Disney’s Newsies (1992)

Are there only 12 Creative Ways To Grow Your Newsletter Subscribers? 🤔

Even if you create the most well-researched, beautifully designed, amazing, insightful, instructive, and inspiring content on the planet you will eventually reach a plateau in your organic newsletter growth. Unless your name is Oprah or ends in Kardashian there are limits to the reach of your organic audience — but even then, what comes after 50 million Instagram followers? Who is asking these tough questions?? I digress.

Before I go any further, I should point out the obvious. Before you take a deep dive into tactics and tools to achieve a desired goal or outcome, it’s necessary to take a step back and think about the bigger picture. I assume you have thought deeply and answered the following:

1. What is a newsletter?
2. What is my newsletter about?
3. Who is this newsletter for?
4. Where do those people get their news already? How do they stay informed? Whom do they trust?
5. What makes my newsletter unique or different?

If you haven’t spent time digging deeper into the questions above, please do so before you continue.

I also glossed over something in the first paragraph of this post. These three key words, “organic newsletter growth” mean that up until this point you have not spent actual money on traditional marketing and promotion of your newsletter. You may have spent lots of time creating your newsletter, which can be considered a currency, but zero 💰💰 ← money bags have been thrown into the wind.

Now, on with the show. I have done your basic Google search, which yielded these top notch listicles:

Most of them say a variation of the same few options, which are distilled below. Despite the number of ideas listed in those flashy SEO headlines, I only count 12 truly different suggestions:

1. Leverage your personal and professional networks. Make sure everyone in your planetary circle on Earth knows about your newsletter. That’s the general tip. But if, like me, you actually care about your personal relationships, I would consider question 3 from above: Who is this newsletter for? And target your audience appropriately.
2. Cross-promote in other people’s newsletters. I share your link; you share mine. Straightforward.
3. Add annoying pop ups to your website that implore people to subscribe to your newsletter whenever they visit, click, hover, scroll, or even just mentally consider any piece of content on your website or social feeds.
4. Collect email addresses at offline events like trade shows and conferences and import them into your database. Protip: Don’t walk around with a clipboard. Take some time to figure out a better/fun/exciting way.
5. Leverage paid search ads to link to a landing page with an email sign-up.
6. Host a co-marketing offer with a partner — like an ebook, webinar, contest, or giveaway — and ask them to promote the registration to their audience. After it’s released, swap leads.
7. Host your own giveaway or contest.
8. Don’t forget good ole fashioned traditional marketing, like direct mail, and take your cyberbullying skills into the real world. Give people an opt out by encouraging them to sign up for your newsletter instead. Win/win!
9. Host an event online and collect email addresses at registration. Events that occur online can be called webinar, hangout, workshop, conference, talk, chat, LIVE, and can occur daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, centennially (whatever cadence works for you).
10. Add a QR code to your print marketing material that people can scan to opt in to your newsletter. Hi, nice to meet you! Take a card.
11. Host your own offline, in-person events like meetups, conferences, hackathons, educational panels, etc., and collect registrations online using email addresses.
12. Add buttons EVERYWHERE possible with a Call To Action to Subscribe to Your Newsletter Today! Before it’s too late. Because once you hit 50 million subscribers the list is maxed out. And you’ll be relegated to the “side” list along with every woman Usher has ever dated or married.

Aaaaaaaand this brings me to YOU. Do you think this list is exhaustive? I would absolutely love your input or suggestions on creative ways to get the word out about the amazing newsletter you have that I simply don’t know about yet. All thoughts and ideas are welcome. There are no wrong answers (unless you didn’t read a single word written above, which I would find strange because why would anyone skip down to the last sentence and just start responding?) 🙏 ← Thank you in advance!