some email platforms are better than others at helping you keep tabs on different segments of your audience. If you can, track the engagement rates based on sign-up sources. That’ll help you understand where loyal readers come from and what channels to invest in.

7.) Growth isn’t all about growth tactics — Growth is often tied to launching new newsletters. Maybe there’s an audience that doesn’t want a daily newsletter but does want something on a topic they like or something from a writer they love. When you launch a new newsletter to serve those readers, you may see your overall list grow. But growth is also about engaging your audience. Think about building out a great welcome series or setting up a winback series to get inactive users to open your newsletter again. Those tactics will help you maintain a large, active list.

One more thought: Before you start to grow your list, understand your why

Often when I start working with a new client, they’ll tell me, “We’ve tried a lot of tactics to convert readers to newsletter subscribers, but nothing’s worked!”

Then, when we go through their website, I’ll usually find that two things are happening. One is that they only have a handful of places where they’re promoting the newsletter, which leads to slower-than-expected growth. The second is that their pitch for their newsletter isn’t very good.

In many cases, the pitch is just five words: “Sign up for our newsletter.”

I always tell clients it’s not enough to tell readers that your newsletter exists. You have to tell them why they should sign up.

Tell them why it matters. Tell them why it will create some sort of impact for them. Tell them why they should take the next step and subscribe.

Your pitch might center around one of these four pillars:

Your newsletter creates value for them — Your newsletter saves them time, makes them money, or helps them do better work.
Your newsletter impacts a reader’s life in a positive way — Your newsletter makes them smarter, helps them make decisions, solves a problem they have, connects them with a larger community, or gives them resources to improve their life.
Your newsletter strikes an emotional chord — Your newsletter makes them happier or helps them better understand themselves.
Your newsletter is a way for readers to engage with you and your work — Your readers like you and choose to sign up because they want to hear directly from you.

If you’re not sure how to explain your newsletter properly, survey your current audience and ask why they value it or ask them for a testimonial. If many readers provide similar feedback about why they love your emails, you’ve just identified the thing to emphasize in the call to action for your newsletter.

52 Ways to Grow Your List

With all that in mind, let’s dive into the list of growth opportunities, plus some tools you can use to implement them.

I’ve divided this list into two parts:

Organic opportunities — Anything that lets you grow your list either from your own channels (your website, your social media platforms) or without spending money.
Paid channels — Using advertising or spending money to acquire email addresses.

I know 52 ideas is a lot to consider. So at the end of this guide, I’ve made some recommendations on which tactics I’d focus on based on the type of newsletter you run. Are you a news publisher? A non-profit? The writer of an indie newsletter? Someone in the ecommerce space? I’ve made recommendations for growth tactics you should lean on. (If you want to skip ahead to those recommendations, click here.)

Organic channels

1.) Build a main newsletter sign-up page

Here’s a growth tip that applies to every newsletter, regardless of your list size or topic: Create a sign-up page.

This is where you should clearly explain the value of your newsletter. Go beyond a tagline. Why will this email be valuable to a reader? What makes this the perfect newsletter for them?

A few other best practices:

Make sure you tell readers when (i.e., on Fridays, at 7 a.m., in the afternoon, etc.) and how frequently they’ll receive the newsletter.
Show the newsletter. Create a sample image you can showcase on the page. I recommend that over linking out to sample newsletters because readers may click out but not sign up if they leave this page. (Ideally, readers should really only have two choices on this page: Sign up, or exit the page.)
Give this page an easy-to-remember URL (like yoursite.com/newsletters).
Make sure that readers don’t have to enter their email addresses multiple times to sign up for multiple newsletters. It’s a frustrating user experience — especially on mobile — that will cost you sign-ups in the long run.
Consider allowing someone to register with a login from a third party, like Google or Facebook, to improve the UX for mobile users.
Make sure that on mobile, your form offers an autocomplete option to allow a reader to easily enter their email address.
Don’t ask for too much information upfront. If you want to ask for a first or last name, that’s OK — but the more you ask for, like a reader’s address or job title, the lower the chance that a reader completes the sign-up process.
Have reCAPTCHA or an email verification tool like Kickbox built into your sign-up box. Spambots tend to target sign-up pages like these, so you want to keep these pages safe to maintain good deliverability.
Add social proof that readers love your newsletter. This could include testimonials from readers to showcase why readers love the product, or stats around list size or engagement to prove that your newsletter is worth reading.

Two more things newsletter operators often fail to do with these pages: Think about how they’ll show up on search and social platforms.

Let’s say I write a local newsletter for my neighborhood. (I happen to live in Midtown East in New York City.) If someone searches for “Midtown East newsletter,” I want my newsletter to pop up in the results. By adding search-friendly headlines and copy to this page, I give myself the best chance to reach that potential reader.

Two headline styles tend to work well on these pages:

Put the CTA right up front — “Sign up for the best daily newsletter about Midtown East.”
Ask a question, then answer it — “What’s happening in Midtown East? Sign up for our daily newsletter to stay informed.”

Think about social-friendly copy and images, too. Put a CTA in the headline, and make sure the image that gets shared also adds context about what your newsletter is and why readers should sign up.

Most social networks have tools to test out what your page will look like when shared. Use this tool to test on Facebook, this one for Twitter, and this one for LinkedIn.

Many email platforms let you create custom landing pages for your newsletter — you may want to build the first version of this page with these tools. If you’re building a sign-up on a platform like WordPress, use WPForms to create the sign-up box to embed on the page. And if you need to create your own page, try a tool like Carrd, which allows you to publish a landing page to a custom domain and doesn’t require any coding skills.

2.) Build individual sign-up pages for your newsletter

If you have multiple newsletters, don’t stop with just a single sign-up page. Create unique pages for each of your newsletters that allow you to really sell the value of each product.

The rules are pretty much the same as with main newsletter sign-up pages:

Set reader expectations about what they’ll get and what’s in it for them.
Have a clear call to action, or CTA, to encourage readers to sign up.
Show the product — don’t just tell them about it.
Put the CTA and sign-up box at the top of the page — don’t make them scroll too far to sign up.
Create an easy-to-remember URL. For instance, if you’ve got a food newsletter, you might create a URL like yoursite.com/foodnewsletter that will be easy for someone to share on social media, at an event, or while doing an interview.

This page doesn’t need to be terribly complicated to be effective. A simple post with good copy and a box to sign up is more than enough to start.

This sign-up page from Boulder Reporting Lab is simple, but it also gives readers all the context they’ll need before signing up.

But if you have the time and resources, you can do more to really explain why someone should sign up for your newsletter. You can share testimonials from readers or take readers behind the scenes to showcase the team that creates the newsletter.

Here’s one of my favorite examples of one of these pages: It’s from Boktugg, a Swedish site that covers the book industry.

Now, if you’re like me, you don’t speak a word of Swedish. But take a look at this sign-up page. Even if you don’t speak the language, you’ll easily spot a few great elements:

✅ They show you what the newsletter looks like.

✅ They offer social proof by telling you how many readers are on their list.

✅ They include testimonials from influencers explaining why the newsletter is great.

✅ They have a big, colorful button that drives you to sign up, which includes a mention of the cost of the newsletter. (Turns out I do know one word of Swedish — “gratis” means “free” in just about every language!)

✅ They include a GDPR-friendly box allowing you to consent to receive newsletters. (As a newsletter based in Sweden, they’re subject to Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, which requires consent before sign-up.)

And what happens if you share the newsletter? They’ve done this right, too — readers on social would see an image of the product, a CTA in the headline, and a description of the newsletter below that:

You can also offer a social sign-up option on these pages. A reader, particularly someone on a mobile device, may not want to type in their full email address. More advanced newsletters will use a protocol known as oAuth to allow readers to log in via Apple, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, or another login option. When a reader clicks on the login option of their choice, they can register without typing in their email, and you, the operator behind the newsletter, will get their email address. (If you request it, you can also get additional information, like a reader’s first or last name.)

The Pulse, from The Athletic, offers five sign-up options: Google, Apple, Facebook, a New York Times login, or an email address.

Looking for even more sign-up pages to learn from? Here are 19 landing pages I absolutely love.

3.) Add a sign-up to your header or nav

Once you’ve created your sign-up pages, it’s time to think about where you can promote your newsletter on your website. Priority No. 1: Put CTAs to sign up in places that readers are guaranteed to see, no matter what they read on your website.

So start with the header or navigation of your website. You’ve got a few options here. The easiest one is to add a CTA to sign up and then link back to your main newsletter sign-up page.

Apartment Therapy employs this strategy, which works well on both desktop and mobile.

Or you can pick a single newsletter to promote and embed a sign-up box directly into your header. Here’s a fun example from ChefSteps, which uses unconventional phrasing to encourage a reader to enter in both their name and email address.

ChefSteps incorporates social proof into this form by sharing their total list size with prospective subscribers.

If you want to deploy the latter strategy on your site, try WPForms (for WordPress-powered sites) or OptinMonster (which can work with both WordPress and non-WordPress sites).

4.) Add a sign-up box to your footer

Adding a newsletter sign-up to your footer is one other way to ensure that you have a sign-up module on every page of your site. Just like with the header or nav, you can pick a single newsletter to promote or link out to your main newsletter sign-up page.

When I look at footer data with clients, I see a common trend: The footer doesn’t get nearly as much visibility as the header or nav, but the conversion rate is incredibly high on these units. Readers who reach the footer are usually looking for something, and it’s often a newsletter. Add a footer unit to make it easy for a reader to sign up.

Just like with the header or nav, I’d recommend WPForms or OptinMonster to deploy these footer units.

Aos Fatos, a Brazilian news website, does a good job using their footer to drive readers to sign up for their newsletter.

5.) Include a newsletter icon in your list of social icons

You’ve probably got a list of your social media profiles — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube — listed in several places on your website. Why isn’t your newsletter listed alongside them?

Add an envelope icon to that list, then link back to your main sign-up page. It’s a simple thing to do for visibility. Will it be a massive source of growth? Probably not. But to build a successful growth strategy, you need lots of different ways to drive readers to sign up, both big and small. A link in your list of social icons is a small, easy win.

Eater Boston smartly includes a newsletter icon alongside their social platforms.

6.) Display sign-up units within the body of stories

I’ve seen a lot of growth hacks and strategies, but none are quite as effective as publishing great content on your website and then converting readers of those stories to your newsletter. If someone likes what they’re reading and you’re offering them the chance to get more stuff like this sent directly to their inbox, why wouldn’t they say yes to that?

There are a lot of opportunities on these story pages. First, at the top of the story, you can embed a line of text with a link to your sign-up page. The advantage here: This requires simple copy-and-paste — no additional tech required.

Mother Jones includes a text-based CTA in most articles, like this.

You could also try embedding a sign-up box midway through the story. With in-line units, you might have a bit more space to add copy about the newsletter or showcase an example.

Grid News, which has since been acquired and absorbed into another brand, had both a CTA and a screenshot of their newsletter in every in-line sign-up box.

And advanced organizations — ones where a reader is already registered or logged in — often build units that require a single click to drive a signup. Since they’ve already collected an email address, they don’t need to ask for it again.

Bloomberg News will include one-click CTAs for logged into users. If you toggle the button, you’ll be signed up.

Three other best practices here:

1.) Make sure the sign-up module stands out so readers don’t quickly scroll past it.

2.) Think about “scroll depth,” which is the percentage of the way down the page where you want to show the module. These in-line units tend to work best on longer articles, which I’d define as anything more than a thousand words long. With these, you may want to show the in-line unit a third of the way or halfway down the page. If you wait longer than that, you may find that readers stop reading the story before they even reach the sign-up box.

3.) If you have multiple newsletters, show specific sign-up modules on specific types of stories. If a reader is reading a sports story, show them a CTA for your sports newsletter. If they’re on a politics story, tell them about your politics newsletter. And if you don’t have a newsletter for that category of story, show them a sign-up box for whatever your flagship newsletter is — likely a daily newsletter.

These units are great places to run A/B tests, too. Test to see what scroll depth drives the best conversion rate or test out the efficacy of text-based units versus units with more imagery.

In terms of tools to deploy these units, I recommend OptinMonster or WPForms, both of which offer embeddable forms that you can customize with the text or images you want. Your email platform may also have its own basic sign-up box you can embed on story pages. (A benefit of those: They’re free to use, unlike OptinMonster or WPForms.)

7.) Show a sign-up box at the bottom of stories

A reader who finishes a story is an engaged reader, so give them the chance to stay engaged through your newsletters.

These types of units are especially valuable to show on shorter stories or for readers on mobile devices. (Both types of readers may ignore in-line interruptions.)

NPR deploys sign-up boxes based on the story you’ve just read. On an NPR Books story, for instance, you’ll see a CTA for their Books newsletter.

This is one place where I recommend directly embedding the sign-up box — don’t drive readers to a secondary page. (Every time a reader has to take an extra step, it adds some friction to the sign-up process. The more friction there is, the lower the percentage of readers who will sign up.)

And again, be super targeted with the boxes you show on these pages. A reader should see a call to action to sign up for something directly related to the story they’ve just read.

OptinMonster or WPForms can be used here to deploy these units.

8.) Display a sign-up box on the left or right rail

As readers scroll down the page — particularly on longer articles — try a sign-up unit that scrolls along with them on the side of the page. I love the example below from The 19th. It’s clean, simple, and unobtrusive as you read. Since it’s part of the design of the page and not something that readers can simply exit out of, these types of units convert well. A reader might not be ready to sign up as soon as they see it, but as they keep reading and the unit follows them down the page, they may eventually choose to sign up.

The 19th only shows a handful of things on their right rail, including a sign-up for their newsletter.

Your CMS may offer some level of customization with the left or right rail, and then you can embed the form within it with OptinMonster or WPForms.

9.) Run full-screen pop-ups for your newsletter

Pop-ups can be one of the most effective ways to capture an email address. When someone’s reading a story on your website, briefly interrupt their reading experience and ask them if they’d like to sign up for your newsletter.

These full-screen takeovers work particularly well on desktops and give you the space to test out different combinations of copy, images, and CTA buttons. They tend to have high conversion rates since they’re harder for readers to ignore.

With a pop-up, don’t drive readers to your main newsletter page — have a sign-up box right there on the form where they can enter their email address to subscribe. (If a reader has to click out to another page, that adds friction to the process and will reduce the percentage of readers who actually sign up.)

Poynter runs several different full-screen pop-ups on their website for newsletters.

The upside of pop-ups is that they can be highly effective at converting readers. But here’s the downside: When deployed too aggressively, readers can find them annoying.

When you run these, make sure you don’t display them too quickly — otherwise, a reader will simply close the pop-up window to get back to the story. And be careful not to deploy multiple pop-ups on the same page. There’s nothing worse for a reader than closing a newsletter sign-up module only to get a second pop-up with a special offer right after it. Optimize first for the reading experience, then conversions.

Four other best practices to consider before you deploy a pop-up:

Don’t show it to readers who clicked on the site from your newsletter or who are already signed up for your newsletter.
Think about when you want to target a reader with these. Is it based on the number of articles read that day? The amount of time they’ve spent on site? Or after they’ve read a certain percentage of the way through a story?
Think about what you want to show on mobile versus desktop. A pop-up can work on mobile, but you may have to remove certain elements, like an image, to make it fit on a smaller screen.
Don’t make it hard for readers to remove the pop-up from the screen if they don’t want to sign up. Offer them a “No, thanks” button or an “X” they can click to make the pop-up go away if they’re not interested.

OptinMonster is a great tool for deploying these sorts of pop-ups, and they offer the ability to set up conditional rules so you can show them to users based on device, time on site, or entry point. You could also look at RightMessage, which allows you to create multi-step pop-ups. For instance, a reader can first be shown a multiple-choice question and then shown a pop-up afterward based on their answer.

10.) Run exit-intent units

Here’s a special type of pop-up to consider: the exit-intent unit.

These are pop-ups that only deploy when a reader starts to move their mouse toward the top of the page, which usually signals that they’re about to leave your website. When that happens, there’s very little risk in deploying a pop-up — they’re already about to leave the site, so you might as well give them a pitch for your newsletter before you go.

The pop-up gives you the best chance to grab their attention before they leave the site. Ask them to sign up for your newsletter so they don’t miss stories like the one they’ve just read.

Again, I’d recommend OptinMonster for these — they offer an exit-intent option that’s easy to turn on.

11.) Show a toaster unit

A toaster is a smaller sign-up module that pops up from the bottom of the screen, like a piece of toast from a toaster. They tend to be a bit smaller and less intrusive than a full-screen pop-up, which makes them a great starting place for a website that’s just beginning to experiment with these sorts of units. Readers are less likely to be annoyed by something that takes up a fraction of the screen instead of the entire screen.

Toasters come in a variety of shapes. Some are small bars that appear at the bottom of the screen. Sometimes they’re a bit wider, which allows for more real estate to display a CTA or additional copy.

CNET uses a toaster with a checkbox to sign up for an additional newsletter.

Some toasters are vertically-oriented boxes that pop up as a reader scrolls. Any of these options could be worth testing to see which drives the conversions you want while still allowing for a good reading experience on-site.

The Tyee’s toaster takes over the right side of the page on desktop, which doesn’t interfere with the reading experience.

OptinMonster offers a variety of out-of-the-box options to run toasters on your website. Hello Bar also offers some basic toaster options, and RightMessage can deploy these, too.

12.) Capture a reader using a fly-in

A fly-in is an animated sign-up module that appears to “fly in” from the side of the screen. The animation grabs a reader’s attention, and then they can sign up on the form.

If you run a fly-in, three things to consider:

Don’t run a fly-in and a pop-up on the same page — it’ll be too much for readers.
Think about whether you want the unit to fly in from the left side or right side of the page. I often suggest using the right side for desktop readers since most websites align their stories on the left side of the page, and having the fly-in on the right means the sign-up module doesn’t interrupt the reading experience.
Fly-ins don’t work quite as well on mobile — there’s less room for the fly-in effect to really work. I’d use a toaster or a pop-up instead on mobile.

Look to a tool like OptinMonster to run fly-ins like these on your website.

The Points Guy sometimes runs fly-ins, from the left side of the page, on their website.

13.) Run a banner at the top of the page

How do you tell as many readers, at once, about your newsletter? You might want to start with a banner across the top of the screen.

These banners often look a lot like the “Breaking news” banner that news websites run for big stories — but instead of promoting a news story, they promote your newsletter. They’re especially effective for new newsletter launches. (And though they appear in a similar part of your site, they’re a little different than something in your header or nav. Banners are temporary and might be displayed for a few hours or days; a header or nav unit is always there.)

The upside of a banner is that they’re not too intrusive and display nicely on both mobile and desktop. The downside? They’re usually not big enough to include an embedded sign-up box, so you’ll have to drive readers to your main newsletter page to actually subscribe to your newsletter. (A more advanced tactic: You could also connect this to a pop-up, so clicking on the link in the banner automatically opens a pop-up on the current page to complete the sign-up process.)

Try not to overuse these units — if they appear on every page of your site on a daily basis, readers will eventually learn to skip right past them.

Hello Bar, OptinMonster, or RightMessage can all deploy banners on your site. Many CMS tools offer a built-in banner option as well.

Montana Free Press runs banners like this to announce new newsletter launches.

14.) Try a welcome mat

Think of this as a toaster unit, but in reverse. These units start at the top of the page, but as you scroll down, they expand with the page. Readers see the initial CTA and then more of the message as they scroll. This gives readers the chance to sign up before they dive into the content; you could always pair this with another CTA, like a bottom sign-up box, on the same story.

OptinMonster can be used to deploy a welcome mat on your site.

15.) Promote the newsletter on your homepage

Adding a sign-up module can be a good way to promote your newsletter for sites that get lots of direct traffic to their homepage.

I recommend you pick a flagship newsletter to promote and include a CTA just for that newsletter. Or create a promotional unit that drives readers to the main newsletter page to subscribe.

Use your email platform’s own sign-up box on these pages, or embed one with OptinMonster or WPForms.

Insider offers the ability to sign up for multiple newsletters from their homepage.

16.) Use a registration wall to convert readers to your newsletter

Websites that use registration walls give readers a simple choice: Want to keep reading this story? You can — as long as you register for an account with us first.

That’s a trade readers are often willing to make, which leads to conversion rates significantly above any other type of on-site unit.

Registration doesn’t necessarily require a password — you may only need to ask for an email address. But since you’re asking for their email, you may also want to ask them to register for your newsletter, too, in the process.

Airmail shows a registration wall to new users, asking them to sign up for their newsletter in order to read the rest of the story.

Some sophisticated publishers will use a tool like Google’s One Tap or oAuth to get readers to register for an account with a single click and then ask readers to sign up for newsletters.

Editor and Publisher offers multiple login options, including Facebook and Google, as part of their registration wall.

If you have a comments section on your website, you can also ask a user to register before they can leave their first comment. Drive readers from the comment form to the registration wall, ask them to sign up for your newsletter, and then bring them back to the comments section so they can post their first comment.

Gothamist connects comments with registration, which opens up possibilities to drive a newsletter subscription once the registration flow is complete.

If you’re a larger publisher, you probably already have a system in place to deploy a registration wall and collect an email address. If not, take a look at tools like Leaky Paywall, OptinMonster, or Poool to run these.

17.) Display house ads on your website

Your website may include spaces where you display advertising, perhaps using a platform like Google Ad Manager. If that’s the case, you probably don’t sell out every ad slot on every page — your ad tool then fills some of the unsold inventory with lower-quality ads, for which you make fractions of a cent per ad shown.

So you’ve got a choice: Use that extra ad inventory to display ads that don’t make much money or replace them with ads for your newsletters, which might lead to significant revenue in the long run.

If you run these ads through your ad platform, you can quickly display an ad across your website, giving your newsletter significant reach. You can also test out different ad copy or artwork to see which messages work best and drive readers to your newsletter sign-up page.

At BuzzFeed, we took the house ad concept a step further and created slots on both the home page and in recirculation units (which highlight the next suggested story to read) on our website. Instead of an image-based ad, readers saw the headline for one of our sign-up pages, like “Find Your Next Great Book With The BuzzFeed Books Newsletter!” When they clicked, they were taken to the page to enter their email.

The Cut shows house ads in stories, including on mobile devices.

18.) Use a lead magnet

With a lead magnet, a reader trades their email address for access to exclusive content. That content might be access to a downloadable guide or an email course — anything with significant value for a reader.

These are popular among indie operators, particularly those who teach readers a new skill or habit. If I’m motivated to learn from that operator, I’ll happily trade an email address to receive the free resource they’ve created.

A copywriting expert like Laura Belgray uses a lead magnet — in this case, “5 Secrets to Non-Sucky Copy“ — to convert readers to her newsletter.

Lead magnets are also common for B2B newsletters that might compile research or best practices in a .pdf and ask readers to sign to get access to it. (B2B newsletters often ask readers to sign up with a work email address to prevent someone from typing in a fake email to get access, and may also ask for additional information, like your title or location, so they can later create a segment of their most valuable readers.)

The key to a successful lead magnet strategy: Make sure there’s a strong tie between the content and the newsletter they’re signing up for. The newsletter needs to be highly relevant for the lead magnet to drive long-term engagement.

You don’t necessarily need a lead magnet-specific tool to deploy these, though some email platforms, like ConvertKit, can create an embeddable sign-up form designed to deliver a lead magnet. Other tools, like OptinMonster, can also work with a lead magnet strategy.

19.) Run a quiz

A quiz is an easy entry point for fly-by readers. Whether you’re testing their knowledge, challenging how much they know about the events of the week, or using a personality test to help someone learn more about themselves, quizzes can be engaging content. Once a reader’s done with the quiz, give them a call to action to subscribe to a relevant newsletter.

One more thought: You could also pair a quiz with a lead magnet or an email course. Challenge their knowledge on a topic — then invite them to sign up and get access to a specific resource to level up and learn more.

Pew Research Center used this quiz to drive readers towards a course about the 2020 U.S. Census.

There are a lot of tools for quizzes and sign-ups out there, like Outgrow or Typeform, that work with several different email platforms. Newsrooms might also want to look at News Games, which can power both quizzes and crosswords.

20.) Invite readers to vote in a “Best Of” contest

What’s the best pizza place in town? Who serves the best cocktails? Your readers probably have opinions on these topics, so invite them to vote in a “Best Of” contest.

The best part of a Best Of? You’ve got multiple chances to drive a sign-up. Ask readers to first nominate local businesses, and on the nomination form, invite them to subscribe to your newsletter. When you’ve narrowed things down to a handful of finalists, ask them to vote on their favorites. To make sure they don’t vote too many times, ask for their email address as part of the voting process — and then ask them to sign up for a relevant newsletter.

And when you run stories on your website about the winners? You’ll have sign-up boxes or pop-ups already displaying on those pages, which gives you another chance to convert readers to newsletter subscribers.

This sort of Best Of strategy also extends beyond just local establishments and nightlife. You could do this as part of a “40 Under 40” type of award for people in your community, which might include nominations, voting, and stories about the winners.

Second Street is great for running these Best Ofs, but you could also use Typeform or Google Forms to run these.

The Keene Sentinel uses an annual Best Of to drive readers to their newsletters.

21.) Try a one-off poll

Maybe you’re not ready for a big Best Of-type contest. You can always start small by asking readers to vote on just a single topic.

Ask readers to vote on something they’ll have an opinion on. If you’re a local newsletter, that might mean voting on the best local place to get ice cream in the summer. If you write about parenting, it might mean voting on the best book to read to your child. Pick a topic that lots of readers will have an opinion on, and ask them to take a one-off poll to share their perspective. And at the end of the poll, ask them if they’d like to sign up for your newsletter.

Don’t overthink the tech behind these — Typeform or Google Forms are great for running a simple poll and then collecting an email address.

22.) Build an interactive or game

Interactives or games require significant development work, but they can be effective at engaging a reader and then converting them into a newsletter subscriber.

In this example, let’s say you’ve got a newsletter that shares advice about living your best life, and you build a tool that lets readers identify where they should live or what career they should work in. As part of the interactive, invite readers to sign up and learn more from your newsletter — after they’ve gone through the interactive, they may want to learn more from you.

Bloomberg’s Work Wise calculator offers both career advice and a newsletter sign-up.

23.) Survey your audience

Surveys can be an effective way to convert an audience from one channel, like social media, to another.

First, ask readers questions to help you understand their needs, or ask demographic questions. At the end of the survey, invite them to sign up for one of your newsletters. If they’re engaged enough to take the survey, they’re probably the type of reader who’ll be excited to receive more content from you in their inbox.

Something to think about: Where will you ask for an email address? Some surveys ask for it at the start of the survey and then offer a simple checkbox — “Would you like to sign up for our newsletter? Yes or no?” — at the end. Others don’t ask for the email address up front but do ask that you enter it when they get to the CTA for the newsletter. Either route can work — it depends on how you’ve structured your survey.

I like to use Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, or Typeform to run surveys. Several email platforms, like Beehiiv or Mailchimp, also have built-in survey tools that you can use.

24.) Utilize user-generated content to grow your list

User-generated content, or UGC, can be a good way to engage a reader and then convert them to your newsletter. What might UGC look like?

Maybe you’ve got a place on your website where readers can submit a question for a mailbag.
Maybe you’ve got a form where readers can submit letters to the editor.
Maybe you’re inviting readers to submit answers to a question you’ve asked in your newsletter.

Anytime you ask for something like this — and, most importantly, collecting an email address in the process — you should promote a relevant newsletter on that form. You’re likely asking for their email address anyway as part of the submission, so you might as well invite them to sign up for your newsletter, too.

The Anchorage Daily News included this bit of UGC — with a checkbox to sign up for their daily newsletter — at the end of several stories.

A simple tool like Google Forms or Typeform is great for running a UGC campaign. A special shout-out here to the team at Hearken, who popularized these units among newsrooms and also offer a tool to deploy them on your website.

25.) Try a giveaway or sweepstakes

Giveaways and sweepstakes offer lots of potential for growth — but not without risk.

Here’s the upside: Readers are often willing to enter an email address if they have the chance to win something. Maybe it’s a giveaway for something small, like tickets to an event. Or maybe you run a partnership with a handful of other newsletters and offer a giant prize, like a trip to an exotic location. These really do work — I’ve seen some contests that have driven tens of thousands of new sign-ups for a newsletter.

Independent newsletters like The Gist often run giveaways to grow their lists. This giveaway was for a $2,000 gift card to a store of the winner’s choosing.

However, when readers sign up, they may only be interested in the prize, not your newsletter. In some cases, like with big giveaways involving several other newsletters, they may not even be aware that they’re signing up for your newsletter. You might get thousands of new sign-ups, only to watch as the majority of these readers unsubscribe or disengage within just a few weeks.

The most successful contests have a clear connection to your newsletter’s topic. If you run a newsletter for writers, think about a giveaway for productivity software writers would love. If you’re a local newsletter that highlights things to do in your area, consider giving away gift cards to local restaurants or tickets to an upcoming concert.

Here’s a giveaway example from a writer-driven newsletter that I wrote about in my guide to indie newsletter growth:

I love how Wesley Verhoeve does this in his photography newsletter, Process. He’ll give away something small — a few rolls of black and white film or a set of photography-themed socks — to readers as long as they’ve signed up for his newsletter. It’s less a way to drive massive growth and more about converting readers who haven’t yet subscribed to the newsletter.

If you run a contest, consider a few next steps. Add a checkbox on the form so a reader can choose to subscribe (or not) to your newsletter. You may want to run these readers through a double opt-in email, so they’ll only be added to your list if they confirm that they want your newsletter. You could also put them into a special welcome series, reminding them of how they signed up, and build a relationship with them before they get added to regular newsletters. And in the first 21 to 30 days after sign-up, look to remove readers who don’t engage with your newsletters. There’s no reason to keep inactive readers on your list.

You may also want to use a newsletter-specific giveaway tool, like Dojomojo, to run the giveaway. But you could also use Google Forms to collect entries and then use Google Sheets’ random number generator to pick a winner.

Note that many of these giveaways are sponsored — advertisers pay to promote their products in your newsletter and also provide the giveaway materials for free. If you do these, you may find that an advertiser is effectively paying you to grow your list. That might make these worth the risk.

Here’s one good example of these from Golf.com. They’ve combined a contest with an in-article pop-up to convert readers on their website:

I’ve also seen newsletters offer access to a birthday club, where readers get a handful of discounts from relevant businesses during their birthday month, in exchange for a sign-up.

26.) Run a contest

Contests are a little different than giveaways: They’re usually based on merit, not luck.

Let’s say you’re a local newsletter, and you ask readers to submit a photograph of the best sunset they’ve seen all year, which you plan on featuring in a future newsletter or on social media. Readers go to a form to submit their original photos, and in order to pick a winner, you ask them for their email address. Since they’re submitting that email address, why not ask them to sign up for your newsletter, too?

Google Forms, Second Street, Typeform, or Outgrow are good tools to use for contests like these.

27.) Use petitions to grow your list

Petitions can be incredibly effective at driving engagement and then converting readers — particularly for non-profits or mission-driven newsletters.

First, promote your petition to readers, and make sure it’s something they’ll want to attach their name to. Then give readers the chance to opt into your newsletter as part of the petition. (Some orgs don’t include the opt-in and instead include a message noting that you’ll be added when you complete the form.)

Petitions are also often used in connection with paid advertising (which we’ll get to later in this guide). An organization might run ads for a petition on social media, then collect the sign-up when the petition is signed.

Google Forms, Typeform, or Outgrow can all be used to run a petition.

The ACLU regularly runs petitions, like these, which include the option to sign up for the ACLU newsletter.

28.) Ask for a sign-up after readers choose to subscribe, donate, or become a member

Here’s one that every media outlet or non-profit should try: After a reader becomes a paying supporter, give them a chance to subscribe to a newsletter.

These types of units work remarkably well. Readers have already entered their email addresses at the same moment they entered their credit card information. So give them the chance to opt into relevant newsletters after they’ve finished the payment process.

If you have multiple newsletters, the key is to pick the right ones to showcase as part of the post-payment flow. Choose ones designed to build some sort of regular habit — a daily newsletter or a weekly product that gets readers back to your site to read or take action. (At The New Yorker, this flow was remarkably effective at driving readers to our Crosswords newsletter, which led to lots of on-site engagement.)

Depending on local laws, you may be able to automatically opt-in readers to a newsletter after they make payment. It’s worth discussing this strategy with your team to decide if you’d like to make this an opt-in or opt-out process.

The New Yorker’s post-purchase flow drove significant email list growth.

29.) Optimize specific sign-up pages for search

If you know that your readers might be searching for a specific term, why not build a newsletter sign-up page built specifically to bring in readers via search?

Here’s an example: Let’s say you live in Philadelphia, and you’ve got a weekly newsletter all about stuff to do in your city. You’ll go ahead and create a sign-up page that talks through the basics of your newsletter, like what they’ll get and when they’ll get it.

But maybe you notice that there’s also a sizable audience that, every week, searches for “free and cheap things to do in Philly.” Knowing that, I might duplicate the sign-up page but adjust the copy on the page. Instead of a more general pitch, I’d add a headline aimed at that audience — “Looking for free and cheap things to do in Philly? Sign up for our newsletter” — and then add details explaining how you’ll help readers find these sorts of activities.

You don’t need to promote these pages across your website — but you can create several of these, all aimed at bringing in readers searching for a specific term.

At BuzzFeed, we created dozens of these unique pages that were designed to bring in new audiences to our newsletters.

30.) Add a sign-up to your Link in Bio

Having a follower on social media is a good starting place, but you don’t have much control over the relationship there. If the social media channel changes its algorithm or rules, you might find that you suddenly can’t reach those followers with your messages.

It’d be far better for you to have them on your email list, where you have more control over the relationship with that reader. Every social media channel lets you display a link alongside your profile. Use a tool like Linktree to create a “link in bio” to spotlight your newsletter. Make sure you include a clear CTA like “Sign up for my newsletter,” to drive readers back to your sign-up page.

Jay Clouse has a CTA on his LinkedIn page, “Become a smarter creator,” to drive readers back to his newsletter.

31.) Use social media to convert readers to your newsletter

Don’t just stop at a link in your profile. Lean into the strengths of these channels to grow your audiences there: text and carousels on Linkedin, Stories on Instagram, video on Facebook, and threads on Twitter. As you post, remind readers that they can continue to learn and hear from you via your newsletter, and direct them back to your sign-up page.

James Clear regularly promotes his newsletter via Instagram Stories.

A good rule of thumb I’ve learned from working with large publishers and indie writers: Most people are able to convert about 2% of their total social media audience to their newsletter. (Best-in-class operations might be able to convert as much as 10% of their audience.) You won’t see all of these readers sign up right away, but that benchmark should give you a goal to work towards.

32.) Publish and share your newsletter to your network

As I wrote in my guide to growing your indie newsletter, direct outreach can be a surprisingly useful tool:

This usually involves emailing contacts and friends to let them know that you’ve launched your newsletter or sending DMs via LinkedIn or Twitter inviting them to sign up. It’s a fairly manual process — but it does work. (One indie writer told me he DMed every person he knew on LinkedIn with the same two-sentence message, asking if they’d sign up and share some feedback with him. He got several hundred sign-ups from those messages.)

You could use a tool like GMass to send emails in bulk. You could also pay for a tool like LinkedIn Message Ads to send messages to prospective readers.

33.) Convert readers using events

Every event (both digital and IRL) is an opportunity to build a relationship with an engaged audience. Encourage a reader to sign up for a relevant newsletter when they register for the event. Some event software, like Eventbrite, can collect an email at the point of registration and then pass it through to your email platform with Zapier.

During the event, remind readers to sign up for newsletters. I’ve seen teams that have taken simple steps to drive subscriptions. Some build a QR code that links back to the newsletter sign-up page and add it to the program handed out at the door. (I’ve even heard of newsletters that print out flyers with QR codes and post them in bathroom stalls. You’d absolutely have someone’s full attention there!) Some orgs even go with a remarkably low-tech but highly-effective tactic: They pass around a clipboard where attendees can write down their email addresses, and then add those sign-ups manually into their email platform at the end of the event.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution asks for a sign-up during the event registration flow.

34.) Ask readers to forward your newsletter to a friend

Word-of-mouth referrals often turn into hugely loyal readers. After all, if a friend tells you something is great, you’re probably going to listen.

One key to generating lots of word-of-mouth referrals is to make it easy for readers to share the newsletter. I don’t recommend using the built-in “Forward to a Friend” features that some ESPs offer — those can be a little clunky to use. Instead, add a link or button to your newsletter — a CTA like “Forward this newsletter to a friend,” “Invite a friend,” or “Share our newsletter” are good places to start — and add what’s known as a mailto: link.

With a mailto: link, you can pre-write the email for a reader. Use a free tool like this, from Parcel, to write the email you want readers to share with their friends. Include your subject line (i.e., “Here’s a newsletter I think you’ll love”) and a few sentences about why they’ll love it. Then include a link back to your sign-up page.

1440 asks readers to share their newsletter, and then includes a pre-written email (with the subject line, “Best newsletter for unbiased news”) that readers can share.

If a reader needs to write the email themselves, they might not follow through. But if you’ve pre-written the email, all they need to do is add their friend’s email address and hit “send.”

If you really want to track this method’s effectiveness, add a UTM to the end of your landing page URL, or create a brand-new sign-up page linked exclusively within Forward to a Friend emails to see how many new subscribers come via this strategy. (For those who aren’t familiar with UTMs: They’re little bits of code you can add to the end of a URL to track the original source that shared the link. If you’ve ever seen a bit of code at the end of a URL, like utm_source=Not_a_Newsletter, you’ve seen a UTM in action! I’d recommend using a free tool like UTM.io to create your UTMs.)

One other easy-to-implement tactic: Add a sign-up link within the body of the email so that if someone forwards the full newsletter (not your Forward to a Friend email), the recipient will still be able to sign up.

35.) Drive sign-ups in real life

Yes, it’s possible to convert readers to your newsletter IRL. It’s just about finding the right places to do so and then making it easy for readers to sign up. When it comes to IRL opportunities, QR codes are your friend — create one with a tool like Canva, and link back to your newsletter sign-up page. Once someone scans the code, they’re taken to the page to sign-up. (Like with the Forward to a Friend strategy, you may want to track effectiveness via a UTM or a unique landing page.)

Where might you drive sign-ups IRL? Maybe, like Madison Minutes, a local newsletter that covers Madison, Wisconsin, you’ll create flyers that you post around your downtown area to drive sign-ups:

Maybe, like Dine Sarasota, a food and dining newsletter in Sarasota, Florida, you’ll print out coasters with a pitch for the newsletter and distribute them to local bars and restaurants:

Or maybe you’ve got another idea, like business cards or postcards with a QR code on them, posters at local bus stops, yard signs placed around town, or bookmarks distributed at the local library. None of these will drive sign-ups at scale — but any of them might provide a boost to your list.

36.) “Power comment” on posts from public figures and in major groups

If you don’t have an existing audience of your own, one of the easiest ways to start building one is by piggybacking off of someone else’s audience.

Identify public figures — maybe someone in your field with a big Twitter or LinkedIn following — and engage regularly with their content. Being the first to comment and start the conversation gets your profile noticed. Or you can spend time in public spaces, like Reddit or Quora threads, where people in your community discuss your topic, and become an active commenter there. Don’t be too self-promotional — try to engage and share, and when it makes sense, direct people back to a resource or article you might have built.

As I wrote about in my guide to indie newsletters:

This is something that was hugely helpful for my own newsletter (which is all about newsletters) when I was first getting started. There are a few Facebook Groups and Slack rooms where email folks spend a lot of time, and I’d make sure to pop in, replying to others and answering questions. I even wrote a few articles about issues that many members were having and would drop in the link to a tutorial or guide as a reply to their public posts. At the end of the article, I’d include a CTA for my newsletter. Those posts helped me position myself as someone with expertise in this space and helped grow my newsletter audience, too.

37.) Leverage the power of Recommendations networks

Some email platforms, like Beehiiv or Substack, allow any newsletter to recommend any other newsletter on their platform. After a reader signs up for your newsletter, you can recommend a handful of additional newsletters to that reader, and they can sign up with one click.

Here’s what Claire Zulkey of Evil Witches recommends to readers after they sign up for her newsletter.

Larger, well-known newsletters tend to be the biggest beneficiaries of these recommendation tools —- some writers see thousands of new sign-ups per month thanks to recommendation tools. (Less-established newsletters may see smaller returns.)

Newsletters not on one of those platforms can also use Sparkloop to recommend other newsletters. After someone signs up for your newsletter, you can use their Upscribe widget to recommend other newsletters to those readers. (Sparkloop’s tool works with newsletters on many platforms, like AWeber, Beehiiv, ConvertKit, and Mailchimp, but not newsletters on Substack.)

The key to these recommendation networks is to build partnerships with other newsletters and cross-promote each other’s newsletters. Reach out to other newsletters you like — perhaps ones that reach your intended audience but cover a slightly different topic — and ask if they’d be open to a partnership, You’ll recommend their newsletter, and they’ll recommend yours, and both newsletters should see growth. Identifying a handful of strong partnerships could lead to a significant influx of new sign-ups in the long run.

38.) Try in-newsletter cross-promotion

One other way to cross-promote is within your regular newsletters.

You could form a partnership and include a note at the top of your next email recommending the partner’s newsletter. The partner would then do the same for your newsletter. Use Sparkloop’s Magic Links tool so readers can sign up with a single click. (Beehiiv also has its own one-click links that work with several ESPs.) If a magic link won’t work with your email platform, then drive readers back to your sign-up page, and use a UTM to track the clicks and conversions from the partnership.

The key here is to find newsletters with a similar audience or similar size to yours — both partners deserve to see growth from this partnership.

Sometimes, if one newsletter is much larger than the other, they’ll find creative ways to even things out. That might mean that the smaller newsletter will run the promotion twice within their newsletter, or promote it in newsletters and on social media to try to reach a similarly-sized audience over the course of the promotion.

You could also try running house ads in your newsletter, or even on your site, for your partners.

Two Chicago-based newsrooms, City Bureau and Block Club Chicago, ran this cross-promotion to grow their audiences.

39.) Offer discount codes on merch

If you have a store where you sell merchandise, offer readers a discount on their next purchase if they first sign up for your newsletter. It’s a win-win for both parties: The reader gets a discount, and you get revenue from their purchase and a new subscriber to your email list.

A platform like OptinMonster is a great platform for deploying this sort of offer.

40.) Invite readers to sign up at the point of purchase

Maybe you didn’t get a user to sign up using a discount code, but you still have one more chance to convert them: On the checkout page, as readers are about to buy something from your store, ask them if they’d like to sign up for your newsletter. (Some payment platforms, like Shopify or WooCommerce, make it easy to add a sign-up box to these pages, which you can then connect to most email platforms.)

41.) Convert readers from another owned channel

At BuzzFeed, we used to refer to any channel where we had a direct relationship with the reader — like podcasts — as an “owned & operated” channel. You might have an audience on one of these types of channels: a print newspaper or magazine, a podcast or radio show, or a TV program. You’ve got an audience here — it’s up to you to figure out how to convert them over to your newsletter.

If you operate in print, run ads in your publication with a QR code so readers can scan and sign up quickly.

The Berkshire Eagle runs these ads to convert readers from print to newsletter.

If you’ve got a podcast or radio show, tell listeners about something they don’t want to miss in an upcoming newsletter and give them the short URL — yoursite.com/newsletter — that you created for your sign-up page. (Keep in mind, a listener may be driving or distracted while listening to your show, so the URL has to be easy for them to remember later on.)

If you’ve got a TV program, display a QR code on the screen — maybe during commercial breaks or at the bottom of the screen — so viewers can scan it and sign up.

42.) Try +1 messages

If you have an existing audience — maybe you have one newsletter and want to add a second one, or you have a database of emails you’ve collected when readers attended an event — you can try a +1 message.

A +1 message is an email designed to get a reader to take one more step. For instance, you could send a dedicated email to readers who attended a previous event and announce your newsletter launch. Take the pitch from your landing page and bring it to that email: What will they get, when will they get it, and why should they sign up? Then include a link to the sign-up page.

Or, instead of offering readers an opt-in, you could try the opt-out strategy. If you’ve got an existing newsletter list, and you can identify your highly-engaged readers, you may find that those readers are eager to get more newsletters from you anyway. So instead of letting them opt in manually, take the step for them. Add readers to the list, tell them why you think they’ll love the newsletter, and let them know they can opt out if they don’t want your newsletter.

Lookout Santa Cruz employed an opt-out strategy when they launched a new newsletter.

This strategy works best with readers who are already highly engaged. It’s also worth noting that in some regions or countries, the opt-out strategy is prohibited by data and privacy laws — you cannot add a reader to a newsletter without their permission. Make sure you’re aware of local laws before you run a growth tactic like this.

You could also try running ads within your existing newsletter to promote a new newsletter. These could take the form of house ads, like the ones you’d run on your website, or text-based ads promoting the new newsletter. If you go the latter route, think about how to leverage your unique voice to promote the newsletter — a personal pitch from a writer or editor often converts well.

The Athletic sometimes runs house ads, like this one for The Bounce, in other newsletters.

43.) Add a sign-up to your email signature

Here’s a tactic that takes 20 seconds to complete: Add a link to your sign-up page in your email signature. You probably send a lot of emails on a daily basis. By adding a link to sign up to your signature, you’ll promote your newsletter every time you send an email.

This is the signature that I added to all of my emails. It’s simple, but it does drive some clicks back to my sign-up page.

44.) Create consistently amazing content

I said it at the top of this article, and I’ll say it again: When it comes to growing your lists, nothing beats great content.

Great content usually leads to readers sharing the newsletter with their networks. And nothing will convert readers quite as well as getting a note from a friend that says, “You’ll love this newsletter — here’s the link to sign up!”

So if you want to encourage word-of-mouth sharing among readers, here’s the least-complicated (and hardest-to-achieve) tactic in this guide: Make a great newsletter, make sure every issue you send is great, and do it over and over again.

At BuzzFeed, I used to tell my team: Let’s set the bar high for our newsletters, and then let’s exceed a reader’s expectations with every newsletter. It always delighted me when readers wrote in to say, “I hate almost every newsletter I get — but I always love when your newsletter shows up in my inbox.” We delivered on our promise with every send, and that’s why our newsletter continued to grow. Word of mouth was a huge part of our growth at BuzzFeed — those loyal readers eventually started to share our newsletters with their friends and colleagues — and I’ve seen similar results from nearly every newsletter I’ve worked on since.

Steve Martin famously said, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” The email version of that might be, “Write a newsletter so good, they can’t help but share it.”

45.) Leverage earned media

In the PR world, there are two types of media to know about: Paid and earned.

“Paid” is exactly what you’d expect: It’s anything you had to pay to get. Paying for advertising on someone else’s platform is the most common type of paid media, and we’ll get to that in just a moment.

“Earned” media refers to anything you were able to get for free. You built yourself up as an expert in your space or as someone who others would want to write about or talk to. You earned the media coverage you got.

Some examples of earned media:

A reporter interviews you and then includes a link to your newsletter in their story.
A podcaster or TV program has you on their show as a featured guest and mentions your newsletter.
A conference or event invites you to speak to its audience and includes a sentence about your newsletter in your bio.
Another newsletter links back to something you’ve written.
An influencer on social media shares your sign-up page.

If you’re doing an interview, make sure you’re clear with the interviewer about how you want to be presented to their audience. For instance, when I first launched Inbox Collective, I noticed that some interviewers wanted to introduce me as “the former head of newsletters at BuzzFeed and The New Yorker.” That’s a true statement — but it wasn’t going to help me grow my business. Instead, I started asking them to introduce me as “a consultant who runs Inbox Collective and writes Not a Newsletter, a monthly guide to sending better email,” and also asked if they’d link back to both sources. Not all included both links, but the ones that did provide a big boost to my subscriber numbers.

When I go on podcasts, I always ask in advance if I can promote my newsletter at the end of the episode. Most podcast hosts say yes — and some will even link to the sign-up page within the show notes, too.

And when I give public talks, I always include a slide where I share the link to my newsletter sign-up page. Depending on the audience and the theme of the talk, I’ll sometimes share a lead magnet at the end of my presentation and use that as a way to convert the audience over to my newsletter.

In 2020, when I did dozens of webinars, I often mentioned a checklist I created with newsletter best practices and next steps. That checklist was a lead magnet that helped drive new sign-ups for my newsletter.

46.) Syndicate your content or guest post in other publications

How do you bring your content to a bigger audience? You may want to find someone with a bigger audience — and ask them to share it with their readers.

Some newsletters will syndicate their content to another website or newsletter. That publication is free to republish the content, in part or full, as long as they include a link back to the original source’s newsletter.

Slate republished a story from Full Stack Economics, but included a link back to their sign-up page.

Some do guest posts for other publications. When I started out with Not a Newsletter, I wrote a monthly newsletter tip for another newsletter that reached a wide audience in the journalism space. They always linked back to my sign-up page. The other newsletter got some free content, and I got free promotion. It was a win for both parties.

If you write a lot for another publication, I encourage you to ask for pay — you deserve to be compensated for your time and expertise! But you should also ask that publication for a link back to your newsletter, too, at the top or bottom of your story, in your bio, or, ideally, in both places.

JR Raphael has links to his Android Intelligence newsletter both at the bottom of stories published on Computerworld and in his bio.

Paid channels

Let’s switch gears and talk about paid acquisition — spending money to promote your audience and acquire email addresses. But before we get into the opportunities, let’s set a benchmark: It usually costs about $1-2 USD to acquire an email subscriber. For newsletters that reach a wide audience, your number may be a bit lower; for niche or B2B products, you may be paying significantly more.

There’s also quite a bit of terminology to understand about the world of paid acquisition. Successful newsletters use a few different metrics to analyze their paid strategy:

Customer acquisition cost (or CAC) — The cost to acquire one email address. (Some refer to this as cost per lead, or CPL. For most newsletter businesses, these phrases are fairly interchangeable.)
Average revenue per user (ARPU) or customer lifetime value (CLV) — These are two different ways to calculate the value of a single reader. Ad-based newsletters tend to use the former, and subscription or membership-based businesses tend to use the latter.
Payback period — The length of time it’ll take you to make back your money on that new email address. Every newsletter aims for the lowest CAC, the highest ARPU or CLV, and the shortest payback period they can — that’ll lead to higher revenue in the long run.
Cost per acquisition (or CPA) — The cost to acquire a new paying customer (this could be a new paid subscriber, donor, member, event-goer, etc.). Remember: Only a percentage of your new leads will become new customers.

This tool from Beehiiv can help you calculate some of the basic costs, like CAC, LTV, and payback period.

Here’s a back-of-the-envelope example of how this might work in practice:

You’re a large newsletter focused on converting readers to paying subscribers. Your core metric is customer lifetime value (CLV). You’ve run the numbers already — the lifetime value of one of your customers is $100.
You spend $1,000 on paid acquisition, with a customer acquisition cost (CAC) of $1. Your $1,000 turned into 1,000 new email addresses.
5% of those readers become new paying subscribers, which means you’ve just acquired 50 new paying customers. Divide the total amount spent by the number of new customers, and you have a customer acquisition cost (CPA) of $20.
And as we said earlier: The CLV of one reader is $100. Multiply that by the number of new paying subscribers, and you’ve generated $5,000 in lifetime value from a $1,000 investment.

These oversimplified numbers here are hypothetical, not actual benchmarks of what you can expect to see from a paid acquisition campaign. I’d be thrilled if you saw results this good — your results are unlikely to match these numbers. But knowing these basics is the first step to understanding what you can spend when it comes to paid acquisition.

With that in mind, let’s dive into a few paid opportunities to grow your list.

47.) Run a lead ad campaign on social media or in another newsletter

If you’re just starting to spend money, start with lead ad units, which are the most straightforward type of paid acquisition. Like many other forms of paid acquisition, lead ads promote your newsletter to a specific audience and ask them to sign up.

But what sets this type of campaign apart is how you collect the email addresses. Instead of driving users to a separate landing page to sign up, you get their email address with one click.

Many social media channels allow you to run a simple lead ad campaign. Let’s say you pay Facebook to run a targeted ad pitching your newsletter. The user sees the ad in their feed. If they want to sign up, they click a “Sign up” button on the ad. When they do, Facebook collects their email address — it’s whatever email is connected to their Facebook account — and stores it in a .csv file for you to download. You can also connect Facebook (or any other social media ad platforms) to your email platform via Zapier, which lets you automatically add a user into your email database as soon as they sign up via the ad.

If you’re planning on running lead ads on Facebook, I recommend checking out Facebook’s Ad Library. You can use it to see the ads that other brands are running on Facebook, and it can be a great source of inspiration when it comes to identifying formats or CTAs that might work for your newsletter.

WBEZ runs these ads, featuring a CTA and a screenshot of their newsletter, on Facebook.

These ads don’t have to be limited to Facebook or other social media channels. You could also run these ads in other newsletters. You could pay to advertise in another newsletter and then use a one-click magic link to collect the email address without requiring a reader to leave their inbox. (Sparkloop’s one-click Magic Link tool works with several email platforms, and Beehiiv offers its own tool, too.)

Or you could join the Sparkloop Partner Network. You tell Sparkloop, upfront, what you’re willing to pay per email address, and how much you’re willing to spend per month, and verified newsletters can promote your newsletter to their audience. When they drive a new sign-up for your audience, they get paid at the preset rate.

48.) Try a content-to-capture approach

Content-to-capture effectively combines two strategies: Lead ads and registration walls.

Instead of promoting your newsletter directly, promote a piece of content. When a reader clicks through to read that content, tell them they can read it for free — as long as they first sign up for your newsletter.

Ottawa Lookout uses content-to-capture with content like, “See How Much Ottawa’s Coolest Homes Cost.”

This sort of strategy can be hit or miss. Make sure you explicitly tell the reader that they’ll be signed up for your newsletter after they click, and tell them what they can expect in your inbox. If you don’t, you may find lots of sign-ups but also a flood of unsubscribes from readers who didn’t realize they were subscribing to a newsletter.

If the ad content is strongly connected to the content readers get in the newsletter, readers may be more likely to come back regularly. For instance, if I ran one of these ads for my own newsletter, I might pay to promote a piece of content that has done well — for instance, my guide to 30 tips to improve your newsletter this year. After someone clicks through to read, I’d tell them about my newsletter and ask them to sign up. Since the reader is interested in improving their newsletter, and my newsletter features tips and advice to improve your newsletter, I’d feel pretty confident that I would keep that reader for a long time.

But the weaker the tie between content and newsletter, the less the chance of conversion. For instance, when working with local newsrooms, I’ve seen some organizations share super-clicky content as part of a content-to-capture strategy, but their newsletter focuses more on hard news or politics. There’s a disconnect between the content in the ad and the newsletter, and those readers tend to become inactive fairly quickly.

49.) Run a two-step conversion campaign

There are two key steps to this strategy: First, drive readers to a landing page or piece of content, and then ask them to sign up. To deploy this strategy correctly, make sure to use a unique landing page or add UTMs to your landing page URL so you can track conversions from specific stories.

This has become an increasingly popular strategy among newsletters, and it’s largely because of Sparkloop’s Upscribe widget. With Upscribe, the two-step conversion campaign actually adds a third step: After a reader signs up for your newsletter, you’d display an Upscribe-powered pop-up recommending additional newsletters they might like. These newsletters might be ones that are part of Sparkloop’s Partner Network — they’re newsletters that will pay you for every email address you send them.

The Future Party displays an Upscribe-powered widget after readers sign up for their newsletter.

Let’s say you spend $1 on Facebook to get a reader to sign up for your newsletter using this strategy, but once you’ve gotten their email address, you use Upscribe to recommend three additional newsletters, each willing to pay you $1 for that same email. If the average reader signs up for just one of those newsletters through Upscribe, you’ve spent a dollar to collect the initial email but then gotten paid back a dollar to drive the reader towards another newsletter. In the end, your costs would even out — you’d spend no money to grow your list through this strategy.

Many newsletters I talk to see success in exactly this way — they break even or even make money via two-step conversion campaigns. Others make back a percentage of their money, which still lowers their customer acquisition costs.

50.) Try a retargeting campaign

Retargeting is a strategy to advertise to readers who have visited your site frequently but haven’t yet subscribed to a newsletter. The idea here is that once a reader has read (and hopefully enjoyed!) your content, they’ll be far more likely to subscribe to your newsletter.

You’ll need to deploy specific pixels or tags on your website to utilize this strategy. (For more, read the Facebook documentation here or the Google documentation here.)

It’s up to you to decide what this retargeting campaign looks like. Maybe you’ll want to run a lead ad or use content-to-capture, or a two-step conversion campaign. Any of those could be targeted to a reader who’s previously visited your site.

Some organizations will even run specific ad campaigns to drive readers to their websites and then retarget them with newsletter ads after they’ve visited.

51.) Buy another newsletter

I need to carefully spell out what I mean by “buying,” because as Yanna-Torry Aspraki’s written about in her Ask a Deliverability Expert columns, buying an email list is an absolute no-no in the deliverability world.

There are email vendors out there who’ll happily sell you a list of email addresses. They’ll tell you that these are verified emails and that they can sell you a list of readers who will most likely be interested in your product.

Please, please, please: Do not buy an email list from a third party like this. Doing so can put you on the fast track to the spam folder. These email addresses are often collected in shady ways, and you haven’t gotten permission from that person to start emailing them.

One more time, louder for the people in the back: Don’t buy a random email list.

But let’s say you’re building your email audience, and you stumble upon a newsletter that covers a similar topic or has a similar audience. You could always reach out and offer to buy that newsletter and bring it under your publishing umbrella. As Alex Hazlett wrote in her guide to newsletter exit strategies:

Newsletter creators who want to continue to work on their projects could attempt to get aqui-hired, like how The Atlantic absorbed Galaxy Brain, created and helmed by Charlie Warzel. This happens even for more niche products. When Meta shuttered their newsletter platform, Bulletin, Rick Hutzell — a newspaper editor covering Annapolis, Maryland — took both his newsletter audience and his weekly column and brought it to The Baltimore Banner, a non-profit newsroom covering news and politics in Maryland.

If you go this route, make sure the original newsletter shares the news of this acquisition, and work to combine the two products. Done well, the new audience will learn more about you and why you acquired this other newsletter, and those readers will start to build a new habit around reading your newsletter.

52.) Run a referral program

Referral programs were — at one point in the 2010s — one of the most effective ways to grow an email list. Prominent newsletters like Morning Brew and TheSkimm leveraged these to build audiences in the millions of subscribers.

A referral program offers readers rewards in exchange for helping you grow your list. Some readers need a little nudge to share a newsletter with a friend — a referral program might convince a percentage of your audience to go the extra mile to share.

There are different strategies you can use with these programs. Morning Brew ran one aimed at their general audience, with the goal of getting as many readers as possible to share the newsletter with at least three friends. Hitting that tier got you access to an exclusive weekly newsletter. They also offered swag for additional referrals. A tiny percentage of power users actually hit those higher tiers, but those users referred a huge total number of new subscribers in the process. And acquiring those subscribers was a bargain — 100 new sign-ups in exchange for a sweatshirt was an amazing deal for Morning Brew.

Here were the rewards in Morning Brew’s referral program, circa 2018. Access to their premium Sunday edition — a tier requiring three referrals — drove significant growth.

TheSkimm focused on an ambassador strategy. Their goal was to identify micro-influencers — people who might have access to their own audience or community. These weren’t Kardashian-level influencers. Often, they were someone with access to an email listserv of hundreds of people, like a sorority leader at a university. They called these influencers Skimm’bassadors, and asked them to share the newsletter with their networks in exchange for rewards and access to monthly calls where TheSkimm team shared insights into how they were building the product. (There was a moment in the 2010s when I frequently saw “Skimm’bassador” listed on the resumes of recent college grads.)

Referral programs aren’t quite as effective as they used to be — it’s rare for me to chat with a newsletter that relies on them as one of their top three sources of growth. But they can still be a sizable source of growth, perhaps something that drives as much as 5-10% of your annual growth.

If you run these, think carefully about the rewards. Start first with digital offerings — maybe one or two new sign-ups gets access to an exclusive lead magnet or newsletter. Or maybe tie these to a giveaway, where referring a friend or three gets a reader access to a new prize, raffled off monthly to anyone who’s hit that referral tier.

If you give away physical merchandise, make sure you first understand the value of a subscriber, either through average revenue per user (ARPU) or customer lifetime value (CLV). If you know how much revenue you’ll generate from each new subscriber, then you can figure out which rewards make sense at which tiers.

For instance, let’s say it costs $15 to print and ship a new tote bag, and the ARPU of a new subscriber is $3. If I give away that tote bag in exchange for five new sign-ups, I’m spending $15 on the reward but only getting $15 back in value (to calculate this, multiply the ARPU times the number of email sign-ups). So I’d want to raise that rewards tier — perhaps to 10 or even 15 referrals — to make sure I’m getting enough value for the price of that tote bag.

Some email platforms, like Beehiiv or ConvertKit, offer built-in referral programs. You can also look at Sparkloop to run a referral program — they make it easy to set up a referral program and offer an integration with Printful to print and ship merch on demand.

Which growth tactics should I prioritize?

There’s a lot in this guide, so I want to close with a few specific recommendations based on the type of newsletter you have.

There’s some stuff every newsletter, regardless of category, should try. Every newsletter should have its own sign-up page (or pages), and everyone should think about putting sign-up boxes on widely-visited pages, like on story pages, or in their header, nav, or footer. Everyone should think about converting readers from social media, such as through a link in their bio.

But some stuff is specific to the category of the newsletter you operate — a big news organization will try different tactics than an independent writer with their own newsletter. So I’ve picked five strategies I think each category of newsletter should focus on from this guide:

If you’re a news organization or other publication

1.) Ask for a sign-up after a reader pays to subscribe or becomes a member.

2.) Get everything you can out of converting readers from your story pages. That means running full-screen pop-ups, toasters, exit-intent units, and house ads.

3.) Run lead gen or two-step conversion campaigns.

4.) Use a registration wall.

5.) Try giveaways, sweepstakes, quizzes, or contests.

If you’re a non-profit

1.) Ask for a sign-up after readers donate.

2.) Use events to bring in new subscribers.

3.) Run pop-ups or toasters on your story pages, and display a sign-up box on the left or right rail.

4.) Lean into user-generated content.

5.) Convert readers using petitions.

If you’ve got an indie newsletter

1.) Leverage the power of recommendation networks.

2.) Syndicate your content and leverage earned media.

3.) Run lead gen or two-step conversion campaigns.

4.) Try a welcome mat or a lead magnet.

5.) Run a referral program or giveaway.

If you’re in the ecommerce space

1.) Offer discount codes on merch.

2.) Invite readers to sign up at the point of purchase.

3.) Run full-screen pop-ups and exit-intent units.

4.) Try a giveaway, sweepstakes, or contest.

5.) Run lead gen or retargeting campaigns.

(And if you need to scroll back to the top to re-read through the full list of tactics, click here.)

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One more thought: Before you start to grow your list, understand your why

52 Ways to Grow Your List

Organic channels

1.) Build a main newsletter sign-up page

2.) Build individual sign-up pages for your newsletter

3.) Add a sign-up to your header or nav

4.) Add a sign-up box to your footer

5.) Include a newsletter icon in your list of social icons

6.) Display sign-up units within the body of stories

7.) Show a sign-up box at the bottom of stories

8.) Display a sign-up box on the left or right rail

9.) Run full-screen pop-ups for your newsletter

10.) Run exit-intent units

11.) Show a toaster unit

12.) Capture a reader using a fly-in

13.) Run a banner at the top of the page

14.) Try a welcome mat

15.) Promote the newsletter on your homepage

16.) Use a registration wall to convert readers to your newsletter

17.) Display house ads on your website

18.) Use a lead magnet

19.) Run a quiz

20.) Invite readers to vote in a “Best Of” contest

21.) Try a one-off poll

22.) Build an interactive or game

23.) Survey your audience

24.) Utilize user-generated content to grow your list

25.) Try a giveaway or sweepstakes

26.) Run a contest

27.) Use petitions to grow your list

28.) Ask for a sign-up after readers choose to subscribe, donate, or become a member

29.) Optimize specific sign-up pages for search

30.) Add a sign-up to your Link in Bio

31.) Use social media to convert readers to your newsletter

32.) Publish and share your newsletter to your network

33.) Convert readers using events

34.) Ask readers to forward your newsletter to a friend

35.) Drive sign-ups in real life

36.) “Power comment” on posts from public figures and in major groups

37.) Leverage the power of Recommendations networks

38.) Try in-newsletter cross-promotion

39.) Offer discount codes on merch

40.) Invite readers to sign up at the point of purchase

41.) Convert readers from another owned channel

42.) Try +1 messages

43.) Add a sign-up to your email signature

44.) Create consistently amazing content

45.) Leverage earned media

46.) Syndicate your content or guest post in other publications

Paid channels

47.) Run a lead ad campaign on social media or in another newsletter

48.) Try a content-to-capture approach

49.) Run a two-step conversion campaign

50.) Try a retargeting campaign

51.) Buy another newsletter

52.) Run a referral program

Which growth tactics should I prioritize?

If you’re a news organization or other publication

If you’re a non-profit

If you’ve got an indie newsletter

If you’re in the ecommerce space

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