How Morning Brew’s referral program built an audience of 1.5 million subscribers

The inner workings of one of the most powerful growth tools in email.

I joined Morning Brew in 2017, back when our daily newsletter had a modest 100,000 subscribers. Since then, our audience has grown to 1.5 million — in just 18 months. I wanted to share how we did it — both to tell our story, but also because we’ve benefitted from others who have shared their story with us along the way.

For those who haven’t heard of Morning Brew, we’re a newsletter-first media company that offers young professionals engaging, entertaining business news.

During my time at Morning Brew, I was in a role best described as a hybrid of engineering, product, and growth positions. That’s partly out of necessity (as employee #2, you have to wear a lot of hats), and partly out of interest (I’m obsessed with growth, but also love software and strategically crafting product roadmaps).

Quick update here—I’m currently the co-founder and CEO of beehiiv, an all-inclusive email newsletter platform that helps creators seamlessly create, monetize and grow. And yes, the referral program outlined in this post is a fully-integrated feature in the beehiiv platform, so check it out!