RAW AUDIO - 30DOG Recap episode

Chenell Basilio: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to the Growth In Reverse podcast. I'm Chenell.

Dylan Redekop: And I'm Dylan.

Chenell Basilio: And today we're gonna do a postmortem of how the 30 days of growth went. And I figured, actually it was Dylan's idea too, just throw some questions at me. I don't even know. I don't even know what these questions are, but I prepared some numbers and some of the results, so I'm excited to talk through this.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, I think it's gonna be fun. I really thought what you did with 30 days growth, it. From the outside, it might look, might have looked like a simple, one newsletter send every day for 30 days. And, but there's like way more behind the scenes going on with it. There's a whole reason you started it.

So I thought this would be a good kinda like interview to figure out, pick your brain about why you did this how you did it and what were the results. So I think people are gonna come with some really good. Ideas around popup newsletters, why they could run them themselves and maybe learn some lessons from you on what maybe they should and should not do with it.

Chenell Basilio: There's a lot of learnings that [00:01:00] came out of this.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. We'll talk to all about the, how many subscribers this kind of got for you and things that you added to your newsletter and all that fun stuff that I think a lot of people will be able to benefit from. So why don't we get into it?

Why don't you start by just explaining for people who don't know, maybe this is the first episode they listened to or they haven't listened to in a while. Explain just quickly what the 30 days of Growth is or was.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, so essentially in the Growth In Reverse pro community, I was trying to do, we were doing a cross promotions like challenge, if you will to do like better cross promos, get more results from them.

And I really wanted to learn how to do better cross promotions like I've done 'em in the past. Some have done well, some have not. So I was like, you know what? I'm gonna see if I can't do more of these. And I was like. A typical cross promotion, you do one in an email. And since I send my email on Sundays during the challenge, I would've only had four to five opportunities to actually have a cross promotion in there.

And I was like, I want more. I want more data for [00:02:00] the community so I can share like how to do these better, what I'm learning. So I was like, what if I did a 30 day like popup newsletter, like a daily send so that I could have a cross promotion in every single send? Which at the time I was like, this is easy.

Great. So simple. But essentially the 30 days of growth came out of just this random idea. I put it together in two and a half weeks I think. And. I just ran with it. Built the parachute on the way down, if you will. Just started it and launched it on a whim.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, and I think it's really funny.

This is the sacrifices Chenell makes for her community. She's she fell on the sword of data I'm gonna do this really. Maybe, I thought it was simple, but really actually ended up being hard thing for the sake of getting better data for everybody. So thank you for, on behalf of the community for doing that.

Sure. So why don't we get into, take, walk us through the prep before the launch. Like what you were going through, how you were contacting or deciding who to collaborate with and how you went out, went about reaching out to those people and stuff.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, [00:03:00] so I figured with a daily send, I wanted to have a very clear structure.

Every day is the same, very like a short thing. I typically write long form pieces. Some are deep dives, some are just like long form posts. So I wanted to make sure it was like quick, digestible. And I've heard from people in the past who read my newsletter that they really would prefer something quick and actionable to, a three to 5,000 word post.

And I'm like, that's just not my style. I'm sorry I can't, but. With this, I was like, maybe I could actually do that. So I had to figure out like a good way to set up a template for this. So I was like, okay, I want a couple of clear things, like what did they do? Why did it work? What were the results and like how you could implement it.

And so I went to good old Chat, GBT, and I was like, can you help me like build this template? 'cause I wanted to make sure, like I didn't go overboard. I'm very wordy and lengthy and I wanna include every detail. So it was, it was a forcing function to get me to shut up faster Yeah. Than I normally would in my writing.

Yeah. So once I had that template, I [00:04:00] actually went back to a couple deep dives that I had published and I was like, let me see if I could pull out some growth levers from there and see if this would work. And I did Eddie Shleyner's Social Proof. He has like a ton of social proof on his landing page, his homepage.

And so I was like, actually this is gonna fit in really well. And I got super excited and that's what made me just jump into it. So I created a Google sheet and I essentially just listed out a bunch of people I was like, that, that I thought would be good for this. Yeah. Some people I know who have talked about like specific tactics they've used and I was like, I wanna include that tactic.

Some people I just knew that person had some cool like ninja stuff they were doing behind the scenes. So I was like, all right, I'm gonna include them. And so I just thought it was an interesting way to do this. But with the people, I wanted to make sure that some of them are larger audiences, some are smaller.

'cause one of the things I always hear about cross promos is Chenell, you can go to somebody with 30,000 people on their email list and you know you're gonna have better results. And I'm like, yes, but some people have like smaller audiences [00:05:00] and get more engaged people on their list.

So I don't know that size is everything. So I wanted to include a mix. I'll stop there 'cause I feel like I'm rambling, but Yeah,

Dylan Redekop: No, that's good. So you basically created a list in a Google sheet of people you wanna reach out to. You did not skew on, they have to be a certain size of an email list necessarily.

You want to get people who have maybe at least, a hundred or two, few hundred subscribers, but it wasn't like, somebody with 3000 subscribers versus they all have to be, my size or larger. So that's great. And then once you had that established, you started reaching out to these people and sharing the idea and what was the trade off, like you were say, you said basically were like, I'm gonna feature your newsletter in this growth lever and you're gonna do what for me?

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, so I saved that one from Eddie Shleyner. 'cause I thought it was like super compelling, obvious, and like exciting and people would understand quickly like what this was. So I saved that as a PDF that I could share in an email and just to give them example of what I'm gonna do and like how I'm gonna showcase their [00:06:00] newsletter.

So in the growth levers, like in the beginning I'll say Hey, this person who writes blank newsletter, and I'll link to it. So that's like a first call out to their newsletter and then towards the bottom. I would, if they were on Kit's Creator Network, I would embed that. Recommendation widget, if you will.

Yeah. If not, I just had a link out to their stuff. And then depending on what the growth lever was, like some of them were naturally like, Hey, go sign up for this person's email list 'cause you'll see how they're doing this thing. Yeah. So that was, I think that was a little bit more compelling for some people, but they at least had two call outs.

And then we published these on Substack in the beginning. We published them on LinkedIn, so they were getting a couple different touch points of call outs for their brand.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. And LinkedIn, by you mean that, you mean the LinkedIn newsletter feature, right?

Chenell Basilio: Yeah.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. We can talk about that later on, but how that went okay, so you're doing all that for them.

What were they doing for you?

Chenell Basilio: Just a typical cross promo. So they would just share the 30 days of growth landing page so people could go sign up if they wanted to. Okay. I wrote out [00:07:00] blurbs for them so that they could just like copy paste if they wanted. Most people didn't, I think they rewrote them almost every time, but yeah, I wanted to make it easy for them to do that. And then for each person, I also have a custom link for them to share so that I could keep track on my end of like how many clicks they got

And that kind of thing.

Dylan Redekop: And why did you decide to get them to share the 30 days of growth?

'cause you created a whole landing page for it. Bought a URL domain and everything. Yeah. 30 days growth.co. If anybody wants to go check that out right now, I think it should still be live when this airs. But why would you, why were you getting them to push that and not just growth in reverse?

Chenell Basilio: Because I wanted to like, create this flywheel of building out this popup newsletter, if you will.

Yeah. I think through the process of them joining 30 days of growth, they'll come to learn about what I do. So I thought it was like, I don't know, a cool way to just promote this new launch of sorts. Yeah. Yeah.

Dylan Redekop: Okay. That makes sense. I feel like this is like kinda like a lead magnet or like almost like a Trojan horse into sort of [00:08:00] the Growth In Reverse whole ethos and ecosystem.

So I think it's smart. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: No, I was gonna say the other reason it was a good, like good way to do that is okay, so if Jay Clouse shared it in his newsletter and then the next day he was actually the featured one, it'd be like more exciting for that person.

'cause they're like, Hey, I recognize Jay. Yeah. They came from him or that kind of thing. So yeah, I felt like it was almost building a little bit of better trust. In a way.

Dylan Redekop: No, absolutely. Yeah. I think that makes sense. And that was smart. And do, and you did that for all 30 days in a row, right?

You strategically set these up so that everyone was gonna share everything at the same time that you did, right?

Chenell Basilio: Oh, you're funny. No

Dylan Redekop: way. Yeah,

Chenell Basilio: if I had more time maybe, but yeah, it just happened that way for some of 'em.

Dylan Redekop: So you had these. You're reaching out as you were prepping this, you said you took about you about two and a half weeks.

Did you have all 30 days created and set up? At the point of launching it, the very first day,

Chenell Basilio: oh, Dylan, you're so funny. No, not even close. Okay. I think I had three.

Dylan Redekop: [00:09:00] Three. Is that right? I don't know. No, I you had, you remember, I think you had the first week, if I remember correctly, about the first week set created.

Or lined up. That's better

Chenell Basilio: than I thought.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Yeah. So this truly was a parachute. You were, you're, you assembling as you were falling to the ground. Yeah. Before we get into the daily, can you just gimme a, a breakdown of how you were. Pumping this up before you actually launched it.

Did you do anything specific social media wise or in your newsletter to get people into it? And also, let's quickly talk about if you sent this to your whole email list to start, or if this was opt-in only.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. Oh man. It's so recent, but so far past. Okay. So in the beginning, I know I shared it in the main newsletter a couple times just saying Hey, this is coming.

Honestly, though, I didn't give myself a ton of leeway to launch this, so I really, that's one thing I wish I would've done is like. I've given myself some permission to pump the brakes a bit and wait a week or two to actually launch this thing. But I was just so excited about it. I just wanted to get it out there.

Dylan Redekop: Why did you wanna [00:10:00] give yourself Yeah, a little more leeway.

Chenell Basilio: So that I could like properly hype it up and launch it and you're trying to deal with 30 creators sharing your work. So like the logistics behind this is just insane. Yeah. I am sure that there are emails in my inbox from some of the creators that I have not responded to yet, and we're done with the 30 days of growth.

So this, their formal apology, this a mess. Yes. This is my formal apology to everyone.

Dylan Redekop: Okay. So yeah, that sounds good. So you're amping it up a little bit in your own newsletter to your list of around 40,000 subscribers. And then you also shared it on social media a little bit on LinkedIn, I believe.

Chenell Basilio: Yes. Yeah. Shared it on LinkedIn. We talked about it on this podcast. Yep. Once, twice. Yeah. And then we actually had a whole episode about it.

Dylan Redekop: Yep.

Chenell Basilio: We actually did a, an exploding podcast episode. I don't know if that's really the right term, but. There's a, there was an audio version on the podcast feed that said this is going to self-destruct in seven days.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: And we just I think [00:11:00] it was just me talking about it.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. It was, I think it was like a seven

Chenell Basilio: minute episode where I just announced what was happening and told people to go sign up.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Okay.

Chenell Basilio: So that was something else we did.

Dylan Redekop: And then I changed

Chenell Basilio: my substack to be 30 days of growth too.

Dylan Redekop: Yes, that's right. That's right. And you even changed on your Growth In Reverse landing page not, sorry, not your landing page to sign up, but on your main website, navigation menu, you had 30 days of growth. Yeah. As the main subscribe button, not Growth In Reverse Pro.

Chenell Basilio: Yep. I totally forgot about that.

Yeah, I gotta change that. Oh, there you go. Thanks

Dylan Redekop: Dylan. Hey, no problem. Okay, so we've got the kind of the setup, the lead in now three days of Growth is launched. How many people actually, how many people, do you know how many people you got signed up prior to actually sending out the first edition?

Chenell Basilio: I can tell you how many people the first edition went out to, and that should be the number that should do it.

Day one went out to.

1,440 people.

Dylan Redekop: Wow. Okay. And that was a combination of new subscribers, just new to Chenell total. [00:12:00] And people who opted in from your, from the promotion who may have already been subscribed to growth in reverse?

Chenell Basilio: Yes, that was total.

Dylan Redekop: So it's a blended subscriber. Okay, cool. So now tell us what, what went into the day-to-day of pushing out these 30 days of growth editions.

Chenell Basilio: In the beginning it was a nice process because I knew who I was writing about. They had shared. Like essentially what the thing was.

So I really just had to compile it together in that template and then send it out, publish it on the website, get it on Substack, which thankfully you were there to help with. 'cause I would not have done all of those every day. And then in the beginning, again, publish on LinkedIn, which was pretty good.

It was like a copy paste situation. So that wasn't bad. Yeah. So it was right the. Article, I wrote it in Kit, which I don't know if that's the best way to do it, but wrote it in the email provider. Then we copied it over to WordPress. Yeah. Had to create a Canva image for each [00:13:00] day.

Dylan Redekop: Yep.

Chenell Basilio: So I had to create that template before we started.

And then link to that WordPress page from the email. 'cause I'm always, I always love giving people the option to like, read it online or bookmark it, save it, that kind of thing. It makes it more shareable too. Yeah, totally. So did that and then publish on Substack. Then rec record a podcast episode for each one.

Yes. That's actually a great, we didn't talk about that yet.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. I think we still have feed record, so

Chenell Basilio: just a few.

Dylan Redekop: That actually leads me into, that's a real nice segue into kind of how you were promoting this and trying to create this viral, shareable flywheel. So we've talked about what growth three days of growth is, how you structured it, what you were doing day to day.

But then there was the whole component of you said to me, basically I want this to be like super shareable and give people reasons to incentivize 'em to share this. So can you talk through the component of the giveaway? Because that's not something that people are really doing a lot with newsletters these days.

Of course, like when Spark Loop was spun up five-ish years ago. Giveaways were kind all the rage with Morning Brew. But [00:14:00] you're like, I'm gonna try to. Use a giveaway to grow this thing. And then also the let's talk about the private podcast feed as a reward tier as well.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, so the giveaway, I was like, this would be cool to share, not only to share, but also see how many people shared it with others.

Because with a newsletter, it can almost be like a black box of like, where do these people come from? So it's nice to see oh, Susie. Shared it with five people. Yeah. And they signed up and they shared it with you. I just wanted to have that insight again for purposes of data.

And then I was like this could be a really cool way to give people the option to win stuff. Yeah. So the first prize was like a private podcast feed. So if you referred just one person, you got a private podcast feed. It was. It's supposed to be every day you got a new episode dropped.

But I think around what were those episodes of 10 or 12? I just the day, that day is like growth lever, so I would just talk it out.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. So if people didn't have time to read it or didn't wanna read it, they could just pop it in on audio version of it.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. And people really enjoyed [00:15:00] that. Like the, it wasn't like a huge number of people who actually signed up for it, but the people who did like really enjoyed it.

So I feel bad that I was like really behind after like day 10. But yeah, so that was the first one. So if you refer just one person, you got that. And I wanted to be like, make sure there was a quick prize people could win just for doing that small action. Nice. So that's kinda why I did that. Okay. Yeah.

And then everyone, yeah, everyone who entered got. entered to win prizes. And so there were, I reached out to Senja, which is like the social proof tool. They actually sponsored this podcast early on. They offered to give away some annual licenses and then Tella, which is like a Loom alternative.

M video alternative which I actually love. It's like a super professional tool. They offered to match that essentially. So they also gave away five. Annual licenses and then Brennan Dunn was kind enough to do the same. So sweet. I got those three. And then Justin Moore, who actually wrote one of [00:16:00] the growth levers gave away two licenses to his like brand deal wizard course, which is worth like a thousand bucks or something at this point each.

So yeah, each, yeah. Yeah, so lots of cool stuff in there. And then I'm also giving away a couple of coaching calls and newsletter audits

Dylan Redekop: and have you drawn the winners yet for that?

Chenell Basilio: I have not. So I was full transparency. I was out of town all last week. So getting back into the swing of things, especially with a holiday weekend.

Yeah. Long weekend. I'm like, this is my Monday and it's Tuesday. And I'm like, oh boy. We have a lot to do.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: But,

Dylan Redekop: and let's, it's gonna

Chenell Basilio: happen soon.

Dylan Redekop: Let's also maybe mention that you. While this 30 days of growth was going on. So daily publishing multiple platforms, creating artwork, creating a daily podcast for the private feed.

You went to New York to interview somebody? Oh, yeah. Like for the newsletter conference you went on this past week, during the [00:17:00] last week of 30 days growth. You were on, in Nashville at another conference or, retreat, I guess it was so like. While all of this was happening you really set yourself up for some success here by, traveling around the United States and trying to, I do things do more things maybe than you possibly physically could have.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, I I'd always give myself ample amount of time to work on this stuff.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: If we've learned anything about me, it's that I just. Force it and figure it out.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, it that is true, that's true. But you got everything out every day. Podcast minus the daily podcast feed. I think we've got about 20 of the 30 days published, roughly.

So we're getting there. We're getting there.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah.

Dylan Redekop: Okay, cool. Where were we? We were talking about the vow giveaway, so how did you, do you have any details on how that went and if that is if that's something you'd recommend other people trying or doing?

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, so I think it went really well.

I would actually, I don't have numbers to back this up, but I think that the private podcast option alone [00:18:00] was the biggest driver of people sharing. Wow. Because it was just one, it was super simple. And yeah, who doesn't want like an extra bonus version of the podcasts. Yeah. Me talking in their ears for six minutes every morning.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, exactly. Okay. So the, and that makes sense too, right? The one, the lowest tier, the one one free referral. Some people will just maybe send it to their, from their work email to their personal email just to get access to it, or they'll maybe legitimately share it with a friend or somebody who might be interested.

And then in terms of the actual prize giveaway how did that work out?

Chenell Basilio: You mean like how many people shared?

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Let's, can you determine how many people shared and then how many people from those referrals came in just by virtue of those people sharing who may not have otherwise,

Chenell Basilio: yeah. So overall, I'm just gonna break down from the beginning number. Yeah. So the big number, 3,714 was the number of people who signed up for 30 days of growth.

Dylan Redekop: Okay. [00:19:00] And again, that's blended,

Chenell Basilio: blended 1,757 of those are new subscribers for me, which is insane. Yep.

Dylan Redekop: Yep. It's pretty decent in 30 days.

Chenell Basilio: And I remember actually, I think I was sharing this in the community that, that like within the first few days I had gotten like 700 new subscribers and everyone was like, oh my God, you're gonna like double your list. And I was like, no guys. I think this is the excitement in the beginning really happens.

But, so it still did grow, but it definitely didn't like. Add 10,000 subscribers to my email list. But this is still like a really good number. I'm pumped about it. 356 of those 3,700 came in through referrals. Okay. So it's 10%. Okay. A little less than 10%, which is pretty good.

Dylan Redekop: That is pretty good. I'd say it's almost closer to 20% because if you count just new subscribers alone of the 1700.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

Yeah.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. That would be about 20%, I think. Roughly. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: So 102 people shared it with at least one person.

Dylan Redekop: Okay. [00:20:00] Which brought in, which is pretty cool.

300 new subscribers. Very cool. Okay. So the, would you, so let's send it and this section off on that. Would you recommend that strategy for people doing a popup newsletter style campaign?

Chenell Basilio: Yes. And here's another reason why. With the LinkedIn newsletter and Substack, everyone's why would somebody sign up if they can just go read it somewhere else, right?

Like why would they actually just sign up for your email list if they can read it elsewhere? And I think with something like this giveaway, that is the key differentiator. If you were just subscribed to the LinkedIn newsletter, you don't get entered to win any of these prizes. You don't get the private podcast feed, so you have to go sign up for the email list.

And so I think even if you're just gonna have won. Bonus in there. I think it's so worth it.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Yep. And same with Substack too, right? Because you were using Substack. Yeah, but more is just a publishing platform, not as a growth platform because everybody who signs up for growth in reverse or 30 days of growth from Substack gets migrated over to your kit list.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, exactly.

Dylan Redekop: [00:21:00] Yeah. Okay.

Chenell Basilio: Yep. Okay. Here's one fun fact I wanna share about the referrals that I Yes. I saw this morning and I was like, no way. Okay, so the referrals. So one person, we'll call her BI don't wanna say that person's name 'cause it's like a unique name. B was referred to two 30 days of growth by someone in the Growth In Reverse Pro community.

Dylan Redekop: Okay?

Chenell Basilio: So that they like shared it in their email list and this person joined from that. So B ended up sharing it with 15 more people, and then one person that B shared it with came back and had 21 of their own referrals.

Dylan Redekop: Dang.

Chenell Basilio: I was like, whoa. Because I exported everything and then I could see like in the main dashboard, I was using a tool called Viral Loops. In the main dashboard, you can't really see a ton of data. You have to click through. But once I exported everything I saw who referred that person?

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. And

Chenell Basilio: I was like, whoa, there's a little thing happening here. It was pretty cool.

So I thought that was, that is cool. Wild. So that one [00:22:00] share ended up with 36 more people joining.

Dylan Redekop: That is the flywheel effect.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah.

Dylan Redekop: Totally. That is cool. Way to go. B, thank you. Thank you for your support.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, that was cool.

Dylan Redekop: Okay, so let's go into the post-mortem. So we talked about new subscribers. I think you said about 1757 and then something around, was it 3,400 or 3,700 total?

Chenell Basilio: 3,700. Yeah.

Dylan Redekop: Okay. So I guess we can do some really quick math and figure about 2000 subscribers converted from the growth reverse bulk broadcast email into the 30 days of growth, like the opted in. Yeah. So let's talk about why you decided to set this up as an opt-in only 'cause I'm sure this people will have discussion.

Why didn't you just blast this out to your whole list? Why didn't you get people to like, force them to opt out? And I think I even asked you that question at first. So what is your thinking around that? I.

Chenell Basilio: So I think that's the question everybody's asked me. Yeah. And it was either send people who [00:23:00] signed up for a weekly email, a daily, just randomly without them opting in, which I don't feel great about.

If someone just started sending me daily emails for 30 days, I'd be like whoa, what's happening here? It is super valuable. I doubt they'd be mad about it, but I didn't wanna have a bunch of unsubscribes. That's the reason I did that. The other reason is that everyone who enters automatically gets entered to win.

And so if I would've thought through this a little bit more, I could have just added everyone to this and then said, if you refer one person, you get entered to win.

But I didn't think of that through, I was just building the plane as I was flying it

Dylan Redekop: yeah. Okay. Okay. Somebody might object to one of your objections and say you could have set up a.

Unsubscribe, just opt out of this sequence right? To your mass list. Yeah. And then yes, I'm sure there's some people who would just get annoyed and just unsubscribe from everything. But I would suspect, or I would hypothesize that most people would probably who like your regular content, who don't want the daily thing, who just unsubscribe from that sequence if you gave him a nice, clear option to do so did that come into play or would [00:24:00] you, in the future, would you maybe do that?

Chenell Basilio: Maybe. Maybe. Okay. So I did do that for people who signed up just in case someone signed up and they're like, whoa, daily's way too much. I didn't want them to go to the bottom and just like unsubscribe. So I did actually set up like a link to say if you just wanna get the weeklies, do this.

Send, go here and click this link. But I actually flubbed and I never actually set that up to have those people get moved to weekly. I realized that like yesterday. Oh. And I was like oh no.

Dylan Redekop: I guess so. I

Chenell Basilio: apologize for anyone. Click that link

Dylan Redekop: into weekly. Weekly. One of the things thing.

Yes. Sorry to interrupt you. One of the, one of the good things is though, in, during this whole three days of growth, we did recap that past week's, all of the editions in your main broadcast. Yeah. So anybody who is still at least subscribed to Growth reverse. Would've gotten, would've seen those in that email.

So they would've been able to see what the last seven days or so of the 30 days growth campaign were. So in a way you stuck true to your word? I would say it just was wrapped in [00:25:00] your, your weekly Sunday send.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. Yeah I don't know. It's all like looking back, I'm like, yeah, there's definitely some things I would've changed,

Dylan Redekop: but yeah.

Oh okay. In terms of unsubscribes, do you, yeah. Do you think the, did this damage your list at all or do you think the growth was definitely beneficial?

Chenell Basilio: No, I don't think it damaged my list at all. The weekly sends had about the same number of people unsubscribing. And then overall from those like 3,700 or so that signed up 170 unsubscribed.

Dylan Redekop: Oh, that's not bad at all. Which, okay.

Chenell Basilio: I think that's totally fine.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. And this actually leads into engagement for the series. Like we didn't talk touched on that at all. People might be curious what was your open rate like for these for these broadcasts? I.

Chenell Basilio: Incredible. I want my list to be 3,700 people again.

No, I'm just kidding. No, the open rate for the first issue was 77%, which is just wow, I'll take that any day. And the lowest it actually [00:26:00] dropped to was 62% was at the final day was 62%. Wow. So I think that's pretty good. Over 30 days. And I had a lot of people tell me apologize in an email and say, I'm so sorry I haven't opened your past like 10 emails 'cause I'm trying to catch up.

Yeah. So I know the intention was there. They're just not opened.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah,

Chenell Basilio: I feel okay about it.

Dylan Redekop: I wanna talk about really quickly too, one smart thing that you did, we should have talked about this at the beginning, but I think in your welcome email for this series, when people first signed up, you shared something about I.

Send me a question you have that I might address in one of these growth levers or a question about Yeah. Growing a newsletter that you might have, and I think you told me you were so overwhelmed with responses to that, that you were just like, I don't have time to answer all of these. I feel awful.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah.

Dylan Redekop: Tell me a little bit about. Walk through how you set up that welcome email. 'cause I think this is really important for, we know that getting replies to our emails is super valuable, especially for new subscribers. So walk us through what you ask people and and maybe how many responses, if you have that number, how many responses came through.[00:27:00]

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. So I essentially just said do you want me, should I just read it?

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Okay. We can put it on screen too, but I just said Hey name, because for this, everyone who signed up, I had to have their first name. I was like, you know what, I'm gonna make that little barrier to entry there. Yeah. Add a little friction.

I like it. So I just said, yes, you're in and I'm pumped to have you here for 30 days. I'm gonna send you one tactical way to grow or optimize your newsletter. These will be short, actionable, and proven to work. Some will help you get more subscribers, others will help you get more from the subscribers you already have.

Either way, you'll leave with a stronger smarter email list than you started with. And then I said here's what happens Next. Starts on April 23rd every day after that for 30 days, you'll get one every morning. Then I said, if it gets to be too much, you can click the thing to get a weekly roundup instead, which I failed on, so I apologize.

And then. I said for now, hit reply and let me know. What is your biggest challenge right now with newsletter growth? And I am someone who. [00:28:00] Despises this question. When I see it in a welcome email, I'm like, no, I'm not answering that. Stop making me think.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: But then at the underneath that I said, why question mark? Because I might end up featuring a tip that helps you with your specific challenge. That would be pretty cool. Huh. And so I'm like giving them a reason to do it. That's like benefiting them. And so I think that two part, like not just the question, like that second piece actually ended up.

Getting a lot of people replying and so within, yeah, it stopped working as well as the 30 days went on. But in the first what is this? So it launched April 23rd. I started getting subscribers on the 15th. So was that eight days? I think I got 200 replies. Wow. Which I guess now looking back, I'm like, that's pretty good.

And then I was like, but the replies aren't just like I'm struggling with growth. It's like paragraphs of these people's like [00:29:00] issues and what they're struggling with.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: So it became overwhelming very fast. And I still have to reply to some of these because yeah, it was just a lot.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. And you are a good person and you feel bad that you said you would reply and you have not yet.

Chenell Basilio: Yes. And I will do it. Yeah. And I feel really bad that I haven't yet.

Dylan Redekop: Okay. Okay, cool. So let's talk about things. You maybe you thought this is gonna work really well, but didn't, like when it term, when it came to this campaign, something that you like yeah. You had a hunch on that didn't work and whether or not you do it again, or how you might do it differently.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. The LinkedIn newsletter is a wild card. I don't know if it was good or bad, but it got to be annoying in the middle. So the, so just to give you a behind the scenes. So with the LinkedIn newsletter, you can launch it, it will go out to all of your first connections and say, Hey, Chenell just wants, just launch this newsletter

Dylan Redekop: as a notification.

Chenell Basilio: Send it. As a notification. Apparently as an email [00:30:00] too, I have LinkedIn emails turned off, so I don't know if you get an email or not. I'm sure at least half people don't, 'cause they have emails turned off. But so that actually did get 1,611 subscribers, which isn't bad. Okay. And that's not any, I haven't included any of those in the counts that we've talked about so far.

Dylan Redekop: And that's just for the LinkedIn newsletter.

Chenell Basilio: Yes, totally. So like subscribers

Dylan Redekop: on the LinkedIn platform, you don't actually have access to their email addresses, we should mention. Yeah, they're just like, yep. Subscribed on the platform.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, which is pointless. And actually, I was thinking this morning, I should go back and DM all those people and say, Hey, it's over, but you should come see all the fun stuff over at growth in reverse.

Totally. So I think I need to do that. That's like an action item. I'm taking away,

Dylan Redekop: seen 1600 minutes of copy and pasting all those. Oh my God. Okay. So that, that didn't really work out the way you had hoped.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, so it got annoying. So here's why. So when you publish a LinkedIn newsletter article, LinkedIn forces you to share [00:31:00] that on your feed.

And so if you're someone who's trying to. Post every day on LinkedIn, you're like almost competing with yourself. Yeah. So if you post a LinkedIn newsletter and then you post something else, it's which one is it gonna show? So I didn't like that. And so I did it for the first seven or 10 days.

I should go look back on what, how many it was. But after a while I just got frustrated with it. 'cause I'm like, I felt like they weren't getting. The engagement, the comments, the subscribers from LinkedIn over to the real newsletter. So I don't know. I stopped doing it and maybe it was just me being grumpy about it, but

Dylan Redekop: yeah,

Chenell Basilio: here we are.

Dylan Redekop: Fair enough. And did so then once you stopped doing that, did you post every day for the rest of the 30 days on LinkedIn for the growth letters? No. No.

Chenell Basilio: I think if I had been more. Organized and set up for this I probably would've had more time for marketing activities and like promoting this thing better.

But after like day seven, I think I was just like hanging on by a [00:32:00] thread.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, I think, and so some of these were get written either the night before, the morning of kind of thing. So

Chenell Basilio: morning of.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Kudos to you. I would've probably just collapsed. So good for you. Okay. So there's some good learnings there.

A little bit more prep. I think you could have squeezed actually like a lot more juice out of this if you had been able to create these social posts daily and published on like a teaser. Yeah, some people would've probably gotten it maybe a little bit annoyed. It's the same thing over and over, but I still think there would've been a lot of value there, getting some conversion, but okay, so that's LinkedIn.

Why, or, oh, actually, let's people might be wondering, did you monetize this? Was this all just in the, for the the growth that you were looking for the newsletter, or was there any monetization aspect to it?

Chenell Basilio: So when I started it, there was no monetization. I didn't even actually, the people, the companies that gave away some of the sponsored stuff, like I didn't get paid.

There was no like, official sponsorship thing. It was literally that they're giving away five licenses. Yeah. And I'm telling people about it. Yeah. Yeah, no, I was just [00:33:00] trying to like honestly do this for that challenge in the community. And then about halfway through I realized that I was not the only person falling behind with this.

So a lot of people were reading them and they're like, oh my God, I don't have time to implement this. I don't know exactly how to do this one. So then they get stuck. So I was like maybe there's a way for me to go deeper on this and like share videos of how to do some of this stuff. About that time I was like, okay, maybe I should start a small little mini course to help people with this. And I was like, I cannot do this for free. Like I, I'm already doing this 30 days of growth for free, like I need to monetize this in some way. So I was like, I'm just gonna make a hundred dollars course, something small and simple. Yeah. So I was like, oh, I actually think I'm gonna do this and put together a little product.

So that's what I did. So I actually did. I'm pre-selling that right now. Yeah. I have not created it. Yeah. But some people have joined to get it.

Dylan Redekop: Okay. And where can they people go to, to find that?

Chenell Basilio: 30 days of growth.co/course.

Dylan Redekop: [00:34:00] Okay. And that course is, does that include all of the three days of growth, le growth levers, or is it more about building a.

Popup newsletter?

Chenell Basilio: That's a great

question.

So the final day of the 30 days of growth I had someone I was going to use their growth lever and it didn't work out that we didn't get like it figured out in time. So I was like, I guess I'll just share about the 30 days of growth. So I actually just created my own.

Growth lever as the last day. Yeah, it actually worked out pretty well. People enjoyed that one a lot. So I just wrote like how I was setting up this popup newsletter and that kind of thing. So since it's a growth lever, that was in the 30 days of growth, I'm gonna include some videos of how I set this up and like I.

How I actually like some of the templates I use and that kind of thing. So

Dylan Redekop: Nice.

Chenell Basilio: I think it'll be fun. Yeah. Okay.

Dylan Redekop: So then what's gonna happen with the 30 days of Growth, since this is a popup newsletter by virtue of the name, it's kinda like it was here for a minute and then it's gone. So what's gonna happen with the content?

Chenell Basilio: This is a really good question. I don't [00:35:00] know. I think I can. Repurpose some of it into a lead magnet, but a 30 day lead magnet is a very long thing. So I think I'm gonna have to just pull out five or seven of them, make it like a seven day email course or something. I'm really not sure yet,

Dylan Redekop: but.

I think you might've inspired other people already without maybe knowing, because I started getting I got promoted or I got marketed to, from a different newsletter operator that I'm subscribed to about a 30 day it was like basically build your audience with AI for 30 days and it was somebody in kind of the creator space.

I won't name names, but, very. That's awesome. It was very, it was like in the middle. It started in the middle of the 30 days of growth. So I feel like this has inspired people a little bit more. Kudos to you on that. That's great. Maybe it was just coincidence. It very well could have been.

But this is somebody who probably you're connected to in some way, shape or form, or been who sees your content. I would think so. Nice. So I think it is cool. I think personally what I would, I don't think that a 30 day. Lead magnet is especially the way, the [00:36:00] value that there is with it. I don't think that is a too long of a course I've signed up for, I think David Perl had a 55 day like daily tip writing thing as lead magnet for his for his course.

I dunno, personally, I don't think it's too bad. The other way you could do it is just deliver it in one whole PDF if people don't wanna deal with a 30 day sequence. Yeah, you just give the option to get the whole thing in a PDF too.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah.

Dylan Redekop: And since it's free, you don't have to really worry about people like sharing it and all that stuff.

That would be fine. Okay. So based on your experience doing this, would you do this again and would you recommend other people doing it?

Chenell Basilio: A hundred percent, yes. Okay. And I will probably do it again.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. 30 days or would you do longer? Shorter.

Chenell Basilio: Now I have the 30 days of growth.co. It's gotta be 30 days.

Dylan Redekop: So you're thinking of running same. I broke like part two, basically like another 30 days of growth.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. I broke the cardinal rule that I always tell people to never put a number in. I. Domain or a title for a URL [00:37:00] because if you add a 31st one or you take one away, it like completely messes up your thing and I just fell right into it.

But it has a ring to it yeah.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Cool. Okay.

Chenell Basilio: All right. Yeah.

Dylan Redekop: Would you think of doing something different, like 30 days of revenue or 30 days of monetization or

Chenell Basilio: maybe

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Could be. I'm definitely going to be carrying over some of these learnings, but it'll definitely happen again. I think it was just, it was fun and like I got to talk to other people and now some of these creators are coming into Growth In Reverse pro to give like full on like how to do these things.

So I'm excited. I think it's just like building this flywheel that I didn't know I needed and built some more excitement around what I'm doing so

Dylan Redekop: well. I think the other thing it did that sort of a. I dunno, maybe a underrepresented thing is it really helped build your relationships with these people as well, right?

Yeah. You may have already had some established relationship with them, but this just built that much more rapport, building a collaboration, going back and forth. All that stuff I think is really valuable. And you're, [00:38:00] you are very a proponent of relationships. You've given, I think you gave your, yes.

Your craft and commerce talk last year was based on that. So yeah, I think that's a a really important point here.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. So I'll definitely do it again. A couple other things that I would carry over that I guess I didn't really touch on. So out of the 20, 29 creators, 'cause I was the 30th one, I can't really share my own stuff, although I did about seven of them ended up, it didn't work out with timing for them to actually share.

During this timeframe. So like I, this is another reason that I would like, give myself a little bit more of a launchpad. Yeah. Just to make sure that like other people's schedules worked with this. 'cause I didn't really take that into account at all you're just

Dylan Redekop: like, I have this window of time, you must fit into it.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. And I was like if you don't, it's totally fine. It's not a big deal. But that's a definite learning that I had, that I would take away from this.

Dylan Redekop: Cool. Yeah. One last question. What, is there a difference between a popup newsletter and an Evergreen email sequence?

Chenell Basilio: [00:39:00] Ooh. Yes. I think the Evergreen is something.

Okay. So I think the popup newsletter can become an evergreen piece of content, but the popup newsletter, it's like it starts on this day. It ends on this day. I don't know. I feel like there's like a launch to it. Yeah. Whereas like at the Evergreen thing, it's like you can launch it, but I don't know.

That's a good question. As I'm talking this out, I'm like maybe they are similar.

Dylan Redekop: I think they can be the, I think the value with the popup nature of it is that limited kind of creates some scarcity to urgency behind it. So it's like you better if you want it, you get in now. That being said, you have to be pretty clear that this is like actually only a time limited thing, or you gate it at the end and you put it behind a paywall or something like that.

So if people want it for free, they can opt in now to get it. So I think there's a little bit of a difference. But the way you structured it, 30 days growth, it can be something you consume once a day for 30 days, or like you said, if you create a evergreen sequence with it, people [00:40:00] could opt in and get it for 30 days straight or.

Maybe even like I, I had maybe suggested putting it into A PDF or some kind of maybe a notion database where people can just sift through it.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah.

Dylan Redekop: Sift and sift through it. No, I think it's,

Chenell Basilio: yeah, it's similar and maybe like the popup newsletter creates an evergreen resource. I'm not sure. TBD.

Dylan Redekop: I, but cool.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah.

Dylan Redekop: Any other part? Final parting words. Or thoughts?

Chenell Basilio: No. If you wanna grab the, 'cause we're actually recording this the day before this goes out, so if you wanna grab the course, it's still gonna be like a cheaper price than what it will be eventually, because I'm still building this out.

But yeah. So if you go to 30 days of growth.co/course, I'm gonna be having video walkthroughs of all of the growth levers and how I set this up and some more bonus stuff in there. So I think it'll be. Really good. Yeah. Like how to set up, how to make sure the people that join your list stay, how to get more people to join your list.

All of that good stuff.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. And templates and resources and stuff like that too. [00:41:00] So I think this is going to far surpass the value, the a hundred dollars price tag value at least currently. 'cause that I think is going up a little bit every week. Isn't that the plan?

Chenell Basilio: It actually went up this morning, so it's $125 now.

There you go. So every week it goes up by 25 bucks. So until I launch it.

Dylan Redekop: There you go. Growth in reverse. Or is it, sorry, 30 days of growth.co/course. Yep. Yep. There you go. And people in the Growth In Reverse Pro community get this for free as being part of the community. Yep, exactly. So just another, and pretty much any, anything Chenell offers front end paid people in the Growth Reverse Pro community get for free.

So if you are interested in checking out, the community it's people like me and Chenell who are running newsletters and people of all different newsletter shapes and sizes in there. And it's a great time. We've got about 80 members going strong and you can go to growth reverse.com/pro to check that out.

Chenell Basilio: Perfect. Yeah. Come join us. It'll be fun.

Dylan Redekop: Yes, join us. Alright. I think that's the pod.

Chenell Basilio: I [00:42:00] think it is. All right. All right. Talk to you soon.