How to grow your newsletter if you are not an ecommerce business

I talk a lot about e-commerce growth strategies with email.

But today I am going to talk about how I grow my newsletter, to hopefully give you some ideas as to how you can grow your own newsletter (assuming you are in B2B).

Method 1

Lead magnets on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Now, I will admit, I have seen this strategy lose its effectiveness over the past few months, and I think that is because of the resources I am putting out there, but here is what I do:

1. I create a free resource like this: click here

2. I then send people here to get access to that resource, to get information and their email addresses: click here

3. I then post it on LinkedIn/Twitter like this: click here

4. I encourage the reader to engage with the post to get access (this helps increase the post’s reach)

5. Rinse and repeat almost every month

This has been one of the best ways I have grown the list, but note that a lot of those coming in are not overly qualified.

Method 2

I put links across my socials for those same lead magnets. For example, on my LinkedIn profile, YouTube channel, Twitter profile, and Instagram profile, there is an evergreen link that lets people opt into my newsletter. Below is a screenshot of my profile showing exactly that:

While putting content out there, I am confident that there is a place for that content to drive poeple to a place where I can own the channel (email) and apposed to rent it (LinkedIn).

Method 3

Shout out via my YouTube.

At the start of every video, I explicitly shout out the fact that I have a newsletter. I think this actually drives more subscribers than I suspect, but I am not surreptitiously tracking this.

In every one of my videos, I have a link to a free lead magnet where people can opt into my newsletter. Right now, I am trying to grow my Skool community, but before that, I was also pinning a comment in every one of my videos that would drive people to those same lead magnets (THIS IS WHY YOUTUBE IS SO POWERFUL).

Method 4

People joining my Skool community

This is definately the smallest source of traffic, but definately drives qualified sign-ups. I have an automation that pulls people from my Skool, directly into my Beehiiv newsletter which works a charm.

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The important thing to keep in mind with any list growth pushes is the quality of the audience you are driving. It’s funny, in the list above, the quality of the audience is almost inverse relative to how much traffic we drive. Skool members are the best people to be in my newsletter, but are the lowest number of people in terms of subscription rates, and the free giveaways drive the most subs, but are least likely to convert (hope I am not hurting your feelings if you are reading this and that is you… I love that you are here).

My recommendation

It’s not really a choice of what to do, as I recommend doing all of them. Instead, it's about keeping in mind that the strategies that tend to drive more qualified subscribers for whatever you are selling are typically a lot harder to acquire but way more worthwhile. For example, a Skool member has to pay me $99 to join my Skool, which is a hard push as opposed to just subscribing for a free resource. But I will tell you now, that a Skool member is worth 100 free giveaway subscribers, because they have already given me money to solve a problem as opposed to simply their email address. In saying that though, I still like my odds of 100 regular subs with the chance of one them becoming a paid member of my Skool, or becoming a high-ticket client.

Today’s sponsor

Me! Join my Skool community to learn everything and anything about email marketing.