Transcription
Welcome back to Send Better Emails.
Hello. Welcome.
The number one podcast for uh. He's doing it again. We're not the number one podcast for anything, I don't think. Uh, we might be the number one podcast for the inbox club. Yeah, we're definitely that. We'll go with that.
Um, this is the podcast that helps you to send better emails. My girlfriend said that I look like a squashy this morning. A squashy? Yeah. You know, like the drumstick squashies. I do know what they are, cuz I love squashies. Do you? Yeah, they're my favorite sweet. Well, mate, you're going to be you're going to be salivating when you finally get your get yourself into the office today. Can you stand up for us? Yeah. Yeah. Let me show you. You got like white bottoms on. Yeah. Ah, yeah. See. Squashy. I'm salivating. You're always salivating when you see me. Yeah.
So, um, yeah, I like squashies. They've got like different flavors out now though with different colors and I don't really like it when brands do that to be honest. I think I've seen like a green and and yellow. Yeah. Have I seen that up? I think it's green and pink maybe. No, like blue and pink. You'd love the green and yellow, wouldn't you? Cuz that's Norwich. Yeah. Yeah. Noridge.
Um, yeah, I don't like it when brands bring out all these like new wacky flavors. I like the traditional. I like the classics. Yeah. You know, it's like all the different gin flavors. Oh, like pink and chocolate orange and all this stuff. Like, yeah, just serve me gin. Yeah, fair enough. Well, I'm glad that I know that. I'm going to have to get a refund on the Christmas presents I bought you. If you There's no way you're organized enough to have bought Christmas presents in August. I think there's a I think if you're buying Christmas presents before Black Friday, you're psychotic. I would I would go as far as to say that that is unhealthy behavior.
And that's the demographic we're offending today. Um, welcome back. Send Better Emails. We want to talk about an underrated list growth tactic for content creators. And actually, it would it expands beyond content creators. We just think it's particularly potent when it comes to people that are content creators. Um, so don't switch off if you're not a content creator, that you will still find this interesting. We're going to try and keep it short for you as well. Snappy.
Um, but yes, if you are a content creator listening to this, uh, sit up, listen, um, fingers on lips. Yeah, for sure. And listen, this tactic is not is is not some like hidden secret that we discovered or anything like that. It's underrated because I don't think many newsletter operators recognize how powerful it is. Um, so it's this is something that if you run a newsletter in any sort of serious capacity, you probably have at least thought of or or maybe even tried before, but it's understanding just how kind of potent this tactic is and and why and some advice about how you can really maximize that. So, Jamie, do you want to do you want to unveil the tactic before we go any further? I'll I'll do the unveil. Oh, no. Sorry. I'll give my top one.
Um, yes. So, the unveiling of this underrated tactic. Drum roll. We We shouldn't have beefed it up this much. I know. Um, the the tactic we want to talk about is cross promotion through other newsletters and partnering up with people that are running newsletters. uh maybe like shout out for a shout out or something. Um, so we think that that is an incredibly underrated. It might not be I would might not be your best performing uh list growth tactic, but we want to bring it up because we think it's the most underrated.
Yeah, for sure. So this is not applicable to brands that run newsletters. I want I want to make that really clear. I would say that generally speaking, it's much harder for brands to do this. Um, it's not impossible, but I I would say that, yeah, this is really for people that are sending content through the newsletter and building a newsletter business, be it creators who want to add a newsletter to their artillery of um of content channels or to newsletter focused businesses that are, you know, like maybe you run an AI newsletter, for example, or you run a fantasy football newsletter or whatever it might be, or you run a local newsletter that shares rubbish historical secrets like Jamie and I do. Um, you know, for those businesses, cross newsletter collaboration is um, incredibly potent. Um, and I think the first reason why people are reticent to try it sometimes is because they think to themselves, well, where am I going to find an audience that's relevant to my newsletter? And the answer is in newsletters that are very similar to what you do. Um, so therefore the conclusion is, well, those are my competitors. Why would they ever want to promote me and why would I want to promote them? And the answer to that is that the way that people consume content is different to the way that they buy brands. You know, if you're buying a barbecue, you buy one barbecue, you probably don't need to buy another barbecue for 3 years, which means, you know, cross-promoting with your competitors would be a terrible idea. But people are very open to the idea of of listening to of um of reading multiple newsletters just in the same way that they're very open to the idea of listening to multiple podcasts about the same topic. You know, you people don't tend to listen to one true crime podcast and then just forever more never listen to another true crime podcast. They listen to others. They look for other stuff. Every newsletter is different unless you're literally copying a newsletter word for word. And if you are, please stop that. Um, every newsletter is different. It brings something slightly new, even if it's focused around the same topic. So, um, to just quickly diminish that concern, um, your competitors will generally be open to cross promotion because they know that their target audience are likely to subscribe to multiple newsletters around the same topic.
Nice. I think that's that's very true and I saw you've painted that picture perfectly and there's nothing I need to say to back it up. to be honest, it's um you raised a point before we before we pressed record on here that I really liked as well, which is around um the uh not everyone likes reading newsletters, but if you cross-promote in other newsletters, you jump that hurdle because you know people are already receiving and reading that medium.
Yeah. Yeah. I think this is something that's very sad and difficult for me to admit as a newsletter enthusiast, but there are some people that I talk to that just won't subscribe to newsletters. Like, it's just not a format of content that they ever want to engage with. They might be video watchers. Just in the same way that you've probably met someone that's like, I don't listen to podcasts, you know, like it's just not really a thing. and newsletters are becoming more normalized and they're obviously having a moment. Um, you know, over the last kind of three or four years, long form content is becoming more and more popular again. So, you know, I rejoice whenever people whenever someone launches a newsletter because the more newsletters that are launched, the more normal it will be for people to consume content in the inbox and for the inbox to be seen as a a place for content consumption and not just kind of sales messaging or uh, you know, annoying work queries or whatever it might be that obliges you to check your emails. So, um, yeah, but there are still plenty of people that just don't consume content over newsletters. And once you understand that revelation, you start to understand why cross newsletter promotion is so valuable and converts so disproportionately well compared to other uh promotional channels. And that's because yeah, people who are reading a newsletter and see your newsletter advert are way more likely to subscribe simply because they already like reading newsletters. That's why they're reading the newsletter you're advertising on.
Nice. And you know, examples of that might be, you know, if you have a history newsletter, um, you might want to cross-promote uh with someone else who's running a history newsletter, right? And that shouldn't be seen as as two people competing, >> you know, it's it's two people who share an audience. Um, and you know, if you have different niches, maybe one of you does uh Middle England and one of you does uh The Two World Wars, you know, or something, you know, I think that's it should be viewed as we share an audience, not we're not competing for the same audience. Um, and you know, maybe another another thing is okay, well, sports is another thing as well. So, um, you know, sports related things, uh, you know, you may be have a newsletter for the Premier League. Those people might also um, you might then speak to someone who's selling sports memorabilia or merchandise, um, or you know, maybe not selling but talking about that kind of stuff. So that's there are ways in which we can share audiences and cross-promote. that doesn't um, you know, it's almost it's it's a um, it's an organic way as well. That's what I like about it. You know, when it's an organic way to and a really cost-effective way to grab subscribers.
Yeah, it is exactly and and Jamie, you're exactly right there. There will always be overlaps of the Venn diagrams, right? Um, and and this is the thing like you it the best thing that could happen, secret knowledge, let's use Secret Norwich as an example, is now on nearly 7 and a half thousand subscribers. The best thing that could happen to Secret Norwich really is that another local newsletter starts with a really aggressive growth plan like the one that we have where they're running paid ads where they're really proactively seeking out an audience, but it's focused on say restaurant reviews in Norwich. You know, now that is different enough to us. We we focus more on history, but there's going to be a clear crossover there. there's going to be new people that discover that newsletter and then hopefully if we did collaborate discover our newsletter through that one. So, it's almost like you're you're it's almost like there are two entities working on on gaining a relevant audience rather than one. And of course, with some um newsletter um service providers, NSPs, I don't know, is that an acronym that ever gets used? We've coined it now. Newsletter service providers like Beehive, like Kit, for example. Um, it's very very easy to recommend other newsletters. They actually have like an in-built network that allows you to um subscribe to other newsletters uh should you wish. It makes it all very very easy. So let's say for example, if you subscribe to Lazy FPL, my fantasy football newsletter, you'll get recommended four other newsletters immediately after you subscribed. Um, two of which we run, by the way. Um, and we're sending subscribers to these passively because they just as people subscribe to our newsletter, we're then introducing them to another newsletter and we write a little blurb that says, you know, this is why we like this newsletter. And it's amazing how well they convert. We're probably talking about 15 to 20% of subscribers uh for Lazy FPL will then go on to subscribe to another newsletter as well. So, you know, that doesn't necessarily sound like a huge amount if you're talking like tens of subscribers, but when you start getting into hundreds and thousands of subscribers, suddenly that that 15 20% is quite a significant boost. So, um, these platforms offer loads of ways to collaborate. Um, and uh, yeah, if you're if you're newsletter focused, it's definitely uh something that you should be tapping into.
Yeah, having the right tech here is super important as well. like you can do partnerships and referral schemes and and you know whatever it is through through any platform. Um, but there are platforms that are built for this stuff. Um, and you know, I think if you're not on one of those, it's worth checking out because uh, you know, you might be paying you end up paying less money for a tool that's that's better suited to you. Um, I I would also shout out Spark Loop, which is um, sort of like a bolt-on referral system. Um, so if you are on Mailchimp, for example, which, um, a lot of newsletter operators are, but, it doesn't have built-in kind of cross-promotional tools, um, Spark Loop is sort of your, um, your cross-promotional tool that you can you can bolt onto any email service provider you like and start tapping into their extensive network of other newsletters that use Spark Loop. So, um, yeah, Sparkly, in fact, there are some Beehive and Kit users that also have Spark Loop just because it's a whole other network of newsletters that aren't on Beehive or Kit, but that are still um worth collaborating with.
Nice. Um, I was going to suggest we talk about like how how you go about doing it, but I don't want to talk about that because we can't give away too much. Um, but I think, you know, if this is a if this is a topic that you're interested in or you you want um some help kind of activating this kind of thing, just get in touch with us. We'll sit down. We'll have a chat with you. You know, talk about we'll talk about how what's worked and what you know, what hasn't worked and maybe what the best move is for you.
Yeah. What what I would say just to just to not leave you empty-handed is um, you know, if you're thinking about outreach to other newsletters, uh, find newsletters that are adjacent but not identical to yours, which should be quite easy and um, and treat them like you would any other collaboration, right? I think um, you you the idea here is um, there's there's no secret sauce necessary, of course, yes, there are tactics and there are there's Um, there's an art to finding newsletters that are actually a good fit. Um, and we can help with all of that stuff. There's also the promotion itself, like how are you phrasing it, where in the email is it going, and all of that stuff that we can help you with as well. But foundationally, like this is relationship building in the same way that any like content collaboration is. Um, so um, if you're relationship building with other newsletters, that's that's a great start.
Nice. Good stuff. Well, I think we'll wrap it up there. Promised it would be short. Um, anything else you want to add there, James? What time are we on? 14 minutes. Lovely. Yeah. Yeah. Lovely little little snappy one. Yeah.
Um, okay. Well, I'm going to come to the office now. Oh, good. About time. I'm going to come salivate over you and your outfit. Your squashy outfit. Come and give me a chew. Yeah. Right. We'll leave it at that. Thanks, everyone. All right. Bye. Bye.