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5 strategies for growing and monetizing your newsletter

Last updated: September 23, 2024

Newsletters are one of the best ways to connect with your audience and make some money while you’re at it. But to really see growth and revenue, you need a solid game plan. So we’ll present five strategies to attract new subscribers and turn your newsletter into a reliable income stream. Read on for advice and examples from media businesses like yours. 

Build relationships and create paid products through your replies 

Lately, you’ve probably heard that you should ask new subscribers to reply to your welcome emails, typically as a way to improve deliverability. 

But replies also help you connect 1:1 with your subscribers and build better paid products for them. And you only get so many chances to do that. So when subscribers reply, talk to them and work their insights into your strategy. 

Stay ahead and read our Q2 2024 email engagement report to uncover trends & best practices for success:

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For example, Simon Owens, who covers the business of media for media entrepreneurs, asked subscribers to reply back to his welcome email telling him a) who they were and b) what they were building.

And rather than just collecting replies, Owens offered to have an introductory phone call with them. Many of these conversations turned into the interviews and case studies he’d later charge for. Bonus: The conversations also helped him retain paid subscribers. 

“I noticed over time that the people I had these phone calls with churned at much lower rates,” Owens says. “There was something about the act of talking to me on a Zoom call that made them less likely to cancel their subscriptions.” 

Use growth quadrants to diversify your growth strategies and prioritize your needs 

With so many strategies to choose from, how can you prioritize the best growth channels for your newsletter? Dan Oshinsky of Inbox Collective laid out four main ways that newsletters grow. Use them to structure your own strategy: 

Owned growth: channels that you own — like your website or newsletter. 

Earned growth: opportunities that come from the relationships you’ve built or the quality of work you’ve produced

Algorithmic growth: tactics used on third-party platforms with algorithms. (traditionally, that’s meant Facebook, Twitter/X and YouTube but also TikTok, Reddit, Discord and/or Whatsapp)

Paid growth: any tactic where you have to spend money to grow 

Most likely, you’ll be stronger in one quadrant than the rest. And that’s OK. But neglecting a quadrant — or overindexing on one that won’t yield the audience you need — will cost you revenue long-term.  

Use your first-party data to inform your paid content strategy 

As a reporter at Politico, Helena Bottemiller Evich had “almost no access” to data about her audience. But now that she’s running her own newsletter, Food Fix, she can see what topics resonate with her readers and adjust her strategy in response. 

“Having access to that does help me focus on what topics I know are resonating,” Evich recently told A Media Operator. “It doesn’t mean I won’t cover other issues, but I’ve learned a few things that have helped me focus on what is what people are engaging with.” 

For example: She realized that coverage of the infant formula crisis only resonated with a small segment of her subscribers. That helped her allocate her resources and go deeper on her coverage without sacrificing quality.

Here’s how to use your email data to refine your paid content strategy: 

Personalized content recommendations: Personalizing content ensures that your subscribers get what they paid for every time they open an email. 

So use your email data to segment your audience by interests and behaviors, then tailor content to each of their preferences. 

For best results, use an email provider that connects with a customer data platform or another audience database. That way, you can see someone’s email engagement alongside the rest of their interactions with your brand. That way, you can plan your outreach and target content with all of their needs in mind.

Targeted promotions: Analyze subscriber activity and preferences to offer exclusive content or discounts to specific groups, increasing the likelihood of paid subscriptions.

For instance, your data might reveal that paid subscribers that came from one of your other newsletters are more likely to stay subscribed for 2+ years than subscribers that come from social ads. In that case, you might shift from paid social to upsell and cross-promotion campaigns. 

Optimized pricing strategy: Assess reader behavior to understand their willingness to pay, helping you refine subscription tiers and pricing models for maximum conversion. 

Retention campaigns: Identify at-risk subscribers through their engagement metrics and create personalized re-engagement campaigns to keep them on board with paid content offers. (On Omeda, you can use content recommendations in email to give each recipient the content/offer that’s most likely to resonate with and reactivate them.) 

Content performance analysis: Use your email engagement data to track which content drives the most engagement and conversions, allowing you to prioritize similar topics or formats for paid content in your newsletter. (Note: Use an email provider that identifies and removes bots from your reports to ensure you’re making decisions based on the right data. That’s especially important since bots make up about 60% of all email clicks.) 

Create additional paid products around your best work 

Anyone can paywall their free newsletter and see what price they can get away with. But blocking previously free content penalizes your readers for choosing not to pay. 

The best newsletters take the opposite tack: Their paid subscription packages add resources, rather than restricting previously free resources. Readers don’t miss out by not subscribing — they get tangible value when they pay. 

The best resources for your paid subscription package depend on your vertical, tone and brand. Look for opportunities to spread your unique knowledge, share resources, and create community, including: 

• Coaching calls
• Databases of industry information
• Q&As for paid subscribers
• Highly tactical interviews/case studies of industry leaders 
• Exclusive networking dinners

Consider creating courses 

To drive revenue from your newsletter, you need to create products around your content. Courses are one of the best ways to do this. Build courses that provide value while still driving results with these tips: 

Create courses targeting a variety of knowledge levels or use cases: This takes some groundwork, but this breadth benefits your audience members while helping you qualify your audience.

More audience members can take advantage of your content — and newcomers can progress through your courses for months or years to come. Even better, you can create more detailed interest-based, seniority-based and behavioral segments based on engagement data from those courses, then use it to further individualize your outreach to each reader.

Double down on expertise. Anyone can get a course outline from Chat-GPT. But only the best can source industry experts and share their battle-tested tactics. That’s where you can make a difference. 

Use courses to engage and nurture underserved audiences. A time-bound, super specific course can help you attract new audiences and progressively introduce them to the rest of your work. For instance, #ThisIsTucson, a reader-supported sister site to the Arizona Daily Star, offers a two-week newsletter course for newcomers to the city. 

Bonus: Once you’ve created your courses, you can repurpose the related content for additional newsletters and other channels, freeing you up to create even more paid products, content and interviews going forward.

CTA: Struggling with siloed subscriber data, complicated workflows, and declining audience engagement? What if you could unify your subscriber data and use it to create better subscriber experiences with less effort? Discover how Omeda’s integrated Audience Data Platform helps teams like yours use their subscriber data to strengthen their media businesses. 

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