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Discover how the best media brands and solo operators are winning at newsletter growth & monetization.
Hosted by SparkLoop's cofounder Louis Nicholls and SparkLoop's newsletter nerd, Dylan Redekop—we take you behind the scenes and share the strategies, trends, and tactics you need to know to build your email audience and revenue.
Featuring exclusive interviews with the smartest media experts and operators out there today. Including from the Hustle, Morning Brew, Workweek, The Pour Over, and more.
Ep 15 - Manny Reyes
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Louis Nicholls: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Send and Grow podcast. I'm your host, Louie Nichols. In my day job at Spark Loop, I spend all my time helping the best newsletter operators and media brands in the world to grow their audiences. So I get to see firsthand what growth tactics, strategies, and channels actually work, which ones you should copy, and what mistakes you should avoid.
And now with this podcast, You get that access to. Every week I sit down with a different guest from industry experts to successful operators, and we go deep on the stuff that you need to know so you can become really effective at growing and monetizing your email audience.
Today I'm joined on the podcast by Manny Reyes. Manny is one of the smartest newsletter growth specialists that I get to work with as a client at spark Loop from driving hugely successful paid audience growth at Morning Brew to his new position at one of the most exciting
[00:01:00] media companies of the moment Workweek. Manny, I'm so excited to talk newsletter growth today and to get your take on what's working and what's not in 2023.
First, though, can you give the audience a quick intro to you and how you
Manny Reyes: got here today? Sure thing. Yeah, so my, I guess break in into the media industry. Started off back at Morning Brew, joined the team there back in the late fall slash winter of 2020. So most of my time there, as soon as I got there, was spent on paid acquisition.
So it was a very nimble team when I joined. And then once I left, it was, 20 plus people team on the growth team themselves. So it was good to see the growth from there. But overall, like ever since I hopped into Morning Brew, it was, you know, high six figures a month on ads that was distributed. Mainly I would say like three buckets, Facebook ads, once we discovered TikTok, ads went bullish on those.
And then some influencer marketing as well. So those were the top three buckets when I got there. Daily newsletter was at little over, I think two and a half million subs. Right [00:02:00] after I left or right, you know, around the time of MI Lynn was a little over 4 million subs, so I could say we did a lot in that time, like almost two years.
So I spent close to two years there and at some point last year I had DMed Adam Ryan, the CEO of workweek, just because I was, I. Kind of curious in Workweek and wanted to see like what he was up to, how he was thinking about growth for tons of creators, this and that. And he, then nothing came outta that conversation.
You know, we, we chatted and like trying to figure out like what's, you know, what we could do with like, helping each other or whatnot. So nothing huge came out of it. He introduced me to Jay, who's the head of growth here at Workweek, and then we all started chatting even more about, you know, certain user tactics, what's working, what's not.
Long story short, a couple months later Jay had told me about this senior growth manager position open at Workweek and he at this point knew exactly like what I could do in terms of paid acquisition for newsletters and that's what he was looking for. So yeah, it was pretty, pretty seamless and I took the leap and, and that's how I ended up here at Workweek.
So let's talk a little
Louis Nicholls: bit more about the, the differences between the two. Cuz Morning Brew is [00:03:00] very brand focused. They do have different newsletters now, obviously, but you think of that sort of traditional one daily newsletter. All of the ones they do have are very related, right? There's, there's overlap between the audiences, and then workweek is a huge array of, of creator driven newsletters.
Some of them have absolutely nothing, at least on the surface, that I can tell to do with each other. What's the difference in, in terms of like, I. How you approach growing those.
Manny Reyes: So the biggest difference I think would be very simple. And I would say that's B2C versus b2b. And I say that because at Morning Brew I worked on the B2C growth side of things.
So I never really touched Marketing Brew. I never really touched hr, brew, all those within the morning Brew ecosystem. I mainly worked on the Daily newsletter, money Scooped, the financial newsletter. We had sidekick at one point, emerging Tech Brew was B2C at some point. So I mainly touched those and so.
Again, strictly b2c. It was just really focusing on like the consumers that you know for the Daily newsletter are, you know, someone who is somewhat interested in business, [00:04:00] somewhat interested in tech, or somewhat interested in finance, and they think the Wall Street Journal is a little too boring for them, but they like reading the News Morning Brews for them.
So that's how you can see pretty broad audience there that we could get to in terms of like the millions coming to Workweek. Yeah. Like you mentioned, a lot of them don't have anything to do with each other. All of these creators are B2B creators within their own respective industry, so, Now my day-to-day, when I think about messaging for.
The ads that I'm putting out there for each of these creators. It's not just very broad how I was thinking of it, you know, at Morning Brew with like anyone who would like enjoy, you know, this model of news coming to them every morning at Workweek, I'm thinking about, you know, how can I get as many marketers as possible to subscribe to.
Market millennials or folks in leadership roles, app media companies to subscribe to Perpetual Adam's Newsletter, you know, so on and so forth. Social media managers, social social files. Those are, you know, very specific, you know, niches of audiences that I'm trying to get to, these specific newsletters. And so, yeah, it's much more granular [00:05:00] thinking, obviously, because, you know, you probably know as well as anyone that b2b.
Advertising CPMs are much higher than B2C advertising CPMs. So I guess part of my job on the back end of things is making sure that I can, I guess, make, or I guess, yeah, making sure that those B2B CPMs are justified by acquiring the right audience for these newsletters. And that all comes down to. Just making sure that we're not just getting anyone and everyone to be able to subscribe to these news.
You know, they're able to, but that's not who we're spending our, our dollars for in order to acquire, you know? So I wanna
Louis Nicholls: dig into that in, in a second, into how you, how you do that sort of validation and qualification and make sure you're, you're only spending on, on the good ones. But one question that I had about like the difference between Morning Brew and let's say Workweek.
Is, yeah. You have that B2C and, and the B2B distinction, which we've talked about is, is super important. Mm-hmm. But the other distinction that I notice is Morning Brew as a brand and, and workweek as, as individual creators. Yeah. I'm guessing that must have some [00:06:00] sort of influence on like the, the impact of the messaging and like, I don't know, like if you sign up for Morning Brew Sure.
People, after they read it, they probably know the name of the, the editor and the, the person who writes the the morning newsletter and stuff, but they probably, when they sign up, they have no idea who those people are. Right. Yeah. Whereas I imagine, I might be completely wrong on this, but I imagine that for a lot of the creators that you're working with at Workweek, They know the person and they can imagine their voice.
They can imagine what they look like probably in a lot of cases before they ever even sign up for that person's newsletter. So does that play a, a big difference,
Manny Reyes: do you think? It does, yes, and I'm, I'm glad we're touching on it because it's, it's actually something that I, I noticed very early on, before I joined Workweek, as I, I noticed that like more creators were, you know, not just going into like their short form video content and went up, they were creating these newsletters also, um, or I should say, I.
Really noticed it when going back to Morning Brew, when they acquired money with Katie. She was in that personal finance industry of, of her own and like [00:07:00] just had an audience of her own already. And I could tell very clearly that her audience was just so like knee deep into. Her content, like there is actually hundreds of finance creators out there.
But I could tell just from the comments and you know, how many people were like clicking on specific links or CTAs that she would put out there that this audience was die hard Money with Katie fans. And that's kind of how I see it nowadays with like a lot of Workweek readers where. They may only be getting their marketing content specifically from Daniel Murray who writes marketing millennials because they trust him so much.
And again, like they know his voice, they know all this and that, and it's becoming more of a personal connection. So yes, it does play a part in it. I think it all goes back to Adams saying, I don't know if it's coined or, or if he like, Brought it up at some point, just outta nowhere. But he always says people follow people not brands.
And that was like one of the main things behind, like a driving force behind Workweek. And so yeah, it's, it's been [00:08:00] very, very interesting to see it play out. I would say that in, in terms of like how it affects my day-to-day and like decisions for that, I would say that on, just like on the surface level observation that or tactic that I do with this is that.
I've seen it perform much better when I put together ads, you know, video ads, U G C style ads, rather than having some other creator speak about it. Testimonial style, U G C testimonial style about the newsletter and about them and what they do. I've seen them work a lot better when the creator of that newsletter themselves are the ones recording the ads and speaking about it themselves.
Like, I write it, this is what I'm gonna show you, the kind of thing. So there hasn't been a huge analysis on my end in terms of like how that's worked out, but I have seen it. I've. I will say this, I've never seen it fail. We've done a lot of video and you do see ads both at Morning Brew and at Workweek when I, when I've been doing them.
And I've never seen it fail when the creator's the one doing the ads, and I've always seen the CPA's been hit consistently. So I guess that's one thing to say that like the [00:09:00] connection is, like you said, it's already there before they even subscribe to the newsletter, just with a little bit of value that the creator is able to.
You know, put out there, whether it's in the form of an ad or in the form of like some content that they put on LinkedIn or Twitter or whatnot. Yeah. Well,
Louis Nicholls: I'm, I'm gonna re derail us even more here. So, I'm sorry about this, Manny. Um, well, let's say cuz it's something I, it's a topic that's come up a lot with newsletters that, that we work with at SparkLoop recently, which is more on that creative focus side saying, well, can.
You know, like traditional paid ads work for us because the flow is so different in terms of like, oh, this person's followed me on social media for six months. They like my posts, and at some point they sign up for their newsletter. Right? And they, they're comfortable with that. They know that. They know they're gonna convert and be good subscribers.
And then they're super worried about like adding in paid growth. Let's say that you are working with a creator who has a, a decent dish. You know, they have an audience of their own good on camera, they have a newsletter. Now the newsletter's going well, and they're like, look, I wanna grow this faster. I wanna do some paid stuff.
Like where would you start in terms of like just pure [00:10:00] performance
Manny Reyes: growth? I would definitely tell that creator to get a little bit comfortable in front of the camera and instead of paying someone on. Five or paying someone else to be on camera, I would definitely push them to get in front of the camera themselves, have someone help them out with like writing scripts in terms of like, you know, there there's like the mechanics of a good ad still, where it's like, I'm, I'm not gonna say that.
Like if the creator themselves don't have like the paid acquisition chops and you know, the experience and all that, definitely get someone on that side of things to help you write a great script for the ad and make sure it performs overall so. The only thing that the creator has to do is get in front of the camera, say these lines, a little bit of editing, and you have some really, really high potential ads that can be put out into the wild from there.
So that, that's where I'd start there in terms of like paid acquisition. The other thing is, If they aren't comfortable in front of that camera, I would say to try out first person point of view messaging in in their ads [00:11:00] also. That's one thing that I've also encountered here. So at Workweek we do both static ads and video ads.
We do like a blend of both and whichever works. Those are our winners and those are the ones that we're putting our dollars behind. But we've seen it on the static side of things where if it's still that, That creator speaking through the ad, you know, first person point view were saying like, I will teach you this.
You know, this is why I started this newsletter. The, the, that kind of messaging, it's also performed really, really well. So I would say in terms of like the creative and how to approach that from the get-go, that's one thing that I, that I would suggest. And at the end of it all, like why I went straight to the creative and like how you would produce that is because I think that's your most important element in paid acquisition, whereas, Sure.
Media buying is one thing where you can put together a campaign. Most people nowadays can go to YouTube for an hour, hour and a half and figure out Facebook ads. But if you don't have good creative, if the messaging isn't there, just don't expect that you work. You're, you're definitely li [00:12:00] Lighting.
Lighting your dollars on fire for sure.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah. Well, let's talk about not lighting dollars on file. Let's talk about how we, uh, how we figure out whether a subscriber is worth paying for, I guess or not. Yeah. Cool. How are you qualifying that on, on, on your end? What does, what does that process look like?
Manny Reyes: So, Uh, the, there's a lot of backend, like audience analysis, analysis that can be done after you subscribe or after you acquire a subscriber or a cohort of subscriber.
You say like, you know, the people that we subscribe or that we acquired in January through Facebook ads, that's one specific cohort that we would wanna look at over the course of these next couple of weeks and these next couple of months to see, you know, at some point did they drop off faster than.
These subscribers that we're acquiring in February dropped off. Are they more engaged? This and that. And there's so many factors at play. Sometimes Louis, that like it. It's tough to really, really pinpoint one or two things that really caused certain things to go up or down. You know, for January [00:13:00] you could expect mixed results, mainly because January is one of those months where a lot of people go really heavy into paid acquisition for ad spend in terms of newsletter acquisition because they know everyone's on that New year, new me High.
I'll read newsletters this year and I'll. Be smarter because I, I'm reading these newsletters this year. So that's one thing where like, you know, you, it, it's gonna be like the gym thing. Like people will start reading them and then they're, they're gonna drop off by February or something. So that might be a tough cohort to look at.
But in terms of like Workweek, I would definitely say like metrics that we look at on the backend would be open rate. And just seeing over time, you know, if, if things are. If, if for some reason we are three xing our budgets and we start seeing that the open rates are going down, can basically figure out that if the main source of acquisition for this specific news that are, that's having the open rate go down is just paid acquisition, that there has to be something on the paid acquisition side of things that we can change up, be it the messaging or just some other, [00:14:00] the targeting, some other factor that we can change up just slightly.
Where then we can start figuring out from that timeframe on did the open rate go, go up because of these changes. And it's not something at the end of it all where we can say, after we do an analysis that within that we expect things to change within, you know, three to five business days. It, it takes weeks, it takes a lot more of like an, you know, ads spend and investing and more acquisition to like really, really have a good sample size to compare each other or each of them with.
And yeah, I, I don't know if I'm answering your question directly on like how we, you know, say if it's the, the right subscriber that we're spending on, but it, it, it definitely comes down to almost having it not be a question after we acquire the subscriber, because we're doing our due diligence before we acquire the subscriber on our messaging and on our ads, to make sure that it's very, very clear that you should only subscribe to this newsletter if you're a social media manager and you should only subscribe to this [00:15:00] newsletter.
If you're in marketing or in FinTech, et cetera, et cetera. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. I I I
Louis Nicholls: love that. That's, that's awesome. So thinking about like setting budgets for, for paid growth or for perfor for performance, like budgets mm-hmm. How do you approach that? Are you basing that off, like, oh yeah, you tell me.
Manny Reyes: So I, I think if you were able to get some of our revenue folks at Workweek here, here on your podcast, they'd probably be much better explaining this to you. Adam, uh, Ryan himself, who knows? I, I, I think he. May or may not have been on this podcast before I saw someone I work with, but the unit economics of media is definitely something that like is a skill of its own.
I would say people who understand it really, really well can definitely take any newsletter from one level of revenue to a whole different level of revenue just by knowing those unit economics there. And so I've been in the trenches at Morning Brew and here at Workweek on that side of things, and it really comes down to understanding like the payback [00:16:00] period, I guess in English.
You could probably go to some article about the Milk Road and their latest acquisition and how they, how they started justifying why they should put paid ads behind their model and started doing those. And it was mainly just because they started figuring out that. Within one, two or three months of acquiring that subscriber and getting, you know, sponsors to the newsletter, they will make that money back.
And so that's a very simple way of, of explaining it, but that's kind of how I've been seeing it for most acquisitions, for most success. Successful newsletters and newsletter operators that are scaling through paid ads is that they understand at one point they will be able to make their money back on a subscriber based on, you know, the current revenue projections.
Okay. And then from there they're like, okay, if we can make this much in this, you know, in this timeframe moving forward, then there really is no rhyme or reason not to three x extra four x our [00:17:00] budget. If you know, the revenue projections will be three extra four x that if we can actually get our list size from.
20,000 to 50,000 and, you know, sell the, the ad sponsor a lot more. So that's kind of how I, I've seen it play out where revenue definitely affects, going back to like the paid ads budget most of the time, you know, some people do just take a bet and, you know, start really not assuming, but hoping for the best that the unit economics are right.
And actually will work out in, in the end where they're just a little too early in, in paid ads. But again, the assumption is there and if. They have good people on their, on the sales side of things that can sell sponsored as the revenue will come in there. And it's just a loop in terms of like how things get reinvested, reinvested back into the business from my point of view and how I've seen it, I think somewhere between.
And don't quote me on this because it, it could be different. With so many external factors, probably 30 to 50, 40 to [00:18:00] 60% of revenue that's coming in can be reinvested back into growth. And a lot of that can be put into that bucket of paid high position and that and ads.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah. I mean, I hate to, to do this, but we are recording, we, we are gonna quote you on that.
Manny Reyes: That's right. But don't, don't, don't, don't write a whole article about me saying that one line, you know what I mean? It's, it's a
Louis Nicholls: fact. We're gonna use you as the, the main person. We're gonna say, how much of your growth budget should you inve? How much of your revenue should you invest back into growth?
Well, these 10 execs say this, but Manny says this, so. Right, right, right. Why are these 10 execs wrong? What does Manny know different? No,
Manny Reyes: that's, that's all exactly. Like I said, there's so many external factors that affect this, like, I would say one factor is like the macroeconomic situation. Before, when I started hearing those numbers, it was when it was like a very bullish market.
Advertisers were just spending like wildfire. This time around, going into this year could be a lot different where, you know, we all know that the, one of the first things that gets cut in a recession is marketing dollars. So that's definitely gonna just [00:19:00] counter what, what I just said in terms of like putting so much percentage of, of revenue back into the marketing side of things, you know?
Louis Nicholls: Well, I dunno. I, I think there's, I think there's a lot of truth. I think it's. We did at, at Spark Loop this, this past month. We did two master classes and we did one on how to go from like a hundred subscribers to 10,001 from how to go, like from roughly 10,000 up to like a hundred thousand or maybe even up to a million.
Right? Yeah. Um, and what should you be, be looking at doing in 2023? And on the hundred to a thousand to 10,001, it was very like tactics focused. There was a lot of, oh, well, think referrals, think cross promotions, think maybe Facebook ads. Think, think this, and so on. Mm-hmm. And everyone was like, oh, I love this.
This is so exciting. And then we got to the, the, the second one, which is more about like, how do you scale a really big newsletter and like, what's really important? And like the main two points we were saying were number one. How can you earn more per subscriber? And number two, how can you get more of that money earlier from the subscriber, basically?
Right? Like, how can you reduce the payback period? And everyone was like, [00:20:00] oh, this isn't fun and exciting. This is just work. This is just
Manny Reyes: Google Sheets at this point. Yeah, exactly.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah. So it's funny how much of that growth doesn't actually come from like, Well, it obviously depends on having a really good growth team, but a lot of it isn't like in the hands of the growth team.
Right. You have to, everything else has to
Manny Reyes: to work as well. Yeah. I, I definitely don't think I would be as confident in the budgets that, that I'm managing and how they're being deployed and how bullish we are on, on certain creators and whatnot. If I didn't know that. Adam had a killer revenue and strategy and ops team on the back end of things.
Always again, just on the daily in Google sheets and running numbers, you know, reviewing the payback period and all that stuff. Knowing that my job affects those numbers at the end of the day and over time I know that like if something I is is shifting on their end, they'll let me know. Things will shift on my end, but they go hand in hand.
There's definitely a need for, you know, someone like myself and others that are [00:21:00] really, really good at paid acquisition and can execute on, on the strategy and the ads and the creative. But they're definitely, again, all goes back to like the economics of media and making sure that, you know, someone on your team also understands that really well to continue to invest, you know?
Louis Nicholls: Yeah, totally. Totally. So let's talk about the numbers then. Let's say that I am very generous and I say you can look at three different KPIs or metrics or numbers to do with growth. What are the three that you are choosing to keep? You gotta delete everything else in the spreadsheet. You don't get to see it.
Just three. What are, what are you keeping? Definitely the cpa. So cpa, just very quickly, cost per acquisition, like what you're paying to acquire a subscriber, right.
Manny Reyes: Correct. Cpa. I've heard cpl, all those cost per lead. Yeah. So yeah. Cpa, cpl, I, I like to say it's North Star because at the end of the day, you have to set a target for your, for your cpa, for any newsletter, whether it's, you know, b2c, B2B should set a target for your newsletter.
And that target is gonna go back to like your assumption or your revenue projections and [00:22:00] all that to see, you know, how fast we can make back. If your target is $2 to require a subscriber or $10 to require a subscriber, how fast can you make that back? And then you know, you start figuring out, you do the math, it'll be quick math on like, if you are fine with making it back in four months, you may be able to afford a little bit more for that subscriber and whatnot.
But at the end of the day, like setting that target, that's what I'm always trying to reach. We set target CPAs for all of our creators here at Workweek, and that is what I'm always focused on, on the day-to-day to make sure that that is being reached. If it's not, then the rest is the rest is his, not history, but it's one of those things where.
It, it, it will be more of a, of a domino effect in terms of the other metrics that that start happening if that CPA isn't reached from the get-go. So, you know, target CPAs, they may change also if we, if you end up finding out that your audience is just a little bit more costly to acquire, especially if you're in the B2B newsletter space, then.
You start figuring out that [00:23:00] it's not really realistic to think that you're going to acquire a director of sales to your sales newsletter for two 50. Like it's, it's just not gonna happen. There's not that many of them out there, and so I. You will probably have to spend a little bit more to acquire, you know, audiences like that.
But yeah. Cpa is that, that first one we said another two or three. Oh no, you only
Louis Nicholls: get two more. Not, not three. Only get just
Manny Reyes: two. Only get two more. Yeah. Yeah. I would say, and th this might, you know, it could definitely spark up a debate if, if we had more people in the room with us, right Natalie? But it could definitely spark up a debate about open rate.
I would say open rate is one of those things that like I. I definitely still respect and kind of see, you know, where things fluctuate with it. But I say like, it could spark up a debate because it has sparked up some stuff on Twitter where it's, we know, and I know specifically that it's not the end all be all anymore.
Before it sort of was and, and people claim that open rates were directional back [00:24:00] then, but at the end of the day, they were. Close to the end all be all in terms of a backend metric that people were following and because of Apple's privacy beacons on emails and whatnot. They're not, and they weren't to the T before, but they're definitely not to the T now kind of thing in terms of how they're being reported through your E S P, but they are directional.
I will say that I, I do see that even nowadays there are still plenty of newsletters that are seeing. A below average open rate, even though you know it may, it may still be inflated because of Apple's privacy beacons and whatnot, but you can definitely, definitely tell the difference between a quality newsletter and a not so quality newsletter just based on the open rates that they're seeing.
So I do think that they are directional. And we can clear to see when, you know, there's differences between newsletters there. So again, it's one of those things where like if we see a newsletter with a lower open rate than others and it's constantly staying flat or doing worse, or not improving over time, then it's, you know, when we can.
[00:25:00] You know, step back a little bit more, we should, you know, this is something that like can be done on like a weekly, biweekly, monthly basis on doing more cohort analysis and seeing if it's people that you're acquiring from Facebook ads or people that you're acquiring from TikTok ads that are really affecting that open rate negatively or positively.
So really just looking at all your, your channels in terms of acquisition. So I'd be one of them. And I would say like, it's one of those that like, I would prioritize and get rid of all the other metrics on, on the, on the Google sheet. It, it'd be one of those for me on the paid acquisition side of things, because again, it, it's directional and you can really tell just on like the surface level of engagement with the open rate.
Whether you're acquiring and great engaged readers or not, or if your ads are just like almost too sexy and acquiring just anyone and everyone and it's not really, you know, paying dividends in terms of like engagement for your newsletter, I. So that's the second one. And the third metric I think would be a little bit [00:26:00] more granular and not something that most newsletter operators, I think do nowadays in looking at the click rates on the newsletters.
And that's really to just further measure the engagement levels of the audience and see if they are actually interacting with the content that you're putting out there and or the sponsored ads. Because at the end of the day, if you're. Audience isn't engaging with your ads, it, it's not gonna look good for you in the long term.
You know, you're not gonna get your, your sponsors back, you know, month over month, all this and that. So, sure, there is something to be said about when you open up a newsletter. All you want to do is read the newsletter, get in, get out, kind of thing. But there's also something to be said about making sure that you have that audience that is the right audience and is qualified enough to be on your, to be on your list and actually support your sponsors and, you know, dive deeper into certain creation of content that you put in there also.
So that would be the third one. And again, you know, click rates is, it's one of those things where the data infrastructure does have to [00:27:00] be there on, on your end, not just through your E S P, to really, really measure that and segment audiences. But I know that there's ways to do it there. There's definitely ways to get together a data infrastructure if it's not already offered through your E S P.
And if you're investing heavily in ads, I definitely would say that like the data infrastructure should be there just to further and further measure the engagement levels and then figure out if you're spending correctly or not.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah, love it. So we have click through rates. We've got open rates. And we've got CPAs.
Correct? Yeah. Love it. Awesome. So let's move on. Let's talk a little bit about, like, I, I always like to do a, not really an experiment, but more of like a hypothetical. So let's just say, we'll pick on me this time. So we'll say I, I'm not allowed to work on Spark Loop anymore. Spark loop goes under, something happens.
People don't need referral programs. They need to go their newsletters. It's, it's all gone. We don't need it anymore. So I decide I'm gonna grow a. A newsletter telling people about, you know, new a newsletter for newsletter operators [00:28:00] on how to, I don't know, grow and monetize your newsletter, for example.
Mm-hmm. Right. So new newsletter and I want to get to a hundred, a thousand, 10,000. Probably not a million, but maybe a hundred thousand subscribers and I kidnap you and make you do that for me. Basically what, what
Manny Reyes: are you doing? I think to start off sp in terms of like the research side of things, I would definitely try to figure out what all the other people in this specific space that, that you just mentioned are are doing.
Because there is a good amount of them at this point within the media industry that I really know the uni economics really know growth and just start figuring out what they're talking about and at the same time, Combining that with your own knowledge, louisie of, you know, newsletter operation growth and monetizing of whatnot.
Combining that all into just. Tons and tons of different forms of content that, you know, we could use on, you know, publishing on LinkedIn and Twitter and start putting CTAs out there. So I would [00:29:00] say that if I'm not the, the expert on this, I don't know if you are, but if anyone can be the expert on writing good Twitter threads and then throwing a CTA tweet at the end of that thread with a link.
The subscribers will be coming in, and I can say that confidently because I've seen it happen every single day here at Workweek wi with the creators that, you know, they put out their content, their threads and you know, LinkedIn stuff also. But that would be one thing I'd, I'd advise on for sure, is making sure that we can put out tons of content out there, you know, before we start doing paid and then, From there, go to LinkedIn and then figure out how many, you know, newsletter operators we can get from there.
LinkedIn, I, I'm not a hundred percent on in terms of like executing on it. There's plenty of people that are, Daniel Murray is one of them who, who writes the marketing millennials where they know specific tactics, specific strategies and content strategies to make sure that the algorithm. Goes in, in, in their favor where it's not just engagement, but it's just tons and tons of [00:30:00] impressions that come through.
And that obviously like funnels into some engagement. And then, you know, one link from there can turn into hundreds of subscribers Also, if the content is relevant enough and people would be more and more interested in, you know, your, your kind of newsletter. A quick side note, I would definitely, if people are, are gonna take this and run with it on how they would go about LinkedIn, I definitely recommend looking up someone.
His name is Justin Welsh on LinkedIn. I think he writes the Saturday solopreneur newsletter. I would definitely like investing this course, like a hundred, 200 bucks on figuring out like that model on how you can make the LinkedIn algorithm really, really like you. And so from there, you know that I guess for going in in stages, that's probably like to get to a hundred.
To get that to a thousand. To get to 10,000, I would continue to double down on the content because it can get you there. I would say just on content alone, I would say that putting as much out there, it can definitely get you to 10 K subscribers, but. Can also start connecting with some other newsletters at certain stages, you know, between the [00:31:00] 1000 and 10,000 stage and seeing if anyone would be open to trading some real estate.
I know that's one of the like tactic things that may have been mentioned in one of your conversations or courses to, to figure out tactics to grow. But yeah, trading, trading real estate with a newsletters is trading true method of getting more subscribers to a newsletter. It's somewhat of a grind, I would say, just to reach out and organize it and all this other stuff, logistics, but the subscribers will come in.
Like I said, it's tried and true. I use it at Morning Brew. We knew it would work because folks, it, it's logic. Folks who are already reading a newsletter are much more likely to subscribe and engage with the newsletter if they find it interesting, and I'm sure plenty of people have said that. It's nothing new.
And then to get to a hundred thousand. Once you and I figure out if, if we have sponsors, if the revenue is there and whatnot, let's
Louis Nicholls: assume that I'm, I'm bankrolling this, I'm, I Mr. Money. We're okay. We're good. Yeah.
Manny Reyes: We've got generous, but not,
Louis Nicholls: not extreme
Manny Reyes: CPAs. Yeah. And, and that's fine. I, I don't, I don't think you need a lot because at the end of the day, if you can get a couple.
Couple [00:32:00] subscribers in with like some money that you have at that point. If you also have someone who's good on sales and can bring in the revenue, it's just a continuous, like I said, a loop of like reinvesting that money back into growth and knowing that you'll be getting the money back plus some later on if you continue to try to scale it.
So yeah, from 10,000 to a hundred thousand or 20,000 to a hundred thousand. To make all of our lives easier. Louie and my life easier for sure, because I, I know the back end of it all too. Definitely would, would recommend getting you in front of a camera and then speaking about how you, you know, your cred, your credibility, you know, all, all this stuff about news are operating.
Running some video ads, we can run some static ads. And I think within, it also depends on, you know, our target CPA that we hit for your newsletter. But I think within a year, well, let's say, let's be conservative, say between like a year and a half and two could probably get you to a hundred thousand subscribers if we're pretty consistent on, on paid acquisition there, you know, Yeah, I love it.
Well,
Louis Nicholls: I'm obviously, [00:33:00] let's hope, let's hope it never has to happen, but yeah, let,
Manny Reyes: let's hope we don't get there. Yeah. I mean, I, I hope we we're not actually humming this conversation as Spark Loop goes under at some point.
Louis Nicholls: No, we're I, I think we're gonna be o I hope we're gonna be okay. I think, I think we're gonna be Okay.
Well, let's, we, we've talked about like the, I guess like a, an optimal route or like things that you could be doing at each stage. What I wanna do is kind of flip that on its head now and talk about. The things that you think people are doing that they shouldn't be doing, if that makes sense. So like what are some mistakes that you see, whether it's creators you work with at Workweek, obviously naming no names, or maybe experiments you tried at Morning Brew that flopped, or other things you've just seen when you're helping friends who have newsletters.
Like what? What's just some mistake that you see them making?
Manny Reyes: I would say that I can probably think of a. A handful when it comes to like the paid acquisition side of things. You know, not setting a target, just running blind and being like, cool, you know, $5 is good this day and $8 is good this day and $1 is good this day, but setting a target would definitely make your money, you know, [00:34:00] go a longer, that's one mistake if you're obviously not setting a target c p A.
But I think one major thing that I would assume, uh, and I think it's a fair assumption that a lot of newsletter operators are not doing nowadays. And there's a lot more that are doing it nowadays, but not enough. I would say practicing less hygiene and training folks who are not engaged at all, like in, in one sentence.
I will say that there's a hundred percent more cons related to not churn subscribers who are unengaged than there is for that one pro of having a sexier list size number and having it be more attractive to your advertisers and you know, you being able to charge them more. Over time, you're probably better off having a lower list size number.
With a lot more engagement on, on your ads and then you know, on the sponsor as they're coming in there, and then you have that sponsor coming back for the next six months rather than you charging the, you know, three x [00:35:00] extra, four x what you probably should have been charging, and then they're never coming back at that point, you know, sure, you made five grand from them, but you probably could have made 30 grand an half of them for the next six months if you would've churned.
And had, you know, some stronger engagement and charge, you know, accurately from there. So I think that's one of those things, uh, where it's that, that whole thing of like the sponsor and like the, you know, charging for the sponsored ads based on the life size number. That's just one example, but there's a whole nother like domino effect that starts happening with like your deliverability and you know, you're forecasting at some point or another.
If you are scaling a newsletter and you start forecasting what your numbers are gonna look like a year from now or the next six months, and you're not going to, you're not gonna be training, you're not. Thinking of practicing list hygiene and you run with the numbers currently, start forecasting off of that later on when you decide to practice some list hygiene and you already forecasted all this stuff, then you gotta go back into all those spreadsheets, reconfigure everything.
You're probably gonna piss off your revenue [00:36:00] team, probably, definitely gonna piss off your sales team at that point. So it it's, it's one of those things where, It's tough to do. I will say it's one of those things where I'm, I'm sure I, I've seen it, you know, Jay, here at Workweek, we, we've done it for many of our newsletter operators, and it's not fun at all.
J just seeing the numbers go down, that's not what we want because we're on the growth team. We want things to go up into the right. But at the end of the day, it saves everyone and so many teams on on cross function, so many headaches if we do practice that list hygiene, and it's better to have it be a recurring thing rather than trying to do it every eight months or 10 months.
Where you're taking bigger and bigger hits when you're trying to do it later, and you will just go back into that loop of, you know, like I said, pissing everyone off on your revenue team or sales team. Yeah, I would, I would say just not, not to avoid it, it's, it's one of those things where it's better to stay on top of it and have it affect you.
Have it. Yeah, of course. Have it affect you negatively on the [00:37:00] churn side of things? Slowly but surely rather than at some point, it just being a huge hit to your list. And you know, again, so many other things that, that come with that. So that's one big growth mistake that I would say some new operators maybe still be making on the paid acquisition side.
Like I said, the target cpa, I'm trying to think of something specific within like the execution of. Paid acquisition maybe when it comes to, if you start investing in video ads rather than static because you, you know, you've heard from myself or plenty of other people that like, it's definitely something to test and, you know, in investing on, on video ads rather than just static, is spending too much on those video ads when it comes to asking other U G C creators to create them for you.
Whereas, you know, it could have easily be done by you yourself if you were the newsletter writer or creator, and they would've performed better than anyone else. But there's definitely a way of spending too much I've, I've been on both sides of the [00:38:00] coin here. I'm spending too much on those video ads and then figuring out that this same exact ad that you probably spent a thousand dollars on for someone to create.
Would have the same exact performance as the video ad that you spent $200 on for someone to make. It really just comes down to like how good you, you wrote the ad script and it doesn't matter if you have a high quality camera recording or a an iPhone. You know, x recording it, it's, it's really gonna come down to like the, again, the ad script and how, how well you wrote it, and also how engaging that creator is in terms of being on camera and, and making sure it's as authentic as possible when they come off of it, you know?
Louis Nicholls: Yeah, yeah. No, I, I love it. There's a three really, really solid tips, so, What I want to get from you before, before we wrap up though, is your predictions on where you think newsletter growth is going over the next two years. So let's say we click our fingers, flip a Switch, [00:39:00] and it's January, 2025, I guess at that point, two years from now.
How do you think sort of the way that we grow newsletters
Manny Reyes: will have changed? I'm not sure it'll change much from everything that we've been talking on, on this, on this podcast. Honestly. I, I will say in terms of tactics and mediums, I. Channels for news that are growth. I guess I can predict that just like the current preview and it's, it's not like cliche, but it's obviously like something that's all over Twitter and all over Reddit.
Probably the current preview that we're seeing with AI and and action will probably help push people over the hump, push graders over the hump and get more folks to publish more content more consistently if it's. Being fed to them almost. You know, if you're, if Chat GPT is just giving you a LinkedIn post really quick that you just, all you have to do is tweak it a bit and place a CTA on the post, maybe it'll go viral.
I've, I've seen plenty of, you know, thought leaders, you know, and I say that in quotes on, on [00:40:00] LinkedIn, just using that and like saying like, AI wrote this LinkedIn post and then having that go viral and whatnot. So it's definitely one of those possibilities where it's a very powerful thing I, I would say, but, That could be one of those things where it's, it's used much, much more over time, you know, between now and 2025, like you said.
Yeah. Just to push out more and more organic content, I would say. I also think, I mean, like when I say I think a few, I. Creators or newsletter operators, I mean like 10 to 20 tops that might be conservative or might be generous actually might crack the code on short form video content, like the funnel from short form video within one of your channels, be it YouTube shorts, TikTok reels, and getting folks to continue subscribe to your newsletter.
From that funnel of MA having CTA at the end of every one of your videos, there's plenty of TikTok creators and Reels creators that always have a CTA to follow them at the end. So why not [00:41:00] change that CTA to subscribe to your newsletter, you know, following the link, bio or whatnot. I've already seen two to three creators that can do this really, really well.
Two of them are within the finance space. But majority of it, majority now on funneling people from your content to becoming a newsletter subscriber is written content. Being on Twitter. On Twitter or LinkedIn. But I myself am very bullish on short form video when it comes to marketing through it. So I, I think people who can crack the code there and have that be like their main form of acquisition for newsletter subscribers.
I think it'll pay, pay dividends for them also, because it's one of those things where it can, it can definitely get you to a whole nother level on, on your list size. If you figure out your content strategy and you. Figure out the TikTok algorithm or reals algorithm and make it like you also, the numbers will definitely, definitely come, come over time, I would say.
Yeah.
Louis Nicholls: Awesome. I'm excited to see who cracks that. If you [00:42:00] find anyone doing a really good job of it, always let us know. We're always happy for, uh, to see some, some good examples. Well, Manny, what, what, where can people find more about you? Where can
Manny Reyes: they follow along and see what you're up to? Yeah. I'm not gonna be tweeting about newsletter growth.
On the daily or weekly? I might at some point or another, but you can definitely find, find me on, on Twitter, it's a Manny Reyes, but with two Y's on both, so m A n n y Y. R e y y e s. You can blame the guy who took simple Manny Reyes handle years, years ago for me having to do that. But yes, you can find me on Twitter, Manny Rays two Ys in each name, and you, you can probably guess my Workweek email.
So Manny at Workweek, uh, I will definitely block you if, if anyone's span me, me, but you can definitely, like, if anyone has, you know, questions about ads, you know, if they're trying to venture into it or if. For some reason, they wanna test out video ads and or if they're, you know, yeah, they're already doing static ads and they wanna test out video ads, but they don't know and, or they don't have any clue on how to write a, a [00:43:00] script and how to approach someone to, to make that video for them.
Happy to chat also, just to see how things can be tackled there, but I'm. You know, I could talk about this with you for hours on end, Louis, if, if you, you need me back on for four more questions, so I'm happy to chat to anyone else in, in, in the news that are operating world. Well,
Louis Nicholls: Manny, thank you so much for taking the time.
It's been great to have you on.
Manny Reyes: Yeah, thank, thank you for having me on, Lou. I appreciate it.
Louis Nicholls: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Send and Grow podcast. If you liked what you heard, here are three quick ways that you can show your support. Number one, Leave us a five star rating or review in the podcast app of your choice.
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