1. Nail your subject lines
Mr. Beast spends $10k+ on YouTube thumbnails because he knows that if people don’t click, the content doesn’t matter.
Your subject line works the same way.
What works:
a) Ensure your subject lines either:
• Spark curiosity: "1440's $15M decision"
• Offer a contrarian take: “Niching down is terrible advice”
• Offer a compelling promise: “This drove 14337 subscribers in 8 months”
b) A/B test subject lines
Track opens. Double down on what's working.
Daniel Bustamante 🥷🏻 has become a buddy of mine this year - he’s the subject line GOAT.
He curates top-performing subject lines weekly.
Try testing:
• 1 subject line you’ve written
• 1 subject line written by Claude trained on Daniel’s posts / subject line examples
2. Optimize deliverability from day 1
If Gmail throws you in "Promotions," it’s game over.
Your welcome email needs to drive action:
• Ask users to move you to “Primary” and hit reply.
• Give away something extremely valuable that requires a link click — a cheat sheet, template, or playbook.
In my welcome series, I give away a 60-page deck on scaling newsletter brands to $100k/month on Meta. It has a 60%+ click-through rate.
My newsletter has the lowest churn I have seen of ANY newsletter - a welcome sequence that gets me in the primary folder is a pillar of that.
3. Create audience-specific content
Most creators copy formats not built for their readers.
Your newsletter is a product — build it like one.
My buddy Rowan and I both run 7-figure newsletter-based businesses with COMPLETELY OPPOSITE approaches.
Here’s my setup:
• Frequency: 2x a month - My readers (founders/execs) are busy, 2-3 emails a week would be an overstep.
• Monetization: No ads - you can't profit from ads sending a newsletter bi-weekly. Instead, I run a growth agency for newsletters.
• Audience: Invite-only - (50%+ of my readers own / lead a newsletter doing $1M+ / year)
• Format: No templates, just direct emails that feel like a 1:1 note from me (it is).
• Content: Industry insights, case studies, and evergreen content.
This works because it’s built for high-value operators who want depth
Rowan's newsletter, The Rundown, takes the complete opposite approach:
• Frequency: Daily
• Monetization: Primarily ads, which works with daily high-volume sends.
• Audience: Open to everyone, 1M+ subscribers
• Format: Highly templated with specific sections
• Content: News, top stories, jobs, and webinars
His model works because it fits his audience — a broad base looking for the latest + tactical information on AI.
The takeaway: There’s no single “right way” to build a newsletter.
Yes, it’s directionally helpful to make choices relative to what other people do.
But in the long term, your customer is your copywriter - listen to them and build your content accordingly.
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