This 1 change will grow our company

Author

Jesse Pujji
July 11, 2024

Hey all, it’s Andrew — CEO of Bootstrapped Giants.

I want to show you a key part of how we're turning this newsletter into a business.

Starting this week, we're moving this newsletter to beehiiv, a platform designed to grow newsletter subscribers and revenue.

We spent weeks evaluating this move because a big part of this company's success depends on our email software. We went with beehiiv because no other email software matched their ability to help us 1) grow this newsletter's subscribers, 2) understand our audience's needs, and 3) start selling effectively.

I'm going to walk you through the features we'll use. On top of that, if you sign up with my partner link, I'd like to invite you to a small chat group I'm creating for people building their businesses on beehiiv.

We've been expanding our team to help us improve the quality of the Bootstrapped Giants' newsletter and take it beyond a simple newsletter. To continue to grow, we'll need revenue. That's where these two features come in.

Surveys

It may seem minor, but this need is what drove me to switch to beehiiv.

After someone signs up for our newsletter, I want to know how we can help them. Our goal is to serve. How can we do that if we don't know readers’ problems and needs?

I don't want to get too in the weeds, but beehiiv is the only software I know of that lets us easily ask subscribers questions after they join.

This feedback will shape the content we put out and the products we offer.

Post-Subscription Sale

This is something that Jesse introduced me to, based upon his marketing experience at Ampush.

We're going to buy ads to drive people to our landing page for newsletter sign-ups. To help offset the ad costs, we'll use post-registration offers.

Frankly, I'm not sure what those offers will be. We'll start by experimenting with our own products, and also try out some of our sponsors' products.

Either way, we need a platform that allows us to do that. beehiiv makes it easy.

Our first 14,000 newsletter subscribers came largely came from readers of Jesse's Tweets who clicked the sign-up link.

We want to expand our reach to those unfamiliar with Jesse and those who don't yet understand the potential success of a bootstrapped company.

beehiiv excels at this. They call themselves, "The newsletter platform built for growth."

I won't use all their growth features (there are too many), but these are the ones I plan to implement.

Referral Program

Shaan Puri did this really well when he ran The Milk Road newsletter. He offered rewards for subscribers who shared his newsletter. It led to over 60,000 subscribers.

This is what it looked like (though he experimented with different rewards):

I'm not sure how this will do for us, but I want to try it, and beehiiv allows me to.

Recommendations

For the last 3-4 years, a popular growth strategy for newsletters has been by recommending other newsletters. When a reader signs up, they'll get a suggestion like, "Since you joined my newsletter, you might enjoy this one, too."

All the subscriber has to do is press a button and they're subscribed.

I want to work with a other newsletter providers to promote our newsletter. beehiiv offers two solutions: 1) they can match me with newsletters for paid features, and 2) I can ask my friends with newsletters to feature us.

Jesse gets a lot of podcast interview requests. I started asking the podcasters, "Would you mind linking to our newsletter when you email your audience about Jesse's episode?" Every single one of them has enthusiastically said, "Yes!"

I want to supercharge those links.

That's what Magic Link is about. Instead of telling the podcasters' readers, "Click this link and enter your email address to subscribe," we can say, "Click this link and you'll be subscribed instantly."

One thing Jesse wants me to focus on is rigor around data. His personal user guide says that 1) any problem can be solved with numbers and 2) while he might be casual about a lot of things, he's not casual when it comes to data.

Here is how we plan to use that data:

3D Analytics

3D Analytics is beehiiv’s analytics package that shows opens, clicks and unsubscribes. But frankly, every email software I evaluated offered those features.

beehiiv goes beyond that with filters by campaigns, demographics and more.

Truthfully, I'll have to try it to understand how I'll use it.

The part I'm most excited about is cohort analysis. Remember that live workshop Jesse and I did with Sam Parr? About 1,000 new people joined this newsletter because of that.

But I can't figure out if those people are as active as our other subscribers. For example, how do their open and click rates compare? Cohort analysis will let me do that.

This feature will be key as we run more live workshops and invest in subscriber growth.

Polls

Here's my problem. After an email goes out, I'll know what % of our readers opened it. But I can't tell if you liked the email or if it was useful to them.

Open rates suck as a measure of success for a newsletter. They encourage clickbait subject lines that may get readers to open, but ultimately harm their relationship with the brand.

That's where polls come in. Sam Parr used them masterfully at The Hustle newsletter. At the bottom of each issue he gave people a way to offer their feedback, like this:

If you want to grow a new email newsletter with beehiiv (or move an existing one), use my partner link for a free trial and discount. And let's chat. I'm forming a small chat group of beehiiv users where I'll share what's working for us and help you grow your newsletter.

beehiiv is ideal for anyone looking to boost their newsletter, including:

  • People with social followings wanting a closer connection with their audience

  • Companies that want to grow and nurture their leads via email

  • Businesses with a teach-first marketing philosophy

But naturally, anyone who builds an email list can build on beehiiv, just like the way we are here at Bootstrapped Giants.

-andrew