Newsletter & Email Growth: Growth In Reverse

VIDEO - What NOT to do with Your Newsletter
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Chenell Basilio: [00:00:00] Dylan. I am fired up today.

Dylan Redekop: Let's go.

Chenell Basilio: I am so sick of seeing people waste their time when they're getting started with their newsletter on stuff that does not matter based on advice they're seeing on the internet. And so I just wanna walk through that and clear some things up for people today.

Dylan Redekop: But Chenell, the internet is undefeated when it comes to the best advice that everybody should listen to. So I can't believe you're

making this stance.

Chenell Basilio: I know, right? It's horrible. I can't believe it.

Dylan Redekop: Unreal, unreal. I'm, I'm pumped. I'm really curious to see what you've come up with. I've come up with a small list of my own, of of things, but, you've had a lot of thoughts about this stuff, so I'm really curious to see what you have to say.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. Uh, I'm excited to just chat about it because. Today we're just gonna talk about the things that you should not do when you're getting started. And some of these things are people that even if you have hundreds or thousands of subscribers, you shouldn't be doing them either. So I think we are [00:01:00] just gonna like save people a ton of time in this, in this conversation and really, I don't know, have some spicy takes flying around here.

Dylan Redekop: I like it. I'm all for the spice. I think mild salsa, it should be outlawed, it should be spicy. Don't come at me with that.

No jalapeno crap. Let's get these, takes like five chili peppers or whatever spice level we need to take 'em up to.

Chenell Basilio: So here's what I think happens, and this topic actually came from me asking people what they need help with. Nobody actually said any of this outright, but they all asked some of these questions and I am just ready to break the myth of all of this stuff. So I think what happens is people start a newsletter, they're researching the concept of a newsletter.

They're like, okay, you know, I'm gonna start an email list. I'm gonna start writing about this one topic.

And then you go too far in your research and you hit this point where you start hearing all of these best practices. You get distracted, you hear about bots clicking emails and needing to clean your list every 30 days.

And then you're like, [00:02:00] oh my God, I have three subscribers. I gotta clean my email list. And I'm like. Oh man. Like it's just not something you should be focusing on in the beginning at all. And so I think people are wasting so much time with a lot of this stuff. And so I have a list of some of these things.

I know you said you do too, so I'm excited to dig in and help save people time and get them off the struggle. Bus,

Dylan Redekop: Let's do it. Let's do it. Yeah. All aboard the struggle bus now. Let's all get off.

Chenell Basilio: No more struggle bus. Okay, so I think the first one that I think you even thought was spicy when I, when I shared this one, but definitely the first mistake I see beginners making and sometimes intermediate folks writing a welcome sequence. And like I just, ugh. Yes, this is, I

Dylan Redekop: now not a

Chenell Basilio: a little spicy here.

Dylan Redekop: but we're talking welcome sequence. That suggests more than one email.

Chenell Basilio: Yes, sequence pe. Okay. Although I think in the early days you probably [00:03:00] don't even need a welcome email. Like if you have three subscribers, you probably don't need to be focused on getting your perfect welcome email set up before you try and find subscribers because there's like this. There's this barrier, right?

Because you're trying to do all these things for people that don't even exist on your list yet. But then like you need to get people on the list. So it's like a chicken and egg problem. And I feel like some people spend way too much time on the technical, which tool should I use? All this stuff versus let's go find subscribers, let's make sure what we think is gonna be a cool idea is what something, what people actually want.

So. Yes, have a welcome, welcome email. That's fine. But it can literally be so basic, like, thanks for being here. I'm gonna send you this every week. Hit reply and let me know what you need help with three sentences, call it a day. Done right, no fancy welcome sequence. You don't need to be like continuously reaching out to these people when there's no one on your list.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Yep, that's fair. So basically what you're saying is don't distract yourself with the minutia in that regard. [00:04:00] Focus on probably. Writing content that people really actually want to read and sharing it publicly so people will sign up for your newsletter.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, and probably sharing the idea publicly before writing the content. Like until you have like 10 subscribers, like let's, let's get those people first. And these numbers are totally arbitrary. Like it could be 11, it could be 20, it could be whatever. But I think until you have a base group of readers, don't write an email.

Dylan Redekop: Hmm. Okay. So how are you promoting this newsletter?

Chenell Basilio: Okay. So I think I like the, the idea, and Tom, uh, Alder kind of did this, right? So he was writing on social media for a while to figure out what people enjoyed. Now you can take that route. You can also just like email people, you know, and be like, Hey, I'm gonna start this newsletter. What do you think you wanna join?

Dylan Redekop: Totally.

Chenell Basilio: Uh, you don't ha it doesn't have to come through social media. Um. Jonathan Goodman wrote a book called The Obvious Choice, and I was reading it recently so it's top of mind for me, but [00:05:00] he harps on this thing of like online business owners try and get, like, they think they can only get customers online.

That's not true. Like you can text people, you can go reach out to friends, you can ask somebody you already know to sign up. Like I think we all think that we're just like out in this weird orbit by ourselves, and we have to find these people brand new without reaching out to people we already

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: So I would love for people to simplify it.

Come up with your topic. Write a couple sentences about what you plan to send and just ask people if they wanna join. And if you get, if everyone says no, maybe it's not the right

Dylan Redekop: It probably isn't. Yeah. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: But I think we get so caught up on like, and like I have more on this list, but like even a fancy landing page, like probably don't need it at the beginning.

Probably don't even need a form. Like go manually find 10, 15, 20 people. To sign up to your email list. Maybe you're finding these people on LinkedIn if you don't have anyone that you think would be [00:06:00] interested, but I, I, I would really push back on that and say that you probably do have someone in your network that would be interested in the topic you're writing about.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, that's a really good way to validate whether or not people wanna read it. Like figure that out first before you Definitely, before you buy a domain and you create a landing page with a form and connect it to your ESP and all that sort of stuff, or embedded whatever you might do. I think the you point you're making is like, make sure this. This newsletter has legs, the topic has legs that people are interested in, and that you can get somebody who you're gonna send the first edition to. Uh, "somebodys", like multiple people would be

ideal. Um, get three, five, you know, 20 friends or colleagues or people in your space on this email list so that when you do actually hit send on the first edition, you'll have like that instant feedback and, and maybe it will be great, maybe it will be, but you won't know until you do.

And I think. You mentioned Tom Alder. He got 5,000 people on his email list just by posting on LinkedIn pretty much every [00:07:00] day. And it turned out to be a really great move because he knew that the content he was posting on LinkedIn was resonating with people. They were signing up 'cause he just added that call to action on his LinkedIn posts. And he had a simple landing page. He wasn't sending any emails. I'm not sure, honestly, if he was sending out. Any kind of like, welcome email to those people when they did sign up. But, um, he wasn't sending out email editions, so he had about 5,000

people on his list before he actually did.

Chenell Basilio: And that's a total outer, like Tom was writing for like six to nine months, I think, before he started his newsletter. I don't think we all necessarily have that luxury of time of like, I have this full-time job. I can do this on the side. If you do, that's awesome.

I think that's a great path to go down. But don't take that number as like, I have to have 5,000 or I have to have 500 like. You can have 55, I don't know a smaller number. It does not mean it's a bad newsletter. I think it's just a matter of like he was posting on LinkedIn. The first things he was was writing about are not what he ended up creating a newsletter about.[00:08:00]

So I think that's the important point of that story is like he started writing about. I think it was like crypto and finance and all this stuff, and he just ended up back in the, Hey, I write about strategy for business, like for B2B. So that's what his newsletter is about, is about strategy. And so I think that's a big lesson of just like, I don't know, iterate.

You can, you can do that kind of thing. But I liked his because he didn't have a newsletter in the beginning. So I think that's a, an interesting example for people to see.

Dylan Redekop: And the nice thing with that too is that. You don't have to commit to. Let's say Tom didn't, wait, and he just started publishing about crypto and finance and that sort of thing. Then he is committed to that. He's got the sunk cost fallacy, the, you know, buying the domain or whatever, starting up the newsletter, the landing page, all that stuff.

Getting people on a list and then all of a sudden being like, ah, actually I'm gonna write about, you know, business strategy instead. And then, but, or he wants to, but he's wasted all this time and, and that sort of thing. And got, all these people on his list who are expecting something different. So this is a really good way to not, [00:09:00] I guess, invest your time and energy into something that you're not for sure committed to or settled on. So yeah, I think, I think this

is, I'm coming around to this idea, I'm coming around to this idea, I was a little bit like, oh man, Chenell's lost it. She's, she's lost her marbles here a bit, but I, I get your, I get

Chenell Basilio: so. Well I'm glad you're coming around to it, so, okay. So no welcome sequence. Um, I think the fancy landing page don't, it's not worth it unless you've been building we websites for 20 years and you could do this in like an hour. Fine. If you feel that way. I'm that kind of person where I'm like, uh, it'll take me like 45 minutes to set this all up.

Go for it. Not necessary. Um, I think one of the other things that people get stuck on is like the perfect tool. By far the biggest question I get is, do I choose beehive or kit or substack? Which one is best? Which one's perfect?

Dylan Redekop: It doesn't matter.

Chenell Basilio: I, I know, spoiler alert. Honestly, the tool is not gonna be the reason that you're successful.

A tool can help, but honestly, it's not until you have a larger [00:10:00] newsletter or, I mean, some tools just resonate better with other people. So I think we'll do a whole episode on, on the tool side of things, but don't get stuck on a tool. Just pick something. Just pick something and don't look back for six months.

Like, keep

Dylan Redekop: This was a hill I died on back in the day when I really was. Starting to write a lot about newsletters is there's this big battle between, oh, should I use Convert? back then. It was ConvertKit. Should I use, um, what was Twitter's Twitter bought that, uh.

Chenell Basilio: Revue.

Dylan Redekop: Should I use Revue? Should I use, um, MailChimp?

And then Beehive came on the block and you know, all these other, there's so many ESPs and it's like, stop wasting your time, your time trying to pick the perfect tool. Just start writing and publishing or start growing your list. Um, that matters way more. And yeah, it's, you can't. Grow. Uh, I, I understand you can't grow a list necessarily without a place to, you know, add those email addresses, but the whole point is like, just find one that does that and use it until you've maxed out the potential that it can do for you. [00:11:00] Then find, spend a little bit more time once you've. Validated your idea. Once people, you've got people on your list, once they're reading and you're like, oh, this tool doesn't actually do what I need it to do anymore, let me find the right one, then, then it makes sense. Then it's worth investing that time and that energy into, and maybe some money into a tool and an ESP platform that'll work for you. But in the beginning it does. I, I just don't, I still stand on this, on this hill and we'll die on it, that it doesn't matter in the beginning. Just pick one and start.

Chenell Basilio: Yes, definitely. So don't get stuck on that either. Again, like you, if you Google like how to get started with a newsletter, like all these things are gonna come up, right? Pick the right tool, build a landing page, add a form to it, write a welcome sequence. Like you just don't, you don't need it necessarily.

It's not necessary, especially when you haven't proven. The case for your newsletter or decided if you actually like writing about this topic. Like there's no point in trying to do all these things if you're gonna end up quitting in three months or six months or whatever because you don't enjoy the topic.

Save those for later. Let yourself delete [00:12:00] that whole to-do list that you have and just like get started.

Dylan Redekop: I am asking ChatGPT what the first things I should do to start a newsletter are

Chenell Basilio: oh, nice. I

Dylan Redekop: because I'm, I'm really curious, just like on the spot testing here. What are, somebody who doesn't know, who hasn't, followed you or I, or all of the names in the newsletter space, what advice they're gonna be getting from like AI or even from Google. I wanna start a newsletter. What are the first, um, what are the most important things I should do right away? I dunno if that's the right prompt, but you know, off the top of my head, it's not too bad.

Chenell Basilio: It's probably what someone would type in, so it's great.

Dylan Redekop: Uh, second thing, choose the right platform.

Second thing, nope. You don't need to do that. Um, you you can find the right platform. You don't have to choose it right away. Um, get clear on purpose and audience is the first one. So I, I agree. Actually, getting clear on the purpose of your newsletter and who you're [00:13:00] writing to is probably the most important thing or one of the, the top most important things .

choosing the right platform is number two.

Chenell Basilio: The next one on my list as we just keep going down this list is, I kind of alluded to this before, but a way to clean your email list. People look for this. They're like, what's a good automation to clean my email list? And I'm like, all right, cool. How many subscribers do you have? And they're like, 80.

And I'm like, no. Back away. Stop trying to clean your email list when you have 80 people on it. Just try it. Like you could literally send a personal email to each of those people and say, do you enjoy this content? How is it going? What could I do better? What are you struggling with? Instead of trying to get like, unsubscribe people because they're potentially not opening, like try and figure out a way to reel them in.

That's like your, your core audience of people that you want to be focusing on. So please don't delete those people just 'cause they might not have opened in the last

Dylan Redekop: Mm-hmm. I wonder what, what.

Chenell Basilio: Uh, I think I see people getting stuck on

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, I wonder what [00:14:00] number of, where the number of subscribers you have and that you're sending to say cold subscribers becomes a detriment, where it actually

is impactful to your, , to your send your reputation and inbox placement and all that sort of things. Because I would think, yeah, if you have 80 subscribers and , 40 are opening and 40 aren't. Probably not a big issue, but once you get to say a thousand or 5,000 or 50,000, then if you're sending to a bunch of inboxes that are either bouncing or are immediately unsubscribing or are , who knows flagging your newsletter, then, then that's where cleaning your list. I, I, I know you weren't suggesting that.

No. Nobody ever cleaned their list, ever. But I'm just curious where that, where that threshold might be where somebody should actually start considering that.

Chenell Basilio: It's a good question. I don't know, but it's definitely not 80 or a hundred or,

Dylan Redekop: maybe even, I don't like even a thousand, like unless you're getting

20% open rates or lower, um, or even maybe

30, it would be a good benchmark.

Like 30% open rates are lower [00:15:00] than maybe it's time to clean your list. And I think maybe that's the rate that you should, or there should be a rate that you're considering less than, more so than numbers. But it,

it's a good, it's a good call out.

Chenell Basilio: I think going along with this, the next one that I had on my list was Fancy automations. Um, people try and set up, I mean, I've seen so many people like, oh, you know, I'm on Kit and I'm trying to set up this super fun automation to make sure that, you know, after seven days of not opening, they'll get this email and then they don't get this email.

And I'm like, just like, grow your list. Like, just focus on the thing that matters, which is. Finding out what content people want and finding the people who are going to continue reading that and like where you enjoy creating and just like just sit there. Just sit at that level until you get to escape philosophy where people are sharing your content without you asking them to and that kind of thing.

Like until you hit that point, don't focus on some of this stuff unless you have like a hundred hours a week, which.

Dylan Redekop: [00:16:00] Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: I still think if you spent that time more on growth and talking to people and finding the right fit for your newsletter, then you're gonna be way better off than just like having these automation set up.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. I think if you're obsessed with. Creating the best content you possibly can, then all this stuff should fall by the wayside and everything, everything else will be better. Your open rates will be better, your engagement will be, be will be better, your growth will be faster. Um, your unsubscribe rate will be lower. I it all, it always comes back to insanely valuable content to me. And, um, I think we should talk about

that soon, someday on the podcast a little bit more. But, but really the, I think that's the point you're getting at, right?

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, definitely. And I mean, I guess I'm talking about growing your newsletter and all of that, but I think the other thing that people focus on way too early is paid ads. So.

Dylan Redekop: Ooh.

Chenell Basilio: I have said this before, I am not a fan of someone starting a newsletter and immediately starting paid ads. I think you're wasting your money.

I think you're wasting your effort and your [00:17:00] time because until you find that core format for your content and what you're gonna be sending, what you're gonna be talking about every week, where every day or whatever you're, there's no reason to go find people for something that you're not sure what it is yet.

So I think people start with paid ads way too early.

Dylan Redekop: What if, you know, um, I'm gonna play devil's advocate here. What if you know what your newsletter is gonna be about? And you've maybe been writing about this online, but you haven't started a newsletter yet. So you've been writing on social media. Um, maybe even you have a podcast or some other form of content, a YouTube, um, a YouTube channel that might not be super popular, but it's like, you know, it's grown, it's grown some steam.

The idea has been validated. Would you then. Consider investing in paid ads if you still had, say, zero newsletter subscribers, but you had like a valid concept for, um, content delivery in the form of a

newsletter.

Chenell Basilio: I would say, I would say go to, if you have an audience elsewhere, even if it's small, [00:18:00] try and get them on the newsletter first, and if they're not signing up, but they're the pe, they're your core audience. There's a mismatch there. So I mean, you hear this all the time with like YouTube versus Instagram.

You can't post the same thing on both platforms because they're different, right? And so a newsletter is not the same thing as a LinkedIn audience either. They're close, but they're not the same. So if you're getting. You know, replies and engagement on LinkedIn, but not getting people to sign up for the newsletter.

I have to wonder if there's like either the, the messaging's wrong, which is a huge part of paid ads. So if you can't get the messaging for people to sign up right, then that's a big problem too.

Dylan Redekop: No, that's totally true. I think that's the biggest, that's the biggest thing that paid ads could possibly even help you with is figuring out like.

Your key messaging and, um, hooks that work, that drive people, lead magnets, that sort of thing. If you have money to kind of just throw away, of course, um, 'cause that's probably what you'll be doing at, at first. But I think, uh, it does really put that constraint on you to like [00:19:00] succinctly share what your newsletter is, who it helps, who it's for, um, and the problem it solves. So kind of the, the who it's for, what problem it solves and how it solves that problem. I think those are the. The key things that you need to make very clear for somebody to subscribe to your newsletter, especially when it's coming from a paid ad. I wanted to share with you quickly, um, some of our, some of our fellow newsletter compatriots, um, who put out a. An episode that said, would you ever

pay to acquire your,

Chenell Basilio: you pulling up here?

Dylan Redekop: would you ever pay to acquire your first 1000 subscribers? And the argument between the two people is one person said no, and the other one said yes.

So, Louis Nichols from Spark Loop, posted on LinkedIn, would you ever pay to acquire your first 1000 subscribers and his co-host on their podcast?

Tyler said, no. Um, and Louis said, well, maybe sometimes. And I, I responded, I said. If your main revenue strategy was, you know, ads and sponsorships, wouldn't you want those first 1000 subscribers to be your validation that people actually want to read and open your [00:20:00] newsletter? You know, it's like your proof of concept. And then Louis said, in that situation, you'd have three priorities. One would be like, how quickly can I grow to enough subscribers that I can test whether I'll be able to make money from selling ads and sponsorships? Number two, does the growth channel I plan on using to scale drive quality subscribers, like opens and clicks in this case.

And number three, will brands spend on ads, sponsorships with me and can I drive results? So he's a big proponent of the complete opposite of what you're saying. He is like, I want to get like super quick proof of concept on this newsletter before I, you know, sync a bunch of time into it. So, um, Louis, all for spending money upfront to validate, whereas you're saying. Save money. Spend your time to validate.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, and I, I still stand behind that. I understand where he is coming from, but I think that. When you are just getting started, you actually would do better to organically grow that core audience. To be able to figure out, Hey, is this newsletter format right? Or [00:21:00] if people don't like it, then go for another one.

But I think organic subscribers are. A better measure of whether something's working versus paid subscribers. I've seen so many people sync thousands of dollars into paid ads to grow an email list of five, 10,000 subscribers and they can't get anyone to reply or open or click or anything. And I'm like, unless you're a Facebook ads are completely dialed in perfectly, you have the right audience, which again, like.

That's gonna depend on your content, so it's like a hard thing to figure out in the beginning. I really think you're, you're wasting your money until you hit like a few hundred, at least a thousand subscribers.

Dylan Redekop: Oh yeah. Yeah. And those and organically grown sub subscribers in that

case. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I think

that most people listening who have a newsletter would probably agree that the people that are. Seeing your content online, say on social media or elsewhere, um, whether it's through like a podcast or something else, or YouTube, and then [00:22:00] subscribe because they like that content. They are gonna be the ones who stick around. They'll o they'll actually be more likely to open your newsletter. They'll be more likely to reply to your newsletter because they've already maybe interfaced with you on those platforms. Whereas somebody who's coming in really cold from a maybe really good Facebook ad, they got them to click and subscribe. . If those people are not nearly as invested in you, they don't really know, like, and trust you. , You haven't built up , space in their head yet, uh, when they think about a problem to come to you. So I think that paid ads have a their place for sure, but most people that I don't think I agree with you, I don't think it's right, the right place to be spending your time and money in the beginning.

Chenell Basilio: And I think if you get a thousand subscribers from paid ads and a thousand subscribers from social media or some other, uh, organic form, the quality is just so starkly different that like, you're not gonna get as. Good quality of information from those paid folks that you will from organic. So I think like the organic people, like you said, they, they know, like, and trust you.

They're probably willing to share your [00:23:00] content if it's good. Whereas someone who came from a paid ad, they're like, I don't even remember signing up for this. Maybe like, didn't Facebook automatically enter my email address? I don't even remember hitting that button. And then they're like, who's this person?

You're probably gonna get some spam complaints. Like that happens with every channel, like even organic stuff. I'm not gonna sit here and say it doesn't. But I still think that going the paid route first is not a good move.

Dylan Redekop: And that actually calls that reminds me of, um, paid recommendations or just newsletter recommendations in general. Do you have a spicy take on those?

Chenell Basilio: I, yeah, I, again, I don't think you should be trying to find newsletter recommendation, uh, partners this early on. I think you should find your first few hundred subscribers from social media or talking to friends and having them share it, or maybe a cross promotion or something that's more like. Meaty versus someone just like clicking a button and there they are on your email list.

Like I don't think that's their way to go either. Uh, that's actually on my list of [00:24:00] things

Dylan Redekop: Oh no, sorry.

Chenell Basilio: too early too. No, it's good. I'm glad you brought it up.

Dylan Redekop: Cool.

Okay.

Chenell Basilio: I think recommendations are just, they're not higher quality. They're not as high quality as like someone finding you on LinkedIn via a post and then going to find your, your landing page and then subscribing, like that's a higher quality person.

'cause they've jumped through a

Dylan Redekop: Oh yeah.

Chenell Basilio: of friction.

So

Dylan Redekop: Didn't we talk about adding friction once?

Chenell Basilio: totally did.

We'll link that video up, uh, as well, or in the show notes too,

Dylan Redekop: that's a good one.

Chenell Basilio: but. Yeah.

Dylan Redekop: Okay. What do you got next?

Chenell Basilio: paid ads just kind of remove the friction too. So it's on the same, same level. The next one is perfect analytics or analytics in general. I hear people all the time like, Ooh, I am, you know, I set up this, this Instagram post, and I wanted to see exactly who came from that one post.

So I used a UTM parameter on my link and then it didn't work. And like they're just focused on. The numbers on the backend versus like actually pulling people [00:25:00] in. Like, you got 10 subscribers yesterday. Awesome. Like if you can't figure out where they came from, it's okay. Like you still got 10. Like I think, I think people get too in the weeds with like UTM parameters and all that stuff way too soon.

And then they're focused on looking at. Oh, I got six impressions versus seven impressions yesterday. Uh, it's like, okay, but really like let's just try and get people on the list, get people reading and consuming your content and then focus on attribution and all this stuff. And it's funny because. In my corporate days, uh, when I worked at AAA, I remember we were doing paid ads and if the attributes attribution wasn't correct, like perfect, like, oh, this ad drove exactly the right number of signups, even though we knew there was some like mistake and it could have come from a different area, but wasn't through that direct link.

It was like, well, that ad didn't work. And I'm like, that's not really, you know, and this, it's not. The company I work for, either, it's like every large business, like they get so [00:26:00] focused on these numbers that they miss. Like the big picture.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, I could see that being a

problem. Marketing is so much more holistic though. It's like, you know, you, you have to look at

the bigger picture. How many times did that person actually. See your brand or your face or your name or your posts before they actually went and subscribed. Attribution is so fickle and I think there is a, there is a time and place for it for sure, , because it does help guide. Where you should be spending your time or where you should be posting, or the types of posts.

If you, if you can see that like, oh, people are really resonating with my video posts. I'm getting tons of subscribers with my Instagram videos. I'm not getting many subscribers with, you know, static posts or LinkedIn or, a different platform altogether, then you'd be doing yourself a disservice by not looking into that a little bit more. But I do agree that like you definitely don't need to fine tune and attribute every single subscriber that you get, especially in the beginning when they're probably coming from all different places.

Chenell Basilio: I say this [00:27:00] one because I think people would just get so hung up in the early days of like, oh, I got a subscriber. I have to know where they came from. And it's like, well, what did you do yesterday? Like, maybe that drove your subscriber and you can just like keep going. Like just. Don't focus on like what's already happened, like keep moving in the same direction.

It's clearly working or it's not working, and then you just, you know, do something different. But I think if you give, um, each channel enough time, then you can. You know, it'll, it'll eventually fi you'll figure it out. But I just, I see people getting so hung up on like UTM parameters and like having the perfect, like Google Analytics set up.

And I'm like, okay, cool. But like you have five subscribers. Like, let's get to a number where, you know, you're consistently putting out content on a discovery platform like JLo calls it, and then you're able to continuously write this. Uh, newsletter, get replies and learn from your subscribers versus just figuring out where they came from.

And I think one of the best ways to circumvent this is just ask them in your welcome email, like, where did you find the newsletter done? That's your [00:28:00] analytics for the first six months. Like, don't focus on too many like specific tools or numbers or that kind of

Dylan Redekop: And you're killing two birds with flint stone there. 'cause as we just talked about in our last episode, getting replies is huge, especially in the beginning.

Um, and if you are writing a welcome email, which Chanel just said, don't write, write a welcome email in the beginning, but if you are, definitely include a

question that

Chenell Basilio: caveats. I

Dylan Redekop: yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, yeah. Yes. You need a welcome email. I'm not saying don't have a welcome email, but I think people focus on it like way too soon, like perfecting it way too

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, that's fair. That's fair.

Chenell Basilio: And then the last couple that I have on here are, uh, scalable growth strategies, like recommendations, that kind of thing.

Um, and then going viral, which kind of go hand in hand. I think people just focus on these huge numbers, like, how do I get 50 subscribers today? And I'm like, okay, you just got started. How can we get three? Like, can you manually DM people on LinkedIn or Twitter or whatever your platform is and say like, Hey, I really.

Enjoy this content. Like , start a [00:29:00] conversation. Tell them you have a newsletter. If they wanna sign up, great. You could also like just tell them about the newsletter and say, can I have your email address? I'll add you to the list. You don't even need a form.

Like it could be that simple.

Dylan Redekop: Yep. Absolutely. That's how I grew my newsletter on Twitter back in the day, uh, when I was first starting. This is like back when Twitter wasn't what it is now. And you could, you could reach out to people and dm, I mean, you still can do that, but you could reach out to like decent people and DM them and, um, and I grew.

I mean, I manually reached out to people. I kind of copy and pasted the same sort of message, but I would actually replace like their first name and kind of tweak it a little bit or call out like, Hey, thanks for engaging with a post if they had, and that's how I got like 50 subscribers I think in a month just by doing that.

Few a day and. Probably about one in five, two outta five would actually reply and say, yeah, sure, that sounds great. And I wasn't even doing the thing where it's like, send me your email address, I'll sign you up. I would send them to a, a landing page, but I think there's, [00:30:00] um, probably a better chance of conversion if you just say, Hey, I'll take your email address now and, um, sign you up myself. Some people might not be comfort comfortable with that, but, uh, I think that. Is proven to be a better strategy in some ways because we had Gannon Meyer in the Growth In Reverse Pro community and he showed us how basically you can use ManyChat on Instagram and keep your subscriber, your new subscriber, or your follower, I guess on Instagram, keep them in Instagram while asking them, Hey, I'm gonna send you this free thing.

It's, it was a lead magnet strategy, but I'm gonna send you this free thing. And instead of sending those people to. A landing page to get the lead magnet. He would just say, um, if you're interested, can I get your email address? And then so you, they would share their email address and that would automatically sync right through to kit and boom, you had a new subscriber without having to take them off platform and get them to fill out a form themselves.

So the conversion rates are much higher for stuff like that. So if you can do that in dms, I think you're gonna be further ahead too. I hadn't honestly thought of that, so that's

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. Again, like [00:31:00] simplify, don't try and go viral and like just focus on one thing at a time, like you don't need to, for it to take three months to start a newsletter, like you could start next week if you just come up with a good idea and concept for your newsletter and just figure out who you wanna talk to and then just go, go where those people are.

Ask them for their email address. And sign them up yourself. Like you don't need a landing page. You don't need an ESP even in the beginning until you get like 10 subscribers, five, like whatever the number is. Like I think if you can get that. Core group of folks first, you probably could start with just like

saving these email addresses in a Google sheet.

No, I won't say Gmail. No. But save them in a Google sheet and then once you get hit 10, sign up for beehive kit or whatever on their free plan and just start sending an email and be like, Hey, thanks for signing up last week. Here's the first edition, or whatever it ends up being. But I think we just overcomplicate this stuff so much and I, I get emails from people all the time that are like, oh, I'm, I'm starting my newsletter next month or two months from now.

I'm like. Why are you [00:32:00] waiting? Like just do it. Just start. There is a point where you're just, you're, you're waiting too long to start, and I think you're gonna learn so much more just by getting going and taking action than you will from thinking about it and researching.

Dylan Redekop: Planning is like. Procrastination. You'll just drive yourself silly. With planning. 'cause it's just a, a form of procrastination

Chenell Basilio: I think people focus on going viral too early. And honestly, if you're just getting started and you don't have all your ducks in a row and everything's not perfect, going viral is gonna be the worst thing for

Dylan Redekop: Oh yeah.

Chenell Basilio: you're gonna lose the potential trust you could have gained from getting seen by 500, a thousand.

25,000 people and they're like, wait, why is this, why does this look like this? I, it's not what I wanted. And then they're not gonna come back. So if you can start slow, go organically, sustainably, and, , start growing that way, I think it's a much better trajectory for you than trying to get a million subscribers at

Dylan Redekop: Yep. Yep. Million subscribers at once Is um, not good? Probably not good.

Um, I got a [00:33:00] few if you have, unless you have a few more that you wanna share.

Chenell Basilio: no. Go for

Dylan Redekop: Okay, so let's start with maybe the spiciest, although we've talked about this before, so it's not super spicy. So, um, this is more technical as well. Uh, don't worry about double opt-in in the beginning. I would, I would

say just get people on your list. Don't worry about them confirming their subscription. Of course there are some countries that you have to use double opt-in. I know Germany is one where they're really strict on that. Um, so just make sure you're doing things above board. However, if you can avoid doing the double opt-in, which is where somebody signs up for your newsletter, you, your ESP sends them a email that says, please confirm your subscription.

They have to, you have to click on that, um, in your inbox and then you'll be subscribed or confirmed. So you have the option to turn that off in kit. And I believe in most ESPs you do. Now we are fans of using a false double opt-in. We won't get into the [00:34:00] details of that, but it's essentially sort of doing the same thing, but you send the email yourself, um, from your ESP, they're automatically subscribed and it's just a way of kind of, um, hedging that somebody misses that first email.

'cause you can always send them again. So that's one. Um, don't worry about double optins.

Chenell Basilio: I like it.

Dylan Redekop: My next one is, this isn't talked about a ton, but it is a feature that I've, I've dabbled with and I've seen people dabble with and that's resend to Unops. Have you heard of this feature? Chanel.

Chenell Basilio: Mm-hmm. Yep.

Dylan Redekop: kid has a feature, um, that you can resend your newsletter to people who didn't open it, which sounds like. Hey, that's awesome. They didn't open it. They, maybe they missed it. I wanna make sure that they've seen it. And so I, I did a test back almost a year ago, last November, where I was resending to an opens for I think, five editions in a row. And, um, the results, I don't have them right in front of me, but basically the long and short of it was the results [00:35:00] weren't great.

The resend to on opens did not actually really increase my overall open rate and. I think it caused more harm than good. I'll have to surface those results and maybe share them publicly because I, I remember coming away from it thinking like, oh, this is not, this is not the feature I think it is meant to be, and it isn't, isn't doing me really any good.

And it's probably just annoying people more than anything. Um, getting another email reminder in their inbox.

Chenell Basilio: I like that one. I, I don't use that. I think I've used it twice maybe because, you know, I might have sent. An email that had like the subject line had like a spam trigger word or some reason that it didn't get opened. Um, so that's when I've used it, but I don't use that. I've heard way too many horror stories of like, you know, you get way more spam complaints, you get all kinds of things.

'cause people are like, no, I actually did open the first one. I just didn't want you to know that I opened it. So stop sending this to me.

Dylan Redekop: Absolutely like you, like if you turn images off, for example, then the pixel [00:36:00] isn't picked up and it looks like the ESP, the ESP is like, oh, they didn't actually open it when they, they very well may have. Yeah. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah.

Dylan Redekop: I'm gonna do one more, and this is more on kind of the content strategy sort of end of things necessarily super newsletter focused, but, I would recommend. People to not post and ghost or send and forget and use the content from your newsletter in social media. Because I, I think a lot of us are of the mindset of like, well, I sent this out, everybody's now seen it. I don't have to talk about this again. I don't wanna like bug people with this message again, or I don't want to, . Make people think I'm just, , regurgitating the same stuff, or that I have nothing else to talk about. The onus is on us to ensure that our message, if we're proud of the content we're sharing, that our message is getting spread. And just because you sent it out to a subscriber, , doesn't mean that they opened it doesn't mean that they saw it and. People like I see Nicholas Cole, he's talked about the same [00:37:00] thing for almost 10 years. He still keeps talking about it just from different ways, right? I think, we should shamelessly reshare the content that we're already sending. And vice versa. If you've written about it on social media and it got some traction, that doesn't mean you shouldn't write about it in your newsletter.

So I guess my whole point is repurpose your content, remix it, the self-awareness that we have that we're sharing the same thing is like sometimes crippling, but I think it actually, I think we need to really ignore that. And I'm guilty of this a lot. So, um, I guess this is more me just kind of airing my dirty laundry here and being like, Hey, don't be like me.

Do this more.

Chenell Basilio: I feel like you're just subconsciously putting this in the episode, so I start posting more

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. '

Chenell Basilio: cause I'm the worst at this.

Dylan Redekop: Oh, you,

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. Yeah, me. I know, I know.

Every week I'm like, Dylan, I already shared that. I'm not sharing it again. You're like, but you should share it again.

Dylan Redekop: share it more. Maybe we're both guilty of it then.

Chenell Basilio: Yes, totally. Um, [00:38:00] no, that's a good one.

Yeah, people get too hung up on, . Talking about the same thing over and over and over again. When you look at the most popular businesses, the most popular creators, and that's all they do is talk about the same thing over and over again. It's obviously from a different angle, but you could literally talk about the same thing a hundred times and people are not gonna remember that you said that.

So everyone's not watching you like you're watching yourself. So just remember

Dylan Redekop: Exactly. They don't probably care much sadly, but truly,

Chenell Basilio: Oh, so good. I'm excited to have this episode to be able to send to people who email me with questions like this to be like, actually go here

Dylan Redekop: yeah.

Chenell Basilio: and just actually here, let's, let's end this with one thing. 'cause I did put together a quick list of things that you'd probably should have when you start.

So I think the four things that you need, you ready? Drum roll, an idea and a content template. Okay, so I, we already talked about this, like have an idea for what you're gonna send. Have a template of like, okay, [00:39:00] every week I'm gonna send this one thing, whether it's a deep dive, whether it's curating the news in a really interesting way, whether it's whatever your content template is, right.

Make sure it's valuable for a specific person. So that's like the one, the first thing. The second one is an ESP, so you're not sending from Gmail or whatever, but again, you could technically start with that one. If you just save emails in a list. Maybe you go to a trade show and you capture 25 emails, and then you go start your newsletter, whatever it is.

The third one was a form to collect emails, but honestly, that's debatable. Don't even think you need it if you are just getting started. Uh, and an email address to send from. So chenell@growthandreverse.com or dylan@growthcurrency.net, like that specific thing, um, so that you're not sending from Gmail, because that can cause all kinds of issues from.

If you're using an ESP and that kind of thing. So I think that's really it, like an idea, an audience member, uh, a form or a way to collect

Dylan Redekop: Mm-hmm.

Chenell Basilio: Again, it could just be handwritten

Dylan Redekop: [00:40:00] Yeah. Copy

paste.

Chenell Basilio: um, yeah, and a, an email address to send emails from.

So, super basic. Don't try and go build the most beautiful website in the world.

If you don't have a website, you can start with beehive. They'll build you one as you write your newsletter. You don't even need one to be honest in the beginning. I think people overcomplicate it. And just, I wanted to set the record straight that you can get started with so much less than you think you need

to, um, build a successful newsletter and that kind of thing.

Focus on all the crazy stuff later.

Dylan Redekop: I think what really matters is that, and we're seeing this more and more with the proliferation of newsletters and people writing them, is you need a good idea and you need to share that idea in a new and interesting way. I think that that is really the thing that's gonna separate people. The wheat from the chaff as they say, um, because I mean, there's so much content.

There's AI content. Content is a commodity. You just have to have. A, a really good [00:41:00] or really unique or really entertaining way of creating and sharing that content so that you can get people's attention and have them coming back for more.

Chenell Basilio: I love it. Perfect. I think that's the, , the end of this one. I think we've harped on some of these things,

Dylan Redekop: I think so. I

think

Chenell Basilio: everything else is a distraction. Just look at getting a good idea, a good piece of content that people are willing to talk about and share. And that's pretty much all you need.

Dylan Redekop: And then once you've done that, um, and you've got a few subscribers you should check out Chenell's Growth Vault, which is full of stuff that she has not talked about in this episode because it's not for somebody who is like not even sending their first edition, but once you're up and running, you should go to vault dot growth reverse.com and check out the Growth Vault where there's. Several dozen, if not what, 50 ish, uh, videos on what you can do to grow your newsletter, retain subscribers and monetize. So there's your plug.

Chenell Basilio: Look at you. I didn't even know you were gonna say that. Thank you.

Dylan Redekop: Oh, we don't have a sponsor, so

Chenell Basilio: plug, so you're gonna do it for me. [00:42:00]

Dylan Redekop: I'm your, I'm your, I'm your hype girl.

Chenell Basilio: you. Thanks, Dylan.

Dylan Redekop: no problem.

Chenell Basilio: All right, so. Once you do have subscribers though, you should go check out some of our other videos and podcast episodes and let us know what you think in the comments.

We are here to respond and create more content for you, so , excited to keep doing

Dylan Redekop: and if you strongly disagree with Chenell's, uh, stance here of not having a welcome sequence or a newsletter form, please let us know. We'd love to hear.

Chenell Basilio: Yes, I love it. Please do.

Dylan Redekop: All right,

Chenell Basilio: we'll talk to you next time. Bye.