Newsletters are the unsung heroes of digital marketing. Businesses have been using them for ages, but you might not realize the revolution they’ve undergone in the past year. At the recent Traffic & Conversion Summit, Perry Belcher, co-founder and CEO of Rival Brands, shared his insights into how modern newsletters can add a new revenue stream to your business.
Lessons Learned in Newsletter Production
The origin of newsletters goes back to Randolph Hurst, the founder of Hurst Publishing. He transformed the newspaper industry when he discovered that he could syndicate columns to papers in other cities without writing additional pieces.
This same principle applies to one of today’s most successful newsletters, The Newsette, which features very little original writing but pulls together links to existing content. The Newsette reached a $200 million enterprise value in only 36 months, showing that the practice Hurst pioneered still has much power.
Why Newsletters Are Valuable
This background makes it clear that newsletters are an asset, but it’s important to understand exactly why. The first reason that Perry gives is actionable data. When brands place a newsletter ad, they can quickly measure their return on advertising.
Advertising platforms have also made this a prime era for newsletters. Active advertisers go to these sites looking for places to promote their brands. You can become a mini version of Google by finding them and making money even if you don’t have anything to sell.
Choosing Platforms and Markets
To get your newsletter started, you’ll need to decide what platforms to use to build it and incorporate advertising. Perry lists several options:
Next, you’ll need to identify your market by considering some essential criteria:
- What do people care about?
- How many people care about it?
- Is it becoming more or less popular?
- How crowded is the space? In other words, how many other people are publishing in that space?
- How high value are the customers?
- Will you produce daily news or a magazine?
Perry cautions not to assume that the biggest market is the best and suggests looking for a balance of size and value.
Strategies for Successful Newsletters
Perry explains 2 strategies that have served him well with newsletters. First, he explains the 7-11-4 principle, which says that people are much more likely to buy from you if they absorb 7 hours of your content and interact with you 11 times in 4 different ways. Just as people are reluctant to move forward in a relationship until 3 dates, potential customers won’t make purchases until they get to know you better through your content.
The second strategy Perry recommends is the 1-2 punch, which involves triggering a promotional email when someone opens your newsletter. He has seen this approach increase conversions by 764% over 7 days.
Adding Subscribers
Whether you have an established or scaling business, finding subscribing is essential to your newsletter. You can buy them from a mailing list marketplace or use cross referrals through sites like Sparkloop. You can also bribe users by offering them a special promotion for subscribing.
Perry describes an alternate, zero-cost method using two-step order forms. Even if customers don’t complete a purchase, you capture their email addresses and can put them into your newsletter subscriber funnel.
Potential Revenue Streams
Newsletters can generate significant revenue with minimal effort using methods such as:
- Premium subscriptions
- Programmatic advertising
- Direct advertising
- Sponsored articles
- List rentals
- Co-registrations
- Affiliate programs
- Behavioral data
If you’re not impressed by a newsletter’s performance, you can make money by selling it. Perry recommends Duuce, Empire Flippers, and Flippa for this purpose.
Enhancing Newsletters With AI
If you’re wondering how to create a newsletter without significant staffing and financial investment, Perry says the answer is artificial intelligence (AI). It gives you the power of a giant publishing team virtually for free.
He suggests using ChatGPT with a carefully worded prompt to generate content in seconds. Try telling ChatGPT to write in the style of a certain type of writer, such as a New York Times Pulitzer Prize winner, so that it aligns with your voice.
Leverage Newsletters and More With T&C 2024
An AI newsletter is already a potential goldmine, and Perry sees big things moving forward, including interactive large language model newsletters. If you want to learn more about the future of newsletters and take advantage of his free software giveaway, we have you covered. We captured every minute of Perry’s presentation, plus hundreds of hours of other tactical content. Grab your T&C Recordings to explore it all.
