beehiiv: The Ultimate Partner For Shopify Brands
If you have an e-commerce business that you manage through Shopify, email marketing is a highly useful way of further growing your brand. You probably collect customer email addresses to a certain extent already, but what are the best ways of using this data to the benefit of your brand?
Email marketing not only introduces another revenue stream for your business, but it can also enhance customer retention and build stronger brand loyalty. In particular, the beehiiv system is geared towards growing your existing customer base, and being easily integrated within the Shopify platform.
In this Shopify newsletter guide, we’ll discuss key points around why beehiiv is the perfect partner for Shopify businesses, including reasons why a newsletter is vital for your brand, how beehiiv supports Shopify businesses, use cases for Shopify brands, and a step-by-step strategy for building a successful newsletter on beehiiv.
Table of Contents
Why Shopify Brands Need a Newsletter
There are some fundamental reasons why Shopify brands need a newsletter.
Firstly, email marketing consistently ranks as the marketing channel with the highest ROI (Return On Investment).
According to a recent Litmis Report, email marketing drives an average $36 for every $1 spent, providing an ROI of 3,500%. This is significantly higher than other marketing channels, with SEO producing an average ROI of 748% (Saga Pixel) and Social Media producing one of 250% (The Goat Agency).
If you’re not currently using email marketing as a part of your overall marketing strategy, it can be a quick way of increasing your ROI and improving your overall marketing efforts.
Secondly, regular newsletters can help combat several challenges that Shopify brands face including the following:
Rising Ad Costs: Advertising your business has never been more expensive, particularly with online spaces becoming more and more competitive. Email marketing provides an affordable way of reaching new and existing customers, with a trackable ROI.
Crowded Marketplaces: Online marketplaces have become crowded and competitive. Online newsletters provide Shopify brands with their own dedicated space to communicate with customers directly, removing noise from the competition and creating a more personal line of communication.
Reliance On Third-Party Platforms For Customer Communication: While plugins and third-party platforms can simplify connecting your brand with customers, they often come with reliability issues and frustrating bugs, making them less dependable for such a critical aspect of your business. In contrast, email marketing offers a reliable and dedicated channel to keep your customers informed about your brand’s latest updates. It’s a trustworthy solution that integrates seamlessly into your business strategy.
Increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Keep customers engaged with relevant updates and promotions, encouraging repeat purchases and fostering long-term loyalty.
Promote New Product Launches: Announce new products directly to your audience, driving interest and sales with targeted campaigns.
Strengthen Brand Loyalty: Build stronger relationships with your audience through consistent communication and valuable content.
Leverage Segmentation for Better Reach: Tailor your content to different customer segments, ensuring your messaging resonates more effectively.
Execute Abandoned Cart Follow-Ups: Recover lost sales by reminding customers of items they left behind, coupled with personalized incentives to complete their purchases.
There are also many benefits to owning an email list. We know that communicating regularly with your audience is key to customer retention, with 80% of small to medium-sized businesses saying that email marketing is the most important online tool for customer retention (OptinMonster).
We also know that email marketing is an excellent tool for remarketing. If you have customers you haven’t heard from in a while, sending them a quick email can help re-engage them. You could also set up an automated campaign specifically targeting customers who have abandoned their shopping carts, making it easy to bring them back to complete their purchase.
In short, Shopify brands need a newsletter because it solves a myriad of challenges that many e-commerce brands face, provides great ROI, and improves customer retention while creating other opportunities for remarketing and direct engagement.
How beehiiv Supports Shopify Brands
With so many newsletter tools available, how do you know which brand is best to support your Shopify business? This is where beehiiv comes in.
beehiiv has been proven again and again to be the best companion for Shopify businesses looking for a seamless email marketing integration tool. Let’s explore why this is the case and how beehiiv is beneficial for e-commerce email marketing.
Integrations
One of the key ways beehiiv supports Shopify brands is via their seamless integrations.
beehiiv provides the ability for users to sync their Shopify and beehiiv accounts to enable automated subscriber collection, via Magic Links, embedded sign-up forms, or transactional emails.
These tools can be embedded directly onto Shopify product pages for example, or even customer receipts. Once they’ve been embedded beehiiv does all the hard work, helping to grow your mailing list in the background while you focus on your other marketing efforts.
Other beehiiv integrations that help to support Shopify brands are A/B testing and Segmentation tools. These allow you to test different versions of content to produce the best results and target specific groups of people within your mailing lists to serve users with the most relevant content, thereby increasing engagement/conversion rates.
Growth Features
beehiiv has a wealth of growth features that can be hugely beneficial to Shopify brands.
Here are some of our hero features to assist e-commerce brands with growing their mailing lists:
beehiiv’s Boosts: Boosts allows you to grow your mailing list by paying for subscribers from other newsletters that may share an interest in yours. You can set your own price that you’re happy paying for new subscribers, and you’ll only be provided with active, engaged subscribers to ensure the best results.
Referral Program: beehiiv referrals lets you set up incentives for your subscribers, encouraging them to refer your newsletter to their friends and family. This helps to grow your mailing list while also building strong relationships with your most loyal customers.
Pop-Ups: Once you’ve integrated beehiiv within your Shopify store, you can set up beautifully designed pop-ups to collect customer email addresses. These pop-ups are unobtrusive, and can provide an opportunity to highlight the benefits of subscribing to your mailing list. You can even tailor these pop-ups so that they only show for specific groups of people, such as users who have already shown an interest in your website.
Monetization
Another way that beehiiv supports Shopify brands is through monetization.
beehiiv has created a multitude of ways that creators can make money from their email marketing efforts, a feature that sets them apart from other email marketing platforms out there.
These include:
beehiiv Ad Network: The beehiiv Ad Network allows you to embed recognizable, trusted brands within your newsletters to generate income from your email marketing. This also gives your newsletter credibility by including brand logos that your audience will recognize and feel at ease with.
Subscription-Based Newsletters: Using gated content within beehiiv can make your content more exclusive to your most dedicated subscribers, while also providing an extra revenue stream for your business.
beehiiv Boosts: beehiiv boosts are not only beneficial for growing your mailing list - you can also recommend your subscribers to other publications to make some extra money for your brand.
beehiiv Partner Program: The beehiiv Partner Program allows you to earn up to 60% commission simply by sharing beehiiv with your audience. You’ll receive a custom partner link when you sign up, as well as access to an extensive library of resources/assets to help you promote beehiiv and earn more commissions.
Newsletters are also an excellent opportunity to promote exclusive product launches, discounts, and affiliate opportunities directly through your newsletters for your subscribers.
Use Cases for Shopify Brands
There are several use cases for Shopify brands to take your email marketing to the next level.
The most successful email marketing campaigns promote a range of content, offering subscribers different opportunities to engage with your brand.
Here are some ideas for you to try out to keep your email marketing fresh and engaging:
Product Launches: Announce new arrivals and provide exclusive early access to subscribers via your email marketing campaigns.
Seasonal Campaigns: Drive sales during holidays with tailored newsletters for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or other peak seasons. You could include specific discount codes to more effectively measure results from these campaigns.
Content + Commerce: Create engaging newsletters with product education, behind-the-scenes content, and brand storytelling. It’s important to strike the right balance between sales content and informative pieces to build trust with your customers and show that you’re not solely focused on sales emails.
Abandoned Cart Series: Use automation to recover lost sales with personalized nudges. These can be highly successful in improving conversion rates and warming up potential customers who are already interested in your brand.
VIP Customer Clubs: Reward loyal customers with newsletter-exclusive perks or first access to sales to make them feel valued as a subscriber.
How Shopify Brands Like Enjoy Basketball Leverage beehiiv
Enjoy Basketball, a brand that merges basketball culture with commerce, exemplifies how to seamlessly integrate a Shopify store with a beehiiv newsletter.
Some Key Takeaways from Enjoy Basketball’s Strategy:
Content + Commerce Approach: Their newsletters blend basketball insights, behind-the-scenes stories, and product updates. This balance of value-driven content and commerce builds trust and keeps their audience engaged without feeling overly sales-focused.
Shopify Integration for Seamless Transactions: By integrating beehiiv with their Shopify store, Enjoy Basketball embeds links to product drops, exclusive collections, and time-sensitive discounts directly in their newsletters. This encourages immediate action and simplifies the buying journey.
Exclusive Drops via Email: To reward their subscribers, Enjoy Basketball often announces exclusive product drops or early access to collections through their newsletter.
Cody also shared how they’ve launched an e-commerce apparel brand by the same name, Enjoy Basketball, that drives revenue for the brand. Their recent collaboration with The ICEE Company featured custom-branded shirts, hoodies, basketball,s and collector’s cups, which all sold out in under 5 hours.
“We're really trying to build the strongest and best community for people that enjoy basketball. So we have apparel products and other sorts of social media assets that we're selling across in addition to monetizing the newsletter itself.”
Strategy for Building a Successful Newsletter
Below, we’ve detailed the key steps in a successful Shopify email marketing strategy.
These steps will guide you through the entire process, from signing up and managing subscriber lists to measuring your campaigns and optimizing them for the best results moving forward.
Step 1: Start with a free beehiiv plan to experiment with your content and build a core list. beehiiv’s free plan lets you experiment with different features to see which plan works best for your brand - sign up here for a free 30-day trial to get started.
Step 2: Segment subscribers based on Shopify purchase history or behaviors for tailored email campaigns. Drilling down into certain groups of users will allow you to provide subscribers with relevant content, which will ultimately lead to higher conversion rates and improved customer retention.
Step 3: Use beehiiv’s analytics to track performance. beehiiv’s 3D Analytics allows you to track metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversions to better understand where your campaigns are working and where they need improvement.
Step 4: Leverage automation tools to create consistent touchpoints with minimal effort. For example, you could set up a welcome series for new Shopify customers to set a great first impression, or create Monthly product spotlights with personalized recommendations to improve engagement with existing customers.
Step 5: Upsell through your newsletter by showcasing complementary products or creating bundles. Nurturing your mailing list makes them excellent opportunities for further upselling, just remember to balance this with informative, fresh content to ensure not all emails are sales-based for your audience.
Launch Your Shopify Newsletter With beehiiv
Keen to get started? Launch your Shopify newsletter with beehiiv today - you can start for free and scale as your list grows!
Our free plan includes audience segmentation, custom newsletters, and API access as standard, working seamlessly with your Shopify store for easy integration.
If you have any specific questions regarding a beehiiv Shopify integration, don’t hesitate to contact us via our Chatbot Assistant, Buzz - we’ll be happy to help!
How I Made $250K With My Newsletter in a Year Using beehiiv
I Always Knew Email Was Powerful—But Not Like This
I’ve been creating for years, and I always knew email marketing was powerful. But to be honest, I never stuck with it.
Why?
The platforms I tried were clunky, expensive, and honestly overwhelming. I’d start and stop; and, even though I believed in the potential, nothing really clicked… until I switched to beehiiv.
A little over a year ago, I committed to building my newsletter from scratch using beehiiv—and in just 12 months, I made over $250K. I didn’t run paid ads. I didn’t have a huge team. I just kept showing up, writing consistently, and turning loyal readers into paying customers.
In this post, I’m going to show you exactly how I made a lot of money in a short amount of time—so you can do the same.
My Journey: From Inconsistent Emails to Daily Profits
Before beehiiv, I struggled to stay consistent with newsletters. Either the platforms weren’t user-friendly, or the subscription fees felt too high for someone just getting started.
beehiiv changed everything.
The interface is so clean that I actually enjoy writing emails now.
beehiiv’s Ad Network helped me cover subscription costs from the start.
And seeing real income come in? It made me want to keep going.
In fact, I now have ad sponsorships almost every other day—and that alone motivates me to write daily.
Every newsletter I send out feels like a mini money-making machine. But beyond the ads, what’s even more rewarding is the community I’ve nurtured—readers who trust me, learn from me, and buy from me.
1. Share Relevant Insights (Timely + Actionable).
My audience follows me for investing tips, personal finance insights, and life updates. I’ve found that when I share time-sensitive market insights—especially during big economic swings—my readers feel supported and informed.
Sharing relevant investment insights has benefits:does two things:
It keeps my open and click-through rates high
It builds trust and authority because my readers know I’m not just selling—I’m helping
If you’re in a niche that changes quickly (like finance, health, or tech), don’t underestimate how powerful it is to be the first to show up in your subscribers’ inbox when something big happens.
2. Use Free Webinars To Drive Sales.
A key part of my monetization strategy is converting email subscribers into coaching clients through free webinars.
Here’s my usual flow:
Announce a live training or market update via beehiiv.
Use curiosity-driven subject lines to boost turnout.
Deliver a lot of free value in the webinar.
Upsell my coaching program at the end.
Because people have already been nurtured by my newsletter, they show up warm—and they’re ready to buy.
This strategy has helped me generate high ticket sales consistently, even without ads.
3. Keep Email Titles Short To Boost Open Rates.
This is one of the simplest tweaks I made that changed everything: short email titles, like one to three words, sometimes even just one.
“Addicted”
“Sell?”
“Huh?!”
These subject lines don’t give everything away, and that’s the point. They spark curiosity, which prompts subscribers to open them. And once people open, I can deliver value, insight, or offers.
Try A/B testing this strategy in your own list—short, punchy, slightly mysterious titles almost always win.
Why Trust Me?
I’m a full-time investing and finance creator, known as the Arigato Investor, with over 200,000 followers across social media. In the past year alone, I’ve sent 300+ newsletters and generated over $250K in income—with the help of beehiiv. By sharing free value daily, I’ve been able to turn loyal readers into high-ticket coaching clients—without spending a cent on ads.
4. Grow Your List Using Social Media + Funnels.
beehiiv is the perfect platform for me to engage my followers, but that’s just one part of the ecosystem.
To grow my list and business sustainably, I combine these elements:
Daily engaging updates on my Telegram channel
My website www.arigatoinvestor.com, which is also a marketing automation funnel built on Software as a Service (SaaS) platform Unify to nurture leads
Consistent value-driven newsletters through beehiiv that keep people coming back
For example, I use content on social media to encourage followers to give me their emails. Then, I run a free masterclass funnel that automatically invites them to join my paid coaching program.
The entire process—from discovery to conversion—is powered by automation and content working together, and I constantly use my beehiiv newsletters to drive traffic back to my website and funnel for better conversions.
5. Keep Going—Even When It Feels Slow.
The beginning is always the hardest.
When you only have 50 or 100 subscribers, it can feel like shouting into the void, but the truth is that those early readers are often the most loyal. They’re the ones who’ll buy first, share your content, and cheer you on.
beehiiv helped me stay consistent by making the writing process easy and the monetization visible—from ad revenue to affiliate links to coaching program signups.
And now? I look forward to hitting “send” every day.
Final Thoughts: Start Where You Are
You don’t need a huge list to be successful.
You don’t need to be a tech expert.
You just need a platform that works—and a willingness to show up.
beehiiv gave me the tools, structure, and motivation to keep going, and I’m grateful for what it’s unlocked in my business and my life.
If you’re just getting started or feeling stuck, feel free to email me at hi@arigatoinvestor.com. I love helping other creators figure this stuff out.
And if you’re curious how I actually build and grow my business step by step—from nurturing my community to turning followers into paying customers, you can see it all in action.
💌 Subscribe to my newsletter here — I share behind-the-scenes insights, investing tips, and hands-on lessons I’ve learned building a multi-six-figure business, so you can get more ideas to grow your own.
How London Creators Are Turning Niche Newsletters Into Real Businesses
I’ve always loved local newsletters. As a former journalist, I know the power of sharp, community-driven reporting, especially when it lands right in your inbox.
When I moved to London, I was surprised by how few great local newsletters existed.
Despite being a global media hub, the city has become a local news desert. I often turned to a mix of Facebook groups, WhatsApp, Eventbrite, and good old-fashioned word-of-mouth to hear about community-level events.
But in that vacuum, a new wave of independent creators is stepping in, and many of them are building on beehiiv. From curated event guides to borough-level commentary, these newsletters are doing what traditional media can’t: serving niche communities with creativity and personality.
If you’re a creator eyeing the local space, especially in cities like London, there’s never been more opportunity. Here’s what we can learn from newsletters like Cheapskate London, London is Blue, and Camdenish — and why I think this is just the beginning.
Table of Contents
The Collapse of Traditional Local Media (And the Newsletter Opportunity It Left Behind)
How to Start Your Own — and Why Beehiiv Makes It Easier Than Ever
The Collapse of Traditional Local Media (And the Newsletter Opportunity It Left Behind)
Over the past two decades, local news in the UK has been in steady decline. Between 2005 and 2024, nearly 300 local newspapers shut down. Reporter headcounts have dropped by two-thirds. Even in London — a city with a population of nearly 9 million — the number of local titles has dwindled to just a few. When The Evening Standard dropped its daily print edition in 2024, it marked the end of daily local news in print.
This isn’t just a London problem. Across the country, millions of people now live in so-called “news deserts,” areas with no dedicated local news coverage. In a city made up of dozens of distinct boroughs and communities, the absence of neighborhood-level reporting means people are less informed about the places they live, work, and vote.
At the same time, reader trust in mainstream media has fallen, and traditional outlets have struggled to sustain ad-based business models. For many journalists, the economics of local reporting simply stopped working.
But that’s also where newsletters come in.
With a low cost to launch, direct audience connection, and flexible revenue options, from local sponsorships to paid subscriptions, email has become the fastest-growing medium for local creators.
In beehiiv’s 2025 State of Email Newsletters report, local newsletters were among the fastest-growing segments across the platform. It’s not hard to see why: readers crave relevance, and creators are better positioned than ever to deliver it.
Instead of trying to cover an entire city, today’s best local newsletters go deep on a neighborhood, a community, or a shared interest, curating events, offering commentary, or building community in a way traditional outlets no longer can.
Meet the Creators Redefining Local Media in London
There’s a new wave of local newsletter creators popping up across London, and a lot of them are building on beehiiv.
Some are covering borough news. Others are curating free events. A few are zeroed in on niche communities like tech founders or football fans. The formats vary, but the throughline is the same: they know their audience, and they show up for them.
Here’s a closer look at a few standout newsletters leading the charge.
Cheapskate London
Free culture for everyone, one inbox at a time.
Cheapskate London tackles a very real (and very London) problem: it’s outrageously expensive to live here, but culture shouldn’t be out of reach.
Launched in 2019 by journalist Kate Samuelson and graphic designer Georgia Weisz, Cheapskate curates free events across the city from gigs and film screenings to plays, talks, and workshops.
Their mission is clear: make London’s cultural scene accessible to everyone.
Today, the newsletter now reaches more than 36,000 subscribers. It’s even been so successful that they’ve now expanded to Cheapskate Kids and Cheapskate LA.
Here’s what I like about it:
A strong brand identity, thanks to having a designer as co-founder.
An editorial voice that feels friendly, inclusive, and useful.
Instead of using a paywall, the newsletter makes money through ads, affiliate partners, and events.
This newsletter shows what’s possible when you serve a real need in a big, fragmented city like London.
Camdenist
A values-driven newsletter reimagining local storytelling in Camden.
If Cheapskate London is a curated guide for getting out and about, Camdenist is a love letter to an entire borough.
Camdenist was launched to create a more democratic, community-first approach to storytelling, one that celebrates the people, places, and culture that make Camden unique. It’s not just a newsletter, but a multi-platform media project: web, social media, events, and even a quarterly print magazine that reaches over thousands of readers.
Here’s what I like about it:
They’ve created a bespoke pack of ad slots for local businesses called Camdenist Boost
Their success proves you can go extremely niche and build a newsletter business from a single neighborhood
London is Blue
A fan-led newsletter for Chelsea supporters, by Chelsea supporters.
London is Blue is a hyper-niche sports newsletter focused entirely on Chelsea Football Club, which is an extension of the London is Blue podcast.
Created by and for fans, it delivers match previews, opinion pieces, transfer rumors, and cultural commentary through a blue-tinted lens.
What sets it apart is its insider community feel. The writing is passionate, informal, and insider-y, like hearing from your most plugged-in sports fan in the group chat. Because it only focuses on one topic, it can go super deep and cover way more than traditional media.
This is a great example of finding and building for your 1,000 true fans.
Not every team has an avid fan base like Chelsea, but this could certainly be replicated for a lot of the big sports teams in London.
What I like about it:
Great example of how to build off of a podcast audience with a newsletter
Adds a Discord for another layer of community access
London Founder House
A newsletter and community hub for London’s startup scene.
London Founder House serves startup founders, indie hackers, and early-stage operators in the city. The newsletter curates high-signal events, meetups, and resources tailored for builders in London’s tech world.
I love how the newsletter is doing more than sharing events. Its main goal is to build community and connect with readers, curating opportunities like pitch nights, coworking sessions, happy hours, and more.
This is exactly the kind of community I had been looking for in London but had not yet found.
What I like:
The newsletter feels less like a media brand and more like a membership pass to the local founder network.
It’s free and accessible to get involved and prime for top tier partnerships for brands who want to reach this audience.
This approach would be a great idea for any industry, from real estate to accounting to web developers. If you help people find their people, you’ve got a solid start for a newsletter.
How They’re Monetizing — and What You Can Learn
London’s becoming a bit of a playground for local newsletter creators, and the smart ones are finding unique ways to grow.
I spoke to Samuelson and Weisz, the co-founders of Cheapskate London, to learn more about what’s working.
1. Work With Local Partners (Even for Free Events)
Cheapskate makes money through brand partnerships, beehiiv ads, and pay-per-click links, but many of their sponsors are actually promoting free events.
“It’s worth pointing out that a lot of places running free events still have a marketing budget. They want people through the doors,” Samuelson tells me. They’ve partnered with big names like the Southbank Center and the Science Museum.
Because Cheapskate focuses on curated listings (not broad event coverage), the team can pitch cost-effective, targeted sponsorships that outperform traditional listings platforms.
“It’s just the two of us, so we can keep costs really low. And that makes us more appealing than a big, bloated London listings site.”
If you want to connect with more local partners, Samuelson recommends this approach:
“If I were running a more localised newsletter, I’d definitely connect with independent cafés, pubs, and comedy clubs in that neighborhood. See if you can offer subscribers a treat, like a 20% discount, and promote that business in return.”
I also love Camdenist’s unique approach to working with local advertisers through their Boost program.
2. Monetize Through the beehiiv Ecosystem
The Cheapskate team switched over to beehiiv in 2023 to get access to more features and to have more flexible choices when it comes to design, co-founder Weisz tells me. After doing a lot of research into other tools, beehiiv made the most sense to help them scale the brand.
Cheapskate has now fully embraced the beehiiv ad network and tools, both for earning money and growth.
This flywheel — monetize attention, reinvest in growth — is exactly how modern media brands scale, even without a sales team.
Another beehiiv feature Cheapskate leans into? Polls.
Try This:
Set up your beehiiv ad network and test placements that align with your tone
Add polls to your newsletter as value-adds for sponsors
Use ad revenue to fund email list growth or content production
3. Build Cross-Promotional Relationships
Samuelson credits much of Cheapskate’s visibility and growth to being part of a wider, friendly newsletter ecosystem.
If your audience overlaps with another creator’s, a simple exchange or bundled sponsor deal can bring in revenue and subscribers alike.
Try This:
Reach out to other newsletters with shared audience values
Pitch mutual shoutouts or cross-promoted sponsor packages
Use local partnerships to do more than just monetize — also try to add tangible value for your readers
3. Offer IRL Events, Memberships & Community Perks
Many newsletters are expanding beyond the inbox into real-life communities, which builds stronger relationships and new revenue streams.
For example, London Founder House turns its newsletter into a gateway to a founder community, with coworking sessions, curated events, and partner perks.
Meanwhile, Camdenist regularly features cultural events, pop-ups, and in-person collaborations that reflect its collaborative roots.
Email creates attention, but community creates belonging (and long-term value). And Londoners are keen to get out and make new friends!
What the U.S. Can Teach Us
If you want a glimpse of where this is headed, just look across the pond.
Catskill Crew: A local guide to the Hudson Valley that built a six-figure business with seasonal guides, directory listings, and community partnerships.
LA Raver: What started as a niche nightlife guide became a $100K+ newsletter through a mix of sponsorships, event collabs, and creative monetization.
Small, loyal audiences can drive big outcomes, especially when creators own their distribution and speak directly to community needs.
The opportunity in London is clear to me: The audience is here. The appetite for local connection is growing. And with tools like beehiiv, the infrastructure is finally in place to support sustainable local media, one newsletter at a time.
The Challenges (and the Real Opportunity)
I’m not pretending this is easy. Running a local newsletter — especially in a massive, chaotic city like London — comes with real challenges. It’s a grind to stay consistent, build trust, and find ways to monetize a cash-strapped audience. And unless you’ve got VC money (which you probably don’t), you’re doing it all yourself — from sourcing content to finding sponsors to showing up at events.
And yet… this is also where the opportunity lies.
The bar is low because so few people are doing it well. London has over 8 million people and dozens of distinct neighborhoods — and still, there are only a handful of newsletters serving those communities with any depth or consistency.
I keep thinking: how many people in Hackney or Peckham or Richmond would love a weekly email rounding up what’s happening near them, or a thoughtful take on something that actually affects their neighborhood? How many local businesses would gladly sponsor something that felt relevant and community-rooted?
What about moms in North London? Or real estate professionals working in the city?
The appetite is there. The tech is ready. What’s missing are more people willing to build.
How to Start Your Own — and Why beehiiv Makes It Easier Than Ever
If you’re reading this and thinking, Maybe I could start something, I genuinely believe you can. Here’s how to get started (and how beehiiv can help):
1. Pick a Specific Audience + Solve One Clear Problem
The more niche, the better. Don’t try to “cover London.” Serve a pocket of it.
👉 Ask: Who are you helping, and what would they miss if your newsletter disappeared?
2. Use beehiiv to Build + Own Your List
beehiiv makes it extremely simple to launch and, more importantly, grow.
Built-in referral programs so readers can share organically
Segmentation tools to send different content to different groups
Custom fields to tag neighborhoods, interests, or subscriber types
Monetization tools for ads, sponsorships, and paid tiers when you’re ready
You can launch in a weekend and improve as you go. Don’t overthink it.
3. Stay Consistent (Even If It’s Small at First)
Weekly is great. Biweekly works too. What matters is showing up and building an audience.
beehiiv’s scheduling, drafts, and analytics make it easier to plan ahead and track what’s working.
4. Get In the Community, Online, and IRL
Local media is rooted in relationships with the community. So talk to people. Go to events. Reply to emails. Post on Instagram. beehiiv gives you the tech, but you have to be the one to cultivate these.
If you’re up for building something thoughtful, useful, and human, now’s the time. And beehiiv’s the place.
This Is Just the Beginning
I wrote this piece because I truly believe there’s a massive opportunity in local newsletters and too few people are talking about it. I’ve seen so many successful newsletters take off in the U.S. and want to help share these learnings in London and beyond.
I’m putting that belief into practice myself. Earlier this year, I launched Pub & Property, a newsletter exploring the charm and culture of the British countryside: part travel guide, part property daydream, and part experiment in building something slow, intentional, and reader-supported.
If you’re thinking about starting your own — especially in a city like London — consider this your invitation to start building.
And if you need a tool to get started, you can use beehiiv for free. It offers a ton of helpful resources to get started, design your brand, and start signing up your first readers.
How a Zero-CAC Sports Newsletter Model Now Serves a Million Fans a Day
You're a die-hard sports fan trying to keep up with your favorite teams and athletes.
Your TV streaming bill keeps climbing, games are on at 3 AM because of time zones, and your calendar is so packed you can barely catch highlights.
Sound familiar?
That's exactly the pain point EssentiallySports kept hearing about from their audience. With a dedicated team of beat writers, content strategists, and editors covering over 14 sports, EssentiallySports was already connecting with millions of fans each month. As one of the top 10 sports media publishers in the U.S., they had built something rare—real relationships with readers who kept coming back, day after day.
However, for years, digital sports publishers operated in the shadow of platforms and algorithms—optimizing for feeds, clicks, and ever-changing distribution logic. No matter how loyal your readers were, you were always at the mercy of someone else’s platform.
EssentiallySports broke that cycle.
With a decade of editorial expertise and a massive daily audience, the team made a strategic shift: stop chasing reach through platforms and start building direct, owned relationships with fans.
The idea wasn’t just to send newsletters—it was to reimagine the role email could play in sports media. A high-quality, high-frequency, zero-CAC engine that surrounded fans with the content they actually cared about. No algorithms. No ad spend. Just relevance, loyalty, and scale.
“We had spent years building one of the most loyal sports audiences on the internet,” says Suryansh Tibarewal, Co-Founder of EssentiallySports.
“But we were operating in an environment where platforms controlled distribution. We realized that to truly serve our fans and scale sustainably, we needed a model where we owned the relationship.”
The idea was to create a network of sports newsletters, each hyper-focused on a passionate niche—from NASCAR to tennis to golf to NFL. “Beehiiv was the right platform to enable this,” added Suryansh.
Launching the First Newsletter: 1,000 Subs Without Spending a Dollar
The first test was Lucky Dog on Track—a daily NASCAR newsletter built for one of the most underserved fanbases in American sports.
Reaching 1,000 subscribers happened fast—and it wasn’t by accident.
“We already had a passionate, engaged daily readership on site,” explains Varun Khanna, Head of Growth & Business at EssentiallySports, who also leads the newsletter vertical.“When we launched Lucky Dog on Track, we didn’t need to convince them to care—we just had to deliver the right format with the right voice.”
No paid promotions. No short-term gimmicks. Just consistent, personality-driven content, embedded across high-intent pages and distributed intelligently through organic channels. The early feedback we got was overwhelming. Replies like “Finally someone’s talking about this stuff” and “This is what I’ve been looking for” poured in. Engagement soared. It was clear: fans wanted this.
He added, “we focused on quality first — sharp writing, deep insight, and content tailored to what fans were missing in the mainstream: stories, breakdowns, and news that spoke directly to them.”
Scaling to a Million: Surrounding the Fan Across Every Touchpoint
Once the first 1,000 came in, the system scaled fast. Today, EssentiallySports runs multiple newsletters across niche sports verticals, with over a million subs today.
“We built our media operation around the sports fan—not the algorithm,” says Suryansh. “That meant understanding what each niche needed and building tailored products around that.”
From Break Point for tennis fans to Essentially Golf to The Huddle for NFL fans and more, each newsletter feels like a product, not just an email blast.
Why beehiiv Became the Backbone
The team had experimented with newsletters before—but most platforms weren’t built for editorial nuance. beehiiv was different.
Tibarewal connected with beehiiv’s co-founder Tyler Denk in a close-knit founder mastermind—an invite-only group of builders focused on audience-first companies. The conversation affirmed the direction EssentiallySports was already leaning toward: building direct, ownable relationships with its most loyal fans.
“What really stuck with me from that conversation,” says Suryansh Tibarewal, Co-Founder of EssentiallySports, “was the belief that brands should own their power users. At a time when most platforms are creating more distance between the brand and its audience, beehiiv was helping build in the exact direction we wanted to go.”
beehiiv allowed them to:
Launch fast and scale with zero engineering dependencies
Segment audiences based on interest, behavior, and replies
Run A/B tests across templates, subject lines, and timing
Use polls and feedback to continuously adapt the product
Simplify operations to the point where one lean team could manage 6+ newsletters without compromise
The Results
1M+ active subscribers with consistent month-over-month growth
45%+ open rates across multiple verticals
200%+ ROI across monetized newsletters (affiliate + branded content)
4–5x engagement per week from top readers
Zero dollars in paid acquisition
The scoreboard doesn't lie: EssentiallySports + beehiiv = A winning combination that's redefining how sports media connects with fans.
And perhaps most importantly: the newsletter is now a morning habit for thousands of sports fans—a direct line between content and community.
The MVP Feature: Polls + Segmentation = Magic
When asked about their favorite beehiiv feature, Khanna doesn't hesitate: "One of our favorite beehiiv features is the seamless integration of polls combined with powerful audience segmentation."
It's not just about engagement—it's about intelligence. The polls drive interaction and feedback, while the segmentation allows them to create smart, behavior-driven groups for tailored follow-ups.
"beehiiv's segmentation tools give us the flexibility to deliver the right content to the right people—effortlessly."
Money Talks: The Monetization Playbook
EssentiallySports keeps its revenue strategy diversified and authentic:
Affiliate partnerships tailored to each newsletter's audience (performance gear for athletes, event tickets for NASCAR fans, training programs for golf enthusiasts)
Direct sales team crafting branded content and high-impact native placements
Long-term brand partnerships with companies aligned to their specific sports verticals
The key?
Everything feels native and drives results because it's genuinely relevant to their highly engaged communities.
The Secret Weapon: Time Savings and Simplicity
Beyond the impressive growth metrics, there is something else that has exceeded expectations: pure operational efficiency.
"What's exceeded our expectations the most is how much beehiiv simplifies the entire newsletter workflow," Khanna explains. "We were pleasantly surprised by how much time we save each week—freeing us up to focus more on content and strategy instead of technical headaches."
For a team managing multiple newsletters across different sports, that time savings translates directly to better content and stronger growth.
Rookie Advice: Find Your Product-Market Fit First
For aspiring newsletter creators, Khanna's advice is crystal clear: "If you're thinking of starting a newsletter today, my top advice is to really focus on finding your product-market fit. Understand your audience and the market size before diving in."
His secret weapon? A/B testing. Lots of it.
"Use A/B testing extensively to learn what resonates—and that's where beehiiv shines with its easy-to-use testing tools. This approach helps you grow smarter and build something your readers truly want."
What It Means for Media Brands Today
In a world of fragmented attention and fleeting platform reach, building an owned audience isn’t just smart—it’s survival.
beehiiv didn’t just power a newsletter launch—it became the foundation for a new kind of sports media model.
See how beehiiv can help you move fast, stay lean, and scale smart—just like EssentiallySports did.
From Zero to Thousands: How To Build a Loyal Audience
Working out how to build an audience sounds simple until you try doing it. It’s not about posting online and hoping people will show up.
I’ve been there. I started my online journey on Medium, publishing over 350 articles and growing my follower base to 21,000 fellow subscribers.
But to nurture the relationships with my readers even more, I’ve started my weekly newsletter on beehiiv.
In my experience, building an online audience doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, patience, and plenty of experimenting to figure out what works. But honestly, it’s one of the most fulfilling parts of growing an online business.
Building an online audience is about connecting with the right people – the ones who truly get what you’re all about, care about your message, and stick with you over time.
In this article, I’ll share what I’ve learned from growing an audience on Medium, my newsletter, and my website (which I’ve optimized to bring in users from organic search results).
If you’re just starting out or trying to grow your audience faster, I hope these lessons will help you build a loyal audience.
Why Trust Me?
I’m an SEO specialist and content writer turned solopreneur in 2022. I’ve been growing my audience on Medium, beehiiv, my website, Quora, and Reddit. Nowadays, my content gets around 30,000 views monthly across different platforms.
Table of Contents
How I Got Started With Building My Audience
When I first started sharing my work online, I had no audience. Nevertheless, I strongly believed that my high-quality and honest content would eventually attract my users.
Let me share how I got started and the challenges I faced along the way, so you can avoid my mistakes and grow faster.
How To Grow an Audience From Scratch and Build Authentically
I started writing on Medium in March 2020 with zero experience and zero clue what I was doing. All I knew was I wanted my voice to be heard.
I had this itch to share my thoughts, especially my hands-on marketing experience, so I just went for it. I started experimenting with topics, not really knowing what would stick.
To my surprise, my first article about Google Ads got around 3,000 views and 6 comments. That’s not bad for someone who is just figuring things out, right?
When I read that piece now, it doesn’t sound like me anymore. It’s awkward and written by someone who didn’t know how to write, but I still feel the honesty behind it and the genuine value I was trying to share.
That’s what I’ve held onto all these years: writing with an authentic voice and sharing helpful content. That first messy post was the start of it all.
The Importance of Consistency in the Early Stages
When you’re just starting out, the consistency and frequency of when you show up matter the most.
In the beginning, no one’s really paying attention. There’s no audience, no comments, and no likes, but that’s why showing up regularly is so important!
You need to give people a chance to find you, trust you, and eventually stick around. I know it’s not easy. I’ve been there.
It took me 4 years and 350 articles to reach over 21,000 followers on Medium, so trust me when I say that success doesn’t happen overnight, no matter what others might promise.
The best advice I could give my younger self is to keep going, even when it feels like no one’s watching. You’re not just posting content. Remember that you’re building a habit, learning what works, and slowly attracting the right people. Over time, you’ll start seeing what resonates.
The Struggles I Faced Early On
My content creator journey has never been smooth.
When I started, I didn’t know what niche to choose, so I kept trying different things, hoping something would work.
The hardest part was dealing with the emotions. I’d spend hours creating content, and then… nothing – no likes, no comments, no feedback. It felt like no one was even out there.
I spent so much time, late nights and weekends – and still didn’t see much progress. It was frustrating and lonely.
Now, looking back, I see how much those tough times taught me. They pushed me to stay consistent and keep going. Every piece of content, even the ones no one noticed, helped me grow.
What I’ve Learned About Growing an Audience Over Time
I’ve spent the past five years building and growing an audience online.
Before I dive into ways to build an audience, I want to quickly share the main lessons I’ve picked up along the way:
It’s not about how many followers or subscribers you have. What matters is how engaged they are.
Real connections lead to trust, and trust often leads to sales.
It’s better to focus on one or two channels where you can grow, instead of trying to be everywhere and getting nowhere.
Showing up consistently matters more than just being naturally talented. Even the most skilled people won’t get far if they don’t keep going.
If you’re unsure where to begin, try different types of content. See what clicks. Then, do more of that.
These tips might sound simple. In theory, they are, but putting them into practice is a whole different story. Most people don’t get far because they never take action.
That’s why I keep sharing my journey to give you a clear picture of what it’s like to build an audience from scratch.
If you’re curious about the behind-the-scenes insights, let me walk you through it.
Building Relationships Over Growing Numbers
Everyone talks about growing big numbers, like 10k subscribers or 50k followers, but I’ve learned that what matters is building relationships with people who are already paying attention.
In my case, I have around 1,200 subscribers on my beehiiv email list. That’s not a big list by typical marketing standards, but it’s a warm list.
People read my newsletters, some pay for my premium newsletter, and many have bought my SEO ebook. Why? Because I’ve gained their trust over time.
I only share tactics that I’ve personally tested and that I know work to boost organic visibility. My newsletter is honest, clear, and built for people serious about getting results.
I’d take 1,000 engaged readers over 10,000 silent ones any day.
At the end of the day, if your audience isn’t helping you move closer to your goals, the numbers mean nothing.
Connection beats vanity metrics, always.
How I Found My Tribe and Why It Took Time
Let me confess — finding my audience took way longer than I thought it would.
Throughout my creator journey, I deleted my email list several times and pivoted my newsletter on beehiiv twice. I couldn’t connect with my audience. And honestly, deep down, I knew I didn’t realize who they were.
I was sharing bits of my journey online, hoping it would click with someone. Sometimes it did, but not in a way that turned into a real connection.
Later, I realized that I didn’t have a niche. I only had stories. And while that sounds fine in theory, in practice, it led to a scattered audience that wasn’t sure why they were there.
I know it’s a bit controversial, but picking a niche finally changed everything for me. After five years, I have started growing an audience that’s genuinely interested in what I share and do.
These days, my newsletter is about growing and monetizing a content website. For the first time, it feels like I’m building something with people who truly get it.
The Role of Trust in Audience Growth
One thing I’ve learned from building an audience is that trust is everything.
People don’t stick around because of your content. They come back because they believe you consistently show up for them, not just chasing clicks.
Your audience notices when you share real value and talk honestly about the wins and the struggles.
I once spent over $1,000 on a course from a blogger I trusted, seriously! Not because they pushed me to buy, but because I genuinely believed in them.
In a world full of noise, trust isn’t just nice to have. It’s your secret weapon.
Content Strategies That Helped Me Build a Loyal Following
When I started creating content, I had no idea it would lead to building a loyal, engaged audience.
But over time, I figured out a few key strategies that made a real difference, like how to tell stories that stick, how to connect with people (not just talk to them), and how to create content that doesn’t blend into the noise.
Below, I’ll break down audience building strategies that worked for me.
How I Use Storytelling To Connect With My Audience
Storytelling is the art of sharing relatable content that sticks with people. It works so well because we’re naturally drawn to stories. They help us connect, feel, and remember, but I didn’t always see it that way. When I started writing, terms like “storytelling” and “tone of voice” felt like marketing fluff.
It took me years to realize how much the way you write matters. The tone you use, the details you choose to highlight, and the emotion behind your message all play a role in whether someone connects with what you say or chooses to scroll right past.
I've realized that storytelling works best when it comes from a person, not a brand.
People follow people. That’s why companies like beehiiv are doing so well online. Their team members regularly share personal stories – some fun, some business-related – and always find a way to tie them back to beehiiv. Those posts feel real. When people see a part of themselves in those stories, they’re more likely to check out the brand.
Just look at Tyler Denk, the CEO of beehiiv. He doesn’t just talk about hitting 100k users with beehiiv. He shows how he did it on YouTube. It’s a goldmine for beginners who want to grow their audience.
That’s the power of storytelling: it makes people pause, feel, and sometimes even take action.
The Power of Providing Value Before Asking for Anything
Attracting an audience is easy, but keeping them is the real challenge.
I’ve learned that the only way to retain people is to share something they’re interested in. If readers lose interest, they’ll likely unsubscribe. Honestly, I don’t blame them. That’s why I focus on providing value first, always.
I regularly share what I have learned about search engine optimization (SEO), the results of my marketing experiments, and strategies that have helped grow websites. I don’t ask for anything in return upfront.
In my welcome emails, I’m super straightforward: everything I share is free. Occasionally, I might mention paid offers, but there’s zero pressure.
If readers decide my newsletter is not for them, they can unsubscribe anytime. However, most people stay because they find real value in what I share. That’s the power of giving first without expecting anything in return.
How I Engage and Keep My Audience Coming Back
When your audience is engaged, it means they care about what you say. They open your emails, which positively impacts your newsletter open rates, and they click your links and look forward to hearing from you.
For me, engagement is about showing up consistently, being helpful, and sharing the real, behind-the-scenes stuff.
Here’s how I keep my email audience engaged:
I write the way I talk: casual, human, and honest.
I share personal stories.
I give practical tips they can use right away.
I ask questions and encourage replies.
I create polls and encourage engagement.
I primarily share helpful content, not just promotions.
I show up weekly without overloading their inbox.
I use short subject lines to spark curiosity.
Last but not least, I don’t try to sound like a know-it-all. I share stuff from my life, behind-the-scenes moments; and, yeah, I mess up words sometimes.
More than anything, I just want to be helpful, honest, and maybe even a bit fun to follow.
How beehiiv Helped Me Grow My Audience Faster
I started using beehiiv because it was built to help creators like me grow faster. Unlike other platforms, beehiiv feels like it wants you to win.
beehiiv comes with powerful features:
Boosts: Pay to get your newsletter featured in other creators’ emails and gain more subscribers.
Recommendations: Partner with other newsletters to cross-promote and grow together.
Magic Links: Track where each subscriber came from with just one click.
Referral Program: Turn your readers into promoters by offering simple rewards.
Pop-ups: Turn casual website visitors into subscribers.
Subscribe forms: Easy-to-embed forms to collect emails anywhere.
Plus, beehiiv’s 3D Analytics helps me see what works, including top-performing emails, best traffic sources, open and click rates, and more. It’s way easier to make smart decisions when you have real data in front of you.
If you want to grow your audience faster, give beehiiv a shot. Try beehiiv free for 30 days!
Mistakes I Made and What I Learned
When I started growing my audience on Medium and beehiiv, I had no idea what I was doing. I definitely made some avoidable mistakes.
If you are trying to grow faster and want to skip the messy trial-and-error phase, I highly recommend that you keep reading. This paragraph is packed with lessons I wish I had known earlier.
What I Wish I Knew When I Started Building My Audience
Starting without experience is like going in blind. You have no idea what’s ahead or if your next move is the right one.
When I first started building an audience, I wish I knew how much consistency, effort, discipline, and budget it takes. It might not even pay off for a long time or at all.
Some newsletters, like Milk Road, grow fast and get acquired, while others stay unprofitable even with thousands of subscribers.
Building an audience is full of uncertainty. You never know which post, article, or connection might open a door.
How I Learned To Avoid the ‘Quick Fix’ Approach
When I first started building my audience online, I got distracted by all those quick-win strategies, like going viral or chasing likes and shares instead of focusing on real growth.
Those strategies seemed like a fast track to success, but they never worked out the way I wanted.
Over time, I realized that growing a loyal, engaged audience takes patience and showing up consistently. Once I stopped stressing about instant results and started thinking long-term, everything changed.
Instead of chasing those vanity metrics or trying to copy viral trends, here’s what I do now:
I study what competitors are doing.
I find out what my audience cares about.
I pick topics with business potential.
I create a quarterly content plan.
I create and schedule posts to keep things running smoothly.
Sure, quick tests have their place, but this way, I avoid jumping around and stay focused on a strategy that works.
What I Would Do Differently if I Started Building My Audience Today
If I were starting to grow my audience today, I’d do things a lot smarter. I’d focus less on trying to be everywhere and more on what works.
Here’s what I’d change:
I’d pick a narrow niche and stick with it.
I’d try different formats and topics, then double down on what resonates.
I’d create products and services early on, even with a small audience.
I’d only post on platforms I enjoy, not just where everyone else is.
I’d clearly define my value, so people know what they’ll get.
I’d stop stressing over unsubscribes because they make space for the right people.
And one more lesson — I’d stick with beehiiv from day one. I wasted time bouncing between platforms that didn’t work. beehiiv was built by creators for creators. In my opinion, it’s probably one of the best email marketing services for growing and monetizing your audience.
If you’re thinking about trying beehiiv, there’s a 30-day, free trial. Give it a shot and see if it’s the right fit for you.
Tools and Resources That Helped Me Build My Audience
Building my audience didn’t happen overnight. It took time, experimentation, and the right tools to support my efforts.
Here are a few platforms and resources that helped me build my audience:
beehiiv: I use beehiiv to host, grow, and monetize my email list. It’s where I share my website growth updates, SEO tips, and behind-the-scenes content with my subscribers. beehiiv’s built-in growth tools and clean interface make it easy to start and scale over time.
WordPress: It is the content management system that powers my website. I like how customizable and easy-to-use it is. WordPress makes it easy to publish a new blog post, tweak my existing layout, and create new landing pages.
Medium: Medium is where I first started writing consistently. It’s where I practiced my craft, got direct feedback from readers, and slowly built an audience that is now more than 21,000 followers. That early traction gave me the confidence to branch out.
Gumroad: I used Gumroad to sell my SEO ebook before I created a proper newsletter landing page. It was quick to set up and helped me start earning right away. The platform handles payments, delivery, and even email follow-ups.
Google Analytics and Google Search Console: These tools help me track how my website performs in organic search results and let me see which channels bring in traffic. I use the data to improve my content strategy, focus on what works, and spot new opportunities.
Zapier: It’s a handy automation tool I use to link payment platforms like Stripe with beehiiv. It automatically adds all of my paid customers to my beehiiv workflows, so I don’t have to lift a finger or do anything manually.
All of these tools worked together to help me grow, one step at a time.
FAQs
What Does It Mean To Build an Audience?
To me, building an audience means connecting with people who care about what you have to say.
When you consistently share helpful, honest content, especially from your experience, people start showing up for you, not just the topic.
Over time, that connection grows into a loyal community that supports and shares your work with others. I’ve seen this firsthand on platforms like Medium and beehiiv.
How To Build an Audience From Scratch?
I recommend starting by sharing what you know: your experiences, wins, and lessons.
People connect with stories, not just tips. You can pick one platform where your audience hangs out (for me, it’s been Medium) and show up there consistently.
Don’t worry about being perfect. Instead, just be helpful, honest, and a little vulnerable. Over time, your audience will grow naturally because they’ll trust you, and trust is what keeps people coming back.
How Will You Attract the Audience?
Attracting an audience starts with understanding who they are and what they need.
Instead of talking about yourself and what you do, I suggest focusing on sharing your stories and tips that will help people solve their problems.
Depending on your preferred user acquisition channel, you can show up consistently through blog posts, LinkedIn updates, or newsletters. This will help you build trust over time and attract your target audience.
How Do I Get More Audience?
Building a larger audience is about consistent effort and connecting with the right people.
What’s helped me is using beehiiv for my newsletter growth. beehiiv is easy to use and allows you to get more subscribers faster with its numerous growth features.
With a powerful audience growth platform, you can focus more on being creative and helpful instead of worrying about the tech side.
Additionally, be sure to talk to your audience. Reply to comments, ask questions, and be yourself. That’s the best way to build connections and keep people coming back.
Give beehiiv a try with their free, 30-day trial and see how easy growing your newsletter can be!
Digital Marketing Trends: 13 Ideas That Aren’t Just Buzzwords
Digital marketing trends can be crucial to staying relevant and competitive as a business.
However, it can be difficult to cut through the noise and determine which trends are worth acting on when digital marketing is changing faster than ever before.
My experience in digital marketing has given me a wealth of experience following digital marketing trends -- some of which I’ve had negative consequences and others that have changed the face of my business forever in the best way.
In my opinion, you need to choose digital trends that are grounded in reality and focus on the ones that marketers are already acting on, basing your decisions on data and results-driven analytics.
In this guide, I’ll talk you through 13 digital marketing trends that are changing the game, how I picked these trends, what smart marketers are focusing on in 2025, and how the beehiiv platform is making email a thriving marketing channel.
Table of Contents
Digital Marketing Trends That Are Changing the Game
When I’m running a campaign, I like to test out a range of techniques. This has helped me to see what works best for that individual strategy and has given me a unique perspective on certain digital marketing trends, predominantly because I’ve tried out so many of them!
I’ve tested all different kinds of digital marketing trends in my 10 years working in online advertising. Here are some of my favorites.
1. Search Is Becoming More Visual.
The way we search online is changing.
In 2024, Google released new algorithm updates, making image recognition more powerful and altering how we Google different things.
While visual search has technically been around for a long time, with Google releasing Google Image Search in 2001 and Google Lens in 2017, we’re only just seeing this digital marketing trend peak in popularity.
Other companies are releasing their visual search ideas, with Pinterest Lens and Snapchat Scan being launched in recent years.
Even retail sites have jumped on this trend, with ASOS Style Match and Wayfair using visual search to prompt consumers to easily source clothing and furniture they’ve seen online.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ultimate driver of visual search, analyzing images for patterns, brands, and similar designs out there to deliver the most precise results.
With 36% of consumers having used visual search and half of these saying visual information is more important than text when shopping online, it’s clear that the way we search is having a relaunch (Invesp).
Naturally, other brands are reacting to these findings, with selling sites such as Amazon, eBay, and Etsy prioritizing visual search and allowing consumers to browse their image-based product searches.
I love this digital marketing trend because it reacts to a real need that consumers are showing: the desire to search for products and services visually.
How can we optimize visual content to ensure that it appears at the top of search results in a visual search capacity?
Here are some tips:
Always Use High Quality Images: Clear, high-resolution images make it easier for search engines to accurately identify products/objects in images.
Fill In Your Alt Text: Alt text tells a search engine what an image is showing, allowing it to better understand and rank your image accordingly.
Experiment With Structured Data: Structured data is a way of telling search engines other information about products within your image, such as price and ratings.
2. Email Newsletters Are Making a Major Comeback.
Email newsletters have been on quite a journey in terms of popularity.
While they’ve always been around, email newsletters have fallen under the radar when other channels such as social media and paid advertising were having their moment around the 2015 mark.
However, in 2023, everything changed.
From 2022 to 2023, beehiiv saw the number of newsletter creators on their platform jump from 3,674 to 26,345… this is a staggering 617% increase.
Email newsletters are continuing to make waves today, with AI, personalization, and monetization making email marketing stronger than ever.
beehiiv has been passionate about engaging with this particular marketing trend, ensuring that there’s a powerful platform available for users who are clearly looking for it.
Keep reading to learn about a few features that make beehiiv stand out from its competitors in the email newsletter space.
Referral Tracking
The beehiiv Referral Platform allows creators to incentivize their audience by offering rewards in return for recommending their newsletter.
Users can set up different rewards such as promo codes, digital gifts, paid subscriptions, or physical merchandise, and then track referrals to ensure that milestones are rewarded automatically.
What I found with this platform is that their referral program is a great way of continuing to grow an audience from an already loyal subscriber base.
Building Audiences
beehiiv is actively committed to helping creators build their audience.
beehiiv’s primary goal is to help creators build, grow, and monetize, so they designed different audience growth tools, such as the Referral Program, SEO optimization tools, and subscriber insights, to help customers grow their audiences.
beehiiv also offers tools such as segmentation to make content more relevant for certain customers and allow easy social media integration to enable creators to expand their reach even further.
Monetization
Earning revenue is a key feature of the beehiiv system.
beehiiv offers many tools to enable creators to monetize their newsletters:
Partner Program: beehiiv allows creators to earn up to 60% in commission by simply sharing beehiiv links. They provide a partner link to make sharing super easy, allowing users to earn commission and even be entered into prizes and giveaways.
Boosts: beehiiv Boosts enable creators to monetize their email marketing by “boosting” subscribers, which is essentially a paid recommendation to another publication.
Ad Network: The beehiiv Ad Network connects creators with top advertisers, allowing them to earn money from featured sponsors on their emails and gain credibility by promoting well-known brands.
3. AI Is Everywhere, But Usefulness Is What Matters.
AI is different compared to other digital marketing movements and trends, as it’s pretty clear that AI is here to stay.
The most important thing to bear in mind with AI is how it is used. It may seem to be everywhere right now, but learning to balance AI tools with human creativity is the key to success.
Understandably, many marketers feel threatened by AI. However, I’ve found that AI Tools like Jasper, ChatGPT, and Midjourney can be used alongside my marketing to make certain processes more efficient, rather than replacing my services completely.
My favorite ways to use AI are included below:
Data Analysis: I like to use AI to take care of some of the more time-consuming, often boring tasks, such as data analysis. This involves inputting datasets into AI tools and allowing algorithms to identify patterns in data that I or my colleagues may miss.
Content Planning: Many people have started using AI for content creation. This didn’t work for me because I found the articles produced lacked creativity and critical thinking, but using it to plan my content is perfect, putting together article templates and helping to generate new topic ideas/keyword research.
Email Personalization: AI can be super useful for email personalization. This involves tasks such as gathering customer data and identifying patterns, so my emails going forward are more targeted.
Ad Optimization: If I have a set of ads that are already working, I love providing AI with my results to see how I can further optimize my ads. AI can also generate sections of ad copy based on what I’ve already created to produce extra ads that already have a strong basis.
In a nutshell, AI is best used to automate tasks that don’t require a lot of creativity or user intent. Using AI for planning and data analysis can free up marketers to do what we do best – the creative bits!
If you’re skeptical and need some inspiration, check out how AI newsletter The Neuron figured out the best ways of using AI for their business in this beehiiv blog.
4. Marketers Are Building in Public To Grow Faster.
Another interesting trend that seems to be sticking around is building brands in public to accelerate growth.
This transparency is very new for brands, with the inner workings of a business previously being held in secret for most industries.
A new trend towards fostering transparency and sharing the journey with your community is becoming the new normal. I love this trend as it has so many advantages for both the business and the consumer.
The business can be less guarded about its approach and receive increased public support, which usually results in better engagement rates and quicker growth.
The consumer enjoys a more transparent relationship with a business, often enjoying a more direct line of communication, too.
There are a few different methods for building in public. Here are my favorites:
Behind-the-Scenes Snapshots
Showing sneak peeks of your business behind the curtain can show your desire to be transparent with your audience.
There are various ways you can accomplish this, from office tours to showing the people behind your brand. Whichever way you choose, bringing your audience along allows the personality of your brand to shine through and builds trust with your audience.
Product Roadmaps
I love a product roadmap.
This type of content typically shows how a product has been developed so far and an outline of where you see that product going over time.
The reason I love this trend so much is that you can directly involve your audience in the vision of a product. You can ask for feedback and direction from people who may use the product and provide a timeline for how you see releases taking place.
Roadmaps can be really successful as they provide a clear view of the product’s timeline to your audience and help to balance expectation management with obtaining a good understanding of your audience’s thoughts.
5. Short-Form Video Is The New Homepage.
Short-form video is a digital marketing trend that doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
Short-form videos dominate major social media channels such as TikTok and Instagram and have even made their way to mediums such as YouTube that are more typically known for long-form video content.
Short-form video content is usually less than 60 seconds long and is typically displayed vertically to prioritize mobile viewing.
I like using this type of content because it’s cost-effective, affords my brand a wide reach, and can be used with trending audio/effects.
With short-form videos receiving 2.5 times more engagement than long-form videos (Yaguara), every brand should try out this trend if they haven’t already.
6. Brands Are Building Communities, Not Just Followings.
The next trend is all about building a community.
There seems to have been a shift in recent years from trying to grow as many followers as possible to cultivating active, engaged audiences.
This shift seems to have emerged from consumers desiring stronger relationships with brands, with the growth of the direct-to-consumer (DTC) space.
There are many benefits to this trend, including better customer retention, improved engagement rates, and overall better consumer loyalty by focusing on creating a strong community brand.
Here are some of my favorite ways to build a community online and grow loyal, passionate customers:
Define Your Ideal Customer Profile: Knowing who you’re targeting can ensure that you’re building an audience that is highly relevant for your business and one that is more likely to be loyal to your brand in the first place.
Offer Exclusive Benefits: Reward your audience for their loyalty by providing exclusive benefits that they can only receive by being part of your community.
Listen To Your Community: Learn what your followers really think, so you can act on any sticking points that may need addressing.
7. Personal Branding Is Outpacing Company Branding.
Encouraging your employees to share content is a highly successful marketing strategy.
I knew that employee-generated content (EGC) was successful but didn’t have much in the way of tangible results, and I was skeptical about the actual levels of engagement. I did some digging for some stats, so I could decide if this trend was really for me.
Here’s what surprised me…
Content shared by employees receives eight times more engagement than content shared through a brand (PostBeyond)! This shows the true power of EGC and why all brands should give this a go.
Personal content from employees is more authentic than content shared by the company as a whole, which I believe helps focus on human connection and being great for both customer and employee engagement.
Employees could share their personal favorite products from a brand or share their day-to-day tasks as employees. Your employees can be your best brand ambassadors, so leveraging your employees' unique insights into your business can improve the reach and engagement levels of your content.
8. SEO Content Is Becoming More Niche and Intent-Driven.
Google has become more focused on relevance over the years.
With the rise of conversational AI and increased user expectations from search engines, niche and intent-driven Search Engine Optimatization (SEO) content has become a strong digital marketing trend, which I personally think is a great thing.
Gone are the days of broad keyword-based SEO and irrelevant content. These days, brands need to provide users with the most relevant, authoritative information if they want any hope of ranking highly in search engines.
The E-E-A-T framework (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) is also becoming more important for rankings, adding to this drive towards niche and intent-driven content.
So how do you create content that will follow this trend?
Here are my top tips:
Build Authority in Your Niche: Become the ultimate source of information for your niche by creating specific, high-quality content. Being broad is not the key here. Choose a well-defined niche and make sure you’re the most useful source out there.
Ensure That Content Is Optimized for Conversational Search: To achieve this, your content should be easy to understand and focus on long-tail keywords in a conversational tone. You should almost pre-empt what your audience may need from you, answering a range of queries around your niche topic.
Leverage AI Tools for Keyword Research: With the rise of AI, more and more people are using it to search. This provides a wealth of data that you can use to understand what people are searching. Using AI to do keyword research is efficient and may uncover hidden keyword opportunities you wouldn’t have thought of on your own.
9. First-Party Data Is Back in Focus.
The shift away from third-party cookies has started a digital marketing trend focused on first-party data.
First-party data is information a company collects directly from its customers (e.g., an opt-in form on a company website).
With consumers becoming more focused on privacy, businesses are looking for more sustainable ways of collecting data. This is particularly prevalent given that third-party cookies are facing depreciation with the risk of new privacy regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
What are the benefits of first-party data?
First-party data is highly valuable due to its accuracy and reliability. In addition, it hasn’t been convoluted like third-party data, which can be a mix of data from various sources.
Collecting first-party data makes it easier for a company to control information and focus on data management, fully understanding its origins and accuracy and having no dependence on third-party sources/intermediaries.
Collecting first-party data also allows for enhanced personalization/targeting and, therefore, the opportunity to build stronger relationships with customers.
This is a trend that I hope is here to stay, as it’s great for businesses. Plus, the use of first-party data helps to protect consumers from the risk of data leaks and provides a more transparent service.
10. Social Search Is Competing With Google.
People are no longer only using Google to search online.
Users are searching on social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit to find the information they need, particularly when it comes to products they want to buy.
According to Google, 40% of 18-24 year olds are using social media as their primary search engine (TechCrunch). This stat is huge and confirms my thoughts that this trend is highly significant in changing the world of search as we know it.
But why are people leaning towards social search rather than using traditional search engines?
Some believe that social media offers a sense of authenticity that traditional search results may be lacking due to advertising and sponsored content.
However, with social media platforms becoming more heavily sponsored, there must be other reasons. One of these reasons could be that the drive towards visual search is, in turn, helping social search, with social media platforms being more visually based platforms.
I believe it’s more likely that generational shifts are contributing to the rise in social search, with younger people becoming increasingly comfortable with using social media as an information source.
Mobile-first internet access also makes social media more convenient. Why leave the platform you’re already using on your phone to use a separate search engine?
Whatever the reason, it’s super clear that social search is a valid competitor for Google, and optimizing content for social platforms is key to brands remaining in the game moving forward.
11. Interactive Content Is Boosting Engagement.
Did you know that interactive content generates up to 80% higher engagement rates than traditional content formats (Eventflare)?
The use of quizzes, polls, interactive videos, and calculators is changing the way we post content. Gone are the days of text and video dominating social media feeds and newsletters. The new king of content is interactive.
With increased engagement comes a range of other positive Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that can positively impact the following metrics :
Time On Page: Interactive content encourages users to engage, increasing the length of time they spend on your website/email.
Personalization: Content can be more easily personalized with interactive content, taking the form of interest-based quizzes or games.
Data Collection: Data can be collected transparently with interactive content, requesting customer details in return for the results of an interactive quiz, for example.
User-Driven Discovery: Understanding more about your users can be done in a user-driven way via interactive content such as questionnaires or polls.
Retention: Interactive content can improve retention rates by making your content more engaging. Content that catches your audience’s attention is more likely to keep them returning.
Brand Connections: Using interactive content is a way of creating a two-way connection with your audience, creating better connections and increased engagement rates.
Conversion Rates: With better KPIs such as engagement and time on page, your audience are more likely to convert after engaging with interactive content.
12. Influencers Are Moving to Owned Platforms.
Another trend that is seeing continued growth is the way influencers engage with their followers.
In 2025, more and more influencers are moving to owned platforms.
Why? It’s largely because of a desire for control and diversification.
Third-party platforms may restrict influencers from marketing the way they want to and may also tie them into long-term fee structures.
An influencer using their own platform can control what content they produce and how they monetize it. It also allows them to build a solid community in one place.
Each of these reasons is causing the influencer marketing space to evolve, with more of the following types of influencer content seen regularly:
Blogs/websites: This allows influencers full control of their content and the ability to build an engaged community that finds an influencer’s content in one place.
Email Newsletters: As mentioned earlier, email newsletters are seeing a comeback, with many influencers choosing platforms such as beehiiv and Substack to regularly send content to their audiences.
Podcasts: Podcasts are another medium that is highly popular these days, allowing influencers to speak directly to their followers via an independent platform.
13. Creator-Led Content Is Outperforming Branded Campaigns.
Content that is created by individuals rather than brand campaigns is the final trend I want to talk about today.
People are becoming more inspired to create content that is more genuine and relatable, rather than overly polished content that may come across as more “sponsored.”
There are various reasons why creator-led content is outperforming branded campaigns, but the main reasons are linked to authenticity and connection.
Individual-led content is more likely to instill a connection than content published by a company. This is likely to lead to better engagement rates, conversion rates, and potentially a higher return on investment (ROI), too.
Brands can leverage creator-led content, too, by prioritizing content published by their employees or customers, sharing personal experiences based on an individual’s views rather than as their brand as a whole.
Why Listen to Me? I have been working in the digital marketing space for 10 years, predominantly helping brands with their email marketing and online presence. I now specialize in creating great content for beehiiv to help people nail their email strategies!
How I Picked These Trends
The trends I’ve picked in this piece come from my personal experience.
Working on different campaigns with clients in a range of industries has given me a set of favorite trends that I try again and again, regardless of whether they’re still popular.
Some trends don’t age well, but it’s my firm belief that if you find the right set of digital marketing trends, you can use them to form a successful strategy.
I’ve prioritized the trends that have provided my clients with tangible results that can provide insights into how I can improve my campaigns moving forward and show me which trends I should prioritize.
It’s not guesswork. Picking the wrong trends can be highly detrimental to a business, which is why it’s so important to test out different methods before running full-scale with them.
Why Newsletter Platforms Like beehiiv Are Thriving
Newsletter platforms are thriving more than ever before; and, in my opinion, this is largely because of how they facilitate the digital trends I’ve discussed today.
Newsletter platforms promote authenticity, growth, and transparency, which are clearly at the forefront of consumers’ mindsets. Plus, they offer owned distribution, which creators can’t always achieve via other marketing mediums.
Here are some other key reasons why newsletter platforms like beehiiv are excelling over other platforms, such as social media:
High Engagement Rates
Newsletters are known for achieving great engagement rates.
Are you aware that email open rates vary from 15-25%, while open rates from organic media are just 2-4%, on average?
Clearly, email is offering much higher engagement rates than social media, and this is because consumers have actively invited a newsletter into their inbox and are therefore likely to interact with it.
Check out this blog comparing email newsletters to social media for more interesting stats!
Direct Communication
A regular newsletter opens a direct line of communication with your audience.
This offers many advantages, such as brand loyalty, the ability to send targeted messaging, and means you’re not at the control of a third-party platform that may dilute a message with sponsors or algorithm changes.
Reaching your audience directly is the best way of communicating with them, allowing you to fully control the process and build trust with your subscribers.
Automation and Efficiency
One of email’s best features is its ability to automate processes and improve efficiency.
Whether you want to set up a welcome series introducing your new subscriber to your brand or automate list-cleaning to make sure it actually gets done regularly, there are many different ways that email can make your communications more efficient.
Data-Driven Analytics
As an analytics buff, I love that email provides me with information I can actually use to push results.
You can track a wide range of metrics through newsletters, including open rates, click-through rates, conversions, and audience retention. These KPIs can provide valuable insights about your marketing performance that other marketing channels can’t.
Check out beehiiv’s 3D Analytics if you want to improve how you measure your newsletter campaigns. There are so many insights you can unlock with this platform – you can even track trends to see what new digital marketing movements you need to keep an eye on!
Drive Real Business Outcomes
For me, if a marketing channel isn’t driving growth and revenue, it’s questionable whether or not it’s working.
Newsletters drive tangible, real business outcomes like monetization, revenue growth, and conversions, making it super easy to see what is working and what needs to be improved.
While some other marketing channels focus on revenue growth, email newsletters are one of the lowest-cost ways to do this measurably.
What Smart Marketers Are Doing Differently in 2025
So what have we learned about digital marketing trends in this help guide?
Let’s summarize:
Test out a range of trends to see what works for your business.
Prioritize trends that focus on authenticity, improved KPIs, and tangible results.
Set up a customer newsletter, if you haven’t already, to engage a direct line of communication with your audience
Think about how you can use a high-leverage owned channel to reduce dependency on third-party mediums
Focus on the results a trend provides. A movement may be super popular; but if it doesn’t work for your brand, leave it at the door.
If you’re ready to get started with an email newsletter, sign up for a free, 30-day trial with beehiiv.
I’ve personally used beehiiv to test out a range of the digital marketing trends mentioned in this piece, and I can confidently report that it allowed me to easily track any trends I was testing, while producing a visually appealing, results-driven newsletter.
Some of my favorite beehiiv features include segmentation, A/B testing, and the beehiiv Ad Network, but I won’t spoil the fun. Check out beehiiv for yourself and see how you can benefit from a first-class newsletter.
Google’s “People Also Ask” Questions
What is a digital marketing trend?
A digital marketing trend is a shift in the direction of online marketing that is known for increasing traffic, engagement, or other KPIs.
It’s important for brands to identify and utilize the best digital trends in order to stay relevant and competitive in the digital market.
Aspects that affect digital marketing trends include a change in consumer behavior, technological advancements such as AI, and changing marketing techniques such as new platforms, tools, and automation methods.
What are the rising trends in digital marketing?
The top rising trends in digital marketing are listed below:
The Continued Rise of AI Tools: AI is being used to automate tasks such as content creation, personalization, and optimization.
Short-Form Video Content: Concise videos shown on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram have contributed to the popularity of short-form video content, allowing brands to put across a strong message quickly and effectively.
Visual Search: The move towards image-based search using platforms such as Google Lens allows consumers a more convenient, accurate way of shopping, with 62% of millennials preferring to use visual search over other search methods (Business Wire).
The Importance of Brand Authenticity: Consumers are more focused on authenticity and transparency when shopping with brands than ever before, with consumers becoming more informed and skeptical of big brand mentality.
Personalization: Content that is relevant, specific, and more personalized can lead to higher engagement rates, contributing towards better conversions and revenue. Personalization may involve using consumers’ first names or user behavior to serve more relevant content.
What are the top 7 types of digital marketing?
Below is a list of the top seven types of digital marketing:
Content Marketing: The creation and distribution of valuable content to inform users and encourage them to connect with a brand
SEO: The optimization of content and design to improve its chances of appearing at the top of search engine results pages
Email Marketing: The use of email to send targeted email messages for promotion, brand awareness, and communication
Social Media Marketing: Using social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok to build a following, engage with consumers, and drive brand awareness
Pay-Per-Click Advertising: Making use of platforms such as Google Ads to place sponsored ads that incur a fee when clicked in order to drive web traffic and conversions
Mobile Marketing: The use of mobile devices to reach consumers, which includes methods such as short message service (SMS) marketing, push notifications, and in-app marketing
Affiliate Marketing: Compensating third-party publishers (affiliates) for generating traffic or sales through their platform, which involves using unique URLs to track referrals and sales and attribute commissions
What are the top digital marketing trends for 2025?
The top digital marketing trends for 2025 include the focus on useful AI tools, the rise of social media searches, and the success of human-generated content.
Each of these trends focuses on the move towards searching through social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, using AI to improve efficiency, and allowing humans to focus on creating content that is authentic, transparent, and has a human touch.
How To Turn Your Newsletter Revenue Into a Legitimate Business
You’ve done what most people never do: turned a newsletter into real revenue. Whether it’s subscriptions, sponsorships, paid products, or premium content — that Stripe balance is proof this is more than just a hobby.
But here’s the part most creators don’t talk about: once the money starts flowing, your risks grow too. Without the right structure behind your newsletter, you’re exposed — legally, financially, and operationally.
This guide walks through exactly what to do when your newsletter becomes a business — and how to set it up the right way without slowing down your momentum.
Why Formalizing Your Newsletter Business Matters
It starts with a realization:
“I just made $800 from this thing. Should I do something about that…?”
The answer is yes. Even if you’re earning a few hundred dollars a month or are getting paid consistently, it’s time to think beyond content and start building infrastructure.
Forming an LLC, opening a business bank account, and staying compliant aren’t just “legal” steps — they’re how you:
Even if you’re not a spreadsheet person or “business-savvy," you’ll want this foundation in place before the money really starts coming in.
Step 1: Form an LLC (It’s Easier Than You Think)
A Limited Liability Company (LLC) is the go-to structure for newsletter creators. It protects your personal assets and gives your business its own identity.
Why It Matters:
Liability protection: If a sponsor deal goes sideways or someone threatens legal action, your personal bank account isn’t at risk.
Credibility: Brands take you more seriously when you’re an actual company, not just a personal Gmail and a PayPal link.
Tax flexibility: LLCs let you choose how you're taxed — standard or S-Corp — depending on how much you earn. Here’s a deeper look at the tax benefits.
Easy setup: You don’t need a lawyer. You don’t need to “figure it out.” Platforms like Swyft Filings do it all for you.
Pro tip: Most creators use their name or newsletter title as their LLC name (e.g. "The Freelance Formula LLC"). You can always file a DBA (“doing business as”) later if you want something different on the front end.
Step 2: Get an EIN and Open a Business Bank Account
Once your LLC is approved by your state, you’ll want to separate your business and personal money as soon as possible. That starts here:
Get an EIN
This is like a Social Security number for your business. You’ll use it to pay taxes, open bank accounts, and work with platforms like Gusto or Stripe. The IRS issues EINs free and instantly online.
Open a Business Bank Account
Keeping your money separate:
Makes bookkeeping 10x easier
Simplifies taxes (and audit protection)
Looks more professional to partners and vendors
Many banks offer free checking for LLCs, or perks like Stripe integrations and no monthly fees.
Step 3: Stay Compliant (Without Losing Your Flow)
Here’s the good news: once you’ve set it up, maintaining an LLC is not a full-time job.
Here’s what you need to stay on top of:
Annual filings: Most states require you to file a short form once a year. You’ll get reminders if you use a service like Swyft.
Registered agent: This is the person or company who officially receives legal documents for your business. Swyft Filings offers this as part of their package so you don’t have to use your home address.
Basic record-keeping: Keep track of your expenses, payments, invoices, and contracts — especially if you elect S-Corp status later.
Swyft Filings offers ongoing compliance support, so you don’t have to track state deadlines or tax forms manually. Here’s a deeper guide to staying compliant as your side hustle grows.
Tools That Make This Entire Process Way Easier
You don’t need to Google your Secretary of State or figure out tax forms solo. Services like Swyft Filings specialize in helping creators, freelancers, and solo business owners go from “side hustle” or even just something you do for fun to “yeah… I’m a business owner.”
Swyft Filings will help you:
File in any U.S. state
Get your EIN
Set up a registered agent
Stay compliant with reminders and support
It’s fast, affordable, and designed for people who don’t want to waste time figuring out bureaucracy.
It’s fast, affordable, and cuts through the confusing stuff — no legalese, no red tape, no guesswork.
And once your structure is set up, tools like beehiiv let you act like a business too — with monetization options, referral programs, and advanced audience segmentation built in.
Why Getting Legit Actually Changes the Game
Here’s what happens when you set things up right:
You land better sponsors who require a W-9 and a legal entity
You write off legit expenses — like your laptop, software, even your beehiiv subscription (yep, it counts).
You stop worrying if something will go wrong legally
You start thinking about growth — not just survival
We see it all the time — the moment a side hustle becomes official, people start operating differently: more confidence, clearer goals, bigger checks.
Want to grow from $200 to $2,000 months? This is how you make sure your setup can keep up.
Why Trust Me: Seth is part of the partnerships team at Swyft Filings, where he helps connect small business owners with the tools and resources they need to grow. With a background in communication, strategy, and business development, he brings a practical lens to every collaboration — always looking for ways to make things simpler, faster, and more impactful for entrepreneurs.
Final Thoughts: Protect What You’ve Built — and Keep Growing
Once your business is formalized, it’s time to scale. beehiiv is the best all-in-one newsletter platform to do just that:
Earn via ads, subscriptions, or your own products
Grow with built-in referrals and Boosts
Analyze what’s working in your Revenue Dashboard
Segment and engage your audience with powerful tools
Whether you’re just getting started or turning a side hustle into a media brand, beehiiv gives you the infrastructure and growth engine you need.
👉 Start your free trial with beehiiv today → www.beehiiv.com
You’ve done the hard part: building an audience, creating great content, and earning real revenue.
Now it’s time to give your business the foundation it deserves.
Whether you’re making $100/month or $5,000/month — forming an LLC and separating your finances is one of the smartest decisions you can make as a creator.
And if you want help doing it fast (without screwing it up), Swyft Filings is built for this moment. Thousands of solo founders and creators trust them to make the process simple.
Start your LLC with Swyft Filings →
Form your business in under 10 minutes and keep building what you love.
Newsletter Website Design That Converts and Looks Incredible
What Do Morning Brew, TIME, and Arnold’s Pump Club Have in Common?
They're all built on beehiiv—but that’s not the whole story.
What truly sets them apart?
Immaculate design.
These aren’t just newsletters. They’re full-blown brands. The kind that command attention, earn trust in seconds, and convert visitors without begging.
They’ve nailed something most newsletters overlook:
Design that drives growth.
Because great design isn’t just aesthetics—it’s strategy. It’s how you turn a casual browser into a loyal subscriber. It’s the feeling readers get the moment your homepage loads-the clarity of your value proposition; the trust embedded in every pixel.
Why Design Matters for Newsletters
Here’s what good design actually does for your newsletter:
Increases conversions: Clear layouts and CTAs reduce friction for signups.
Builds trust instantly: Professional design signals legitimacy and credibility.
Supports your brand: Colors, fonts, imagery, and voice create a cohesive experience.
Keeps people engaged: Thoughtful hierarchy and mobile-friendly layouts increase time on page.
Drives repeat visits: Great archive pages and visual consistency keep readers exploring.
For example, here is a screenshot from Oliver Darcy’s recent email. The first line clearly directs subscribers to sign up for his paid subscription tier.
With beehiiv, you're not stuck with generic templates. You can customize every part of your site—from the homepage to the archive to the paid content walls.
Key Design Principles To Follow
Before we dive into the best examples, here are the design fundamentals that every newsletter site should nail:
1. Clarity Over Cleverness
Your homepage should answer three things instantly:
What is this?
Who is it for?
Why should I care?
Take TIME Magazine, for example. Each of their newsletters opens with a crystal-clear pitch.
Who it’s for, what you'll get, and why it matters.
No guesswork, no fluff. Just value, front and center.
2. Mobile-First Thinking
Over 60% of email opens happen on mobile. If your site isn’t mobile-optimized, you’re losing readers.
Test your site on multiple devices. Use fewer columns, more vertical spacing, and thumb-friendly CTAs.
Arnold’s Pump Club leans on simple sections, bold headers, and legible copy—so whether you’re on a morning walk or mid-set at the gym, it works.
The Daily Bite is a masterclass in mobile UX. Large fonts, clean vertical flow, and a prominent subscribe button that never gets lost. Even their archive feels swipeable.
3. High-Contrast CTAs
Make your signup buttons easy to see, tap, and understand. No vague copy. “Join free,” “Subscribe now,” or “Get the daily email” work better than “Go.”
Upward News does this beautifully. The subscribe button contrasts perfectly with the background and uses action-driven copy: Need-to-know reporting and analysis you won’t find in the mainstream media.
4. Consistency in Visual Branding
Your homepage, your emails, your archives—they should all feel like they belong to the same world. Think consistency:
Fonts
Colors
Icons
Tone of voice
Girlboss gets this right. Their newsletter site uses the same aesthetic as their Shopify store—peach tones, clean fonts, and a cool, confident voice.
Pick a color palette, stick to 1-2 fonts, and reuse design elements. Familiarity builds trust. Mismatch kills it.
5. Visual Hierarchy
Not all content deserves equal attention. Use layout intentionally to guide your reader’s eye where it matters most:
Big, bold headline
Subheadline or value prop
CTA above the fold
Posts or previews next
Purposeful Performer is a great example. The homepage leads you through: headline → value → CTA → premium upsell. It feels intuitive, not overwhelming.
CoinSnacks uses font weights and sectioning to break down a lot of content without overwhelming the reader. You scroll because it’s easy—not because you’re lost.
🏆 The 12 Best Newsletter Website Designs on beehiiv
Here’s a handpicked lineup of the best-looking (and best-converting) newsletter websites and why they work so well.
1. TodayIn Design
Minimalist design with whitespace done right. Perfect for a creative audience.
Design Wins: Subtle animations, simple subscribe flow, beautiful font pairing.
2. The Daily Bite
A fun, vibrant site that pulls you in fast.
Design Wins: Bold colors, clean emoji usage, friendly CTA ("Get your daily bite").
3. Big Desk Energy
Yes, this is beehiiv CEO Tyler Denk’s own site—and it slaps.
Design Wins: Gradient background, punchy microcopy, and strong visual brand.
4. Kristi Digital
Polished and elegant, with a premium digital freelancer vibe.
Design Wins: Clean serif font, light color palette, personal brand emphasis.
5. The Neuron Daily
Sleek and modern, perfectly tuned for the tech crowd.
Design Wins: Compact nav, large bold headlines, and frictionless subscribe UX.
6. Purposeful Performer
A masterclass in monetization.
Design Wins: Premium content previews, tiered CTAs, and engaging visuals.
7. Creator Spotlight
Feels like a media brand. Operates like a newsletter-first experience.
Design Wins: Hero imagery, feature blocks, beautiful post layouts.
8. The Future Party
Pop culture energy meets publishing polish.
Design Wins: Strong visual rhythm, bold typography, fast-loading everything.
9. Girlboss Newsletter
An extension of the main brand with a stylish twist.
Design Wins: Icon-based nav, modern preferences center, great typography.
10. Just Women’s Sports Newsletter
Sporty and bold, with great post layout design.
Design Wins: Vivid color scheme, content-forward structure, easy scroll archive.
11. CoinSnacks
Clean crypto without the clutter.
Design Wins: Digest-style homepage, dark/light mode vibe, strong branding.
12. AMMI.AI
AI newsletter with futuristic visuals and a bold UI.
Design Wins: Custom graphics, black-and-white color scheme, CTA button animations.
Final Thoughts: Let Your Design Do the Work
Every one of these newsletters shows what’s possible with beehiiv’s website builder: conversion-driven design that still looks damn good.
With beehiiv’s Website Builder, you get:
Full design control — Customize your homepage, archive, subscribe page, and even post layouts
Clean, fast templates — Optimized for mobile and conversion, no coding needed
Drag-and-drop modules — Add image blocks, testimonials, pricing cards, and more
Custom domains — Build on your brand, not someone else’s
Seamless paywall integration — Perfect for premium newsletters or gated content
Don’t let your layout hold your growth back.
Try beehiiv’s Website Builder and launch a site you’re proud to promote.
How Superhuman AI Acquires Up to 10,000 Subscribers Monthly Through Newsletter Ads
Superhuman AI is a high-growth company focused on scaling user acquisition through paid media.
Founded by CEO Zain Khan, the company was already investing heavily in Meta Ads and other paid channels, with Khizer Abbas leading performance marketing efforts as Head of Paid Acquisition.
But they were looking for additional growth levers that could supplement their existing success — especially channels that offered audience alignment without operational complexity.
Newsletters stood out as a promising solution. The audience quality was strong, the engagement was higher than most ad formats, and the targeting potential was ideal.
Plus, newsletters are the best place to find new subscribers—readers are already in their inbox and comfortable sharing their email.
Hence, Superhuman AI turned to the beehiiv Ad Network.
The Challenge
Before working with beehiiv, Superhuman AI encountered the same friction points that prevent many performance teams from leaning into newsletter advertising at scale:
1. Manual operations were inefficient
The team had to spend hours identifying individual newsletters, negotiating placements, coordinating creative, and managing tracking links. These tasks required bandwidth that could be better spent optimizing actual performance.
2. Small newsletters were high effort, low return
Even though many niche newsletters had the right audiences, the coordination needed to work with them wasn’t worth the effort. Without scale or centralized control, running multiple campaigns was not feasible.
3. Performance was fragmented and hard to analyze
There was no unified system for monitoring ad spend, tracking CPA, or comparing campaign performance across newsletters. The result was a fragmented media mix that lacked the transparency required for true optimization.
4. Scaling was capped by internal bandwidth
With no automation or centralized dashboard, scaling newsletter ads was simply not efficient — even when results were promising.
Superhuman AI needed a way to make newsletter advertising behave like a performance channel — scalable, measurable, and predictable.
The Solution
beehiiv’s Ad Network introduced a level of scale and automation that aligned perfectly with how Superhuman AI runs growth campaigns.
1. End-to-end management, without internal lift
beehiiv took care of everything — identifying the right newsletters, managing placements, handling creative, tracking performance, and even optimizing mid-flight. The team no longer had to spend hours on outreach or logistics.
2. Centralized dashboard for spend and performance
All metrics, including impressions, clicks, subscriber conversions, and spend, were visible in a single performance dashboard. This made it possible to make real-time decisions and allocate budget more effectively.
3. CPC-based pricing for predictable ROI
By only paying for clicks, Superhuman AI was able to forecast costs accurately and measure results against internal CPA benchmarks. This performance-based model aligned perfectly with their existing acquisition strategy.
4. Scalable across dozens of newsletters
What used to take hours of coordination could now be launched in minutes. Even small newsletters with niche audiences became viable, thanks to beehiiv’s infrastructure and performance consistency.
5. Dedicated support from beehiiv’s team
From setup to troubleshooting, Superhuman AI reported fast, proactive support. According to Khizer, “The support from beehiiv has been outstanding. We’ve never had a question go unanswered.”
The Results
Superhuman AI is now acquiring between 5,000 to 10,000 new subscribers per month from beehiiv’s Ad Network — making it one of their most efficient acquisition channels to date.
Here’s what stood out:
1. Strong top-of-funnel volume
Newsletter ads are delivering a steady, scalable stream of new subscribers that supplements growth from Meta Ads.
2. Performance meets internal KPIs
Their key metrics — including cost per acquisition, open rates, and unsubscribe rates — are consistently performing within target thresholds.
3. Workflow is dramatically simplified
All newsletter advertising is now managed through a single platform, with minimal lift from Superhuman AI’s internal team.
4. Cost and results are both predictable
Thanks to CPC pricing and transparent reporting, there’s no guesswork around budget allocation or campaign performance.
5. Newsletter ads now operate like a core paid channel
With beehiiv, newsletter advertising is no longer a side experiment. It’s a foundational part of the performance mix.
Final Thoughts on the Superhuman AI Case Study
Superhuman AI’s story is proof that newsletter advertising doesn’t have to be a manual, fragmented experiment. With beehiiv’s Ad Network, it becomes a scalable, automated, performance-optimized channel — one that fits right into any modern acquisition strategy.
By centralizing operations, offering CPC pricing, and giving teams the tools to act on data in real time, beehiiv turns newsletters into a true performance lever. The kind that drives 10,000 new subscribers a month.
If you’re leading growth at a startup or media company and want to scale without adding more moving parts, ask yourself the same question Superhuman AI did:
What if newsletter ads performed like your best-paid channel?
With the beehiiv Ad Network, they can.
It’s the most effective way to advertise newsletters—your target audience already lives in the inbox, and your ads land directly where they’re most likely to convert.
Turn newsletter ads into a growth engine — sign up here.
How to Turn Free Readers Into Paying Subscribers: The Complete Guide
Substack might dominate the paid newsletter conversation, but I have some good news for you. If you don’t want to get trapped in a platform, you want to keep all of your earnings, and have complete control of your upsell automations, beehiiv offers a much stronger alternative.
This is the guide I wish had existed when I first launched a newsletter. Even after launching and running several newsletters, it feels like the process of how you actually get readers to pay is a topic we all try to dance around.
I sat down with Lex Roman (They/them), the founder of Journalists Pay Themselves, and one of the most trusted voices when it comes to reader-funded media. They’ve helped everyone from indie creators to pro newsrooms build sustainable, subscription-backed newsletters.
Roman’s advice is direct, tactical, and exactly what most of us need to hear. In the article, I’ll break down how to go paid the right way, and how you can do it step-by-step in beehiiv.
Table of Contents
Who Should Go Paid — and When?
The good news (and the bad news) around paid subscriptions is this: there’s no secret subscriber amount or monthly price that guarantees success.
According to Roman, the more important factor is trust. Instead of thinking “when should I go paid?” or looking for a magic number, you should look at how much trust you have with your audience.
If you've already built trust—whether through consistent content, a strong presence on another platform, or a successful past project—you may be ready to monetize sooner than you think. That could take the form of:
A legacy email list from a previous service-based business
A social audience that’s already engaged and loyal
A readership from a past publication or YouTube channel
They shared, “If you’ve built a bunch of trust with any number of people — maybe 100 real people — then you can go paid at launch.”
Some creators and newsrooms even start with a one-time reader raise or a founding member push before launching a recurring tier. And worst-case scenario? Lex says, “People don’t take you up on it, and it just sits there. You get a few people casually. No big deal.”
Two Models to Consider
1,000 True Fans
The Kevin Kelly classic. Can you get 1,000 people to pay you $100/year? That’s a $100K business.
Right-Fit Fans
You may not even need 1,000 people— maybe it’s just 75 people who really need what you’re offering.
Think niche experts, B2B analysts, diehard hobbyists. If you’re writing high-leverage content, you don’t need mass appeal (and you can charge a higher rate).
As Matt Brown says, “You don’t need millions of casual readers,” Brown explained. “You need a few thousand people who find your work so valuable they’re willing to pay for it directly.”
Key Metrics to Watch Before Going Paid
Open rates: 40–50% shows strong engagement
Reply rate: Are readers hitting reply?
Referral behavior: Are people sharing without you asking?
Reader feedback: Are you getting DMs or survey notes asking for more?
And if you’re hesitant to “ask for money,” Lex suggests reframing the pitch.
“It’s not a threat. It’s not a mandate. It’s an opportunity. You’re giving people a way to support something they care about.”
So instead of waiting for the perfect moment or chasing an arbitrary number, ask yourself: Have I earned the right to go deeper with this audience? If yes, it’s probably time.
Conversion Strategies That Work
Getting people to join your free newsletter is one thing. Getting them to pull out a credit card? That’s a tougher sell.
This is where most creators fall into the trap of lazy copy or half-hearted asks. Lex Roman puts it bluntly: “If I were writing the copy for a default button on Substack, ‘Upgrade to paid’ is just about the weakest three words I could have picked.”
Why? Because it’s not about paying, it’s about what they get.
“I don’t want to upgrade to paid. I want to upgrade for perks. I want to upgrade to read the rest of the story. I want to upgrade to be part of a community.”
That reframe should shape everything that follows: your pitch, your pricing, and your product.
Here are the strategies that actually work:
1. Tease Premium Content
Your free readers need to see what they’re missing.
Share a compelling preview. Give them the setup, the tension, the curiosity gap, and make the payoff gated.
Here’s an example of how Roman does this in her newsletter, Journalists Pay Themselves.
What to try:
Publish the first 3-4 paragraphs of a premium essay
Add a callout mid-post that says, “This is where paid readers get the goods.”
End with a CTA that hits the benefit (not just “Upgrade to read more”)
beehiiv tip: Use Partial Posts to split free vs paid access and customize the upgrade text.
I’m experimenting with this in my own newsletter, Creator Diaries, where I write long-form interviews for interesting people in the creator economy and share a weekly newsletter on what I’m learning and resources I recommend.
In a recent interview I published, I did an author Q&A and teased a portion of the full interview for free readers, while gating the rest.
2. Create Urgency Around Launch
Nobody converts off “I’ll upgrade someday.” Your launch needs a reason to act now.
What works:
Founding member pricing (limited to the first 50–100 people)
Countdown offers (e.g., first week is $50/year, then $70)
Special bonuses (AMA, merch, bonus archive, community invite)
Roman suggests aligning this with your mission or roadmap:
“Tell your readers: I want to add a podcast, I want to pay a contributor, I want to host something for you, and here’s how paid subscriptions help me get there.”
Tip: Pair urgency with a personal letter or origin story. See #5 below.
3. Use Anchor Pricing
Pricing is perception. Don’t just offer one plan; structure it to guide the choice you want.
Here are a couple of examples from beehiiv newsletters like Status and Garbage Day.
Common setup:
$7/month
$70/year (2 months free)
$150 lifetime (limited time or invite-only)
Roman shared her expertise, “$9/month is a great starting point. It sits just under $10, and it signals value without being intimidating.”
beehiiv tip: Push annual by setting it as your default CTA.
4. Involve Your Readers
Conversion goes up when readers feel invested in the journey.
Try:
Let them vote on perks, topics, or names for the paid tier
Share your roadmap and let them suggest ideas
Use polls to learn what they would pay for
The Catskill Crew newsletter by Michael Kauffman (although a free newsletter) is a great example of this. He involves his subscribers in every new product launch or new business venture.
Well, the subscribers have spoken, looks like I’m writing a book…
PS if you don’t use @beehiiv polls to test new ideas before pulling the trigger you are certifiably crazy!
— Michael Kauffman (@MikeyPesto)
11:08 AM • Apr 16, 2025
beehiiv tip: You can use beehiiv’s poll feature to embed custom polls on any page or newsletter.
5. Write the Founder’s Letter
Instead of a generic sales page, write a personal, honest note. I like how Matt Brown of Extra Points does this often with his subscribers. This approach breaks the Fourth Wall between you and your audience.
What to include:
Why now?
What your paid plan supports (your time, team, expansion)
What readers will unlock (content, community, access)
A real thank you, not a sales pitch
Roman recommends this approach to readers: “Frame your call to action as an opportunity. Are you glad this exists? Help me keep it going — and here’s what we’ll do together.”
The founder of Handmade Seller Magazine, Amber Christian, has invested time and energy to build a relationship with her subscribers. So much so that when they made the jump to beehiiv and turned on paid subscriptions, they saw a 34% growth in paying subscribers.
6. Add Something Extra
Sometimes readers just need a little nudge, a cherry on top that justifies the jump.
Ideas:
Access to a Notion library, a workshop replay, or a private podcast feed.
Invite to a Slack group, Zoom Q&A, or 1:1 consult.
Early access to big announcements or deals.
Example: Extra Points offers the Extra Points Library as an added resource for its audience of sports management professionals. It’s insider information that you couldn’t easily access anywhere else.
beehiiv tip: You can also use the new one-time payments feature to sell à la carte. Here’s an example from Creator Toolbox.
What Top beehiiv Creators Are Doing
Here’s what it looks like in action from some of our favorite beehiiv creators.
📈 Christian Collard – Sunday Money
Free subs: 25,000+
Revenue: Sponsorships + paid product
Sunday Money is one of the fastest-growing personal finance newsletters on beehiiv. As an extension of the newsletter, Collard created the Side Stack Club as a premium product. It includes hand-picked content for side hustlers, tools, success stories, and other valuable content.
(P.S. See how he uses both urgency (expires in 19 days) and value (20% off forever) to promote the deal. Take notes!)
Why it works: Collard has built a trust with his audience over the years, so it’s a natural next step for his readers to upgrade for more access + content.
🏈 Matt Brown – Extra Points
Free subs: 27,000
Paid subs: 2,000+
Annual revenue: $200K+
Brown nailed the niche model. His B2B-ish college sports content attracts athletic departments, industry insiders, and superfans. He charges for the reporting that’s deep, timely, and specialized.
Why it works: The more specific your value, the easier it is to charge for it.
Paid Newsletter Mistakes to Avoid
In my conversation with Roman, I realized that too many newsletter creators get stuck overthinking the launch of a paid newsletter—unsure of when, where, or how to make the move.
But the bigger issue isn’t just when to launch—it's not having a clear plan for A) converting free readers into paying subscribers, and B) retaining the ones you already have. Both are just as crucial to building a successful paid newsletter.
Weak CTAs
As we mentioned earlier, no one really wants to “Upgrade to Paid.” We give people money because we desire the outcome, whether that’s access, content, or insight.
That’s Roman’s take, and they’re right. Most CTAs ask for money without explaining why the offer matters.
Do this instead:
Write your own CTA buttons and upgrade prompts.
Lead with what readers get: access, perks, community, mission.
Use phrases like “Join the community” or “Support this work.”
Here’s an example of upgrade copy I loved from The Fly Trap:
No Onboarding Strategy
Don’t just send a Stripe receipt. Make your new paid subscribers feel like VIPs.
What to include in your paid welcome sequence:
A personal thank-you note.
A reminder of what they now get access to (bonus posts, archives, private podcast, etc.).
A guide on where to start or how to get the most out of their membership.
A subtle nudge to share they’ve joined (Senja or testimonial link optional).
Goal: Make them feel smart for joining and excited to stick around.
No Upsell Strategy
This is the most overlooked part of running a paid newsletter.
A lot of creators think of their audience in binary terms: free or paid. But your biggest growth opportunity is turning current readers into deeper supporters.
It’s way easier to upgrade someone who already knows and values your newsletter than to convince someone cold to subscribe, Roman explained.
That’s why upsells matter. Whether it’s moving someone from monthly to annual or giving them a reason to jump into a higher tier, this is how you build sustainable revenue.
What to do:
Frame it around momentum. Roman shared two upsell strategies that work:
“I’m about to do something — help me make it happen.”
(e.g., hiring a freelance editor, launching a community, writing a big report)
“Here’s a special offer if you upgrade now.”
(e.g., $50 off lifetime, limited-time bonus, founding member access)
And don’t forget: this can be automated.
Try this automation:
At month 6 of a monthly plan, send a sequence offering 20% off to switch to annual.
After someone clicks a lot but hasn’t upgraded, trigger a 3-day perk-focused sequence.
Add a banner to free emails for lifetime deals when you’re doing a big push.
Roman calls this the “Why Pay” sequence. Here’s an example from 404 Media:
beehiiv tip: You can set up an email sequence (6–8 weeks after joining) that walks them through:
What your paid offer is
Why you created it
What others love about it
What they’re missing
Ignoring Retention
Getting someone to pay once is a win—but getting them to stay? That’s the real challenge (and key) to running a successful paid newsletter.
I see a lot of people focus on conversion and then neglect onboarding, ongoing perks, or just basic check-ins. Roman says, “Retention comes down to communication. And most people just… don’t follow up.”
You can’t assume people will remember why they joined or know how to get the most out of their subscription. Especially if your perks include things like private podcasts, community invites, or Notion libraries.
Lex recommends setting up two key flows:
A paid onboarding sequence (reminding them what they get, where to find it, and how to use it)
A “Why Stay” retention sequence, sent right before renewal (reiterating value, sharing what’s coming next, and thanking them for being a member)
Bonus idea: You can also run occasional manual outreach — a short check-in asking: “How are you enjoying the newsletter so far? Anything you’d love to see more of?”
I think this is a nice personal touch, and I love to see notes like this in my inbox.
How to Set Up Paid Plans in beehiiv
This is the tactical part. Here’s exactly how I launched a paid tier inside beehiiv — and how you can do the same.
Let’s break it down:
Step 1: Enable Monetization
Go to Settings → Monetization in beehiiv
Connect your Stripe account
Toggle on “Enable Paid Subscriptions”
Step 2: Set Your Tiers
Here’s what I am testing for my newsletter.
Monthly: e.g., $9/month
Annual: e.g., $80/year (discounted)
Lifetime: Optional, but great for early believers
Then you’ll want to click ‘Create New Tier’ to create your membership options.
From there, you can enable monthly, annual, and one-time purchases, and set the rates for each.
Pro tip: Remember that you can customize the button so it’s more enticing than just ‘buy now.’
Step 3: Gate Your Content
When you’re drafting a post:
Click “Post Visibility” in the editor
Choose: Free, Paid, or Partial (teaser + paywall)
If you’re using Partial, write a clear preview that tees up the value. Here’s what that looks like in my newsletter.
Automations in beehiiv
To make all of this easier, beehiiv has condensed hundreds of high-impact newsletter automations into a library of ready-to-use templates. Now, you can harness the same automations used by the largest newsletters in the industry to grow, engage, and retain your own audience.
First head to Audience -> Automations.
Then choose from some of the automation templates listed — or you can create your own. I chose this reminder for paid subscriptions.
From there, you’ll see a full automation sequence that you can customize for your newsletter. You can see there is some template text there, but I recommend writing your own message tailored to your voice and readers. Here’s an example from my automation:
You can customize so much of this process, from how to segment readers to the copy text and more. If you want to learn more, check out beehiiv’s guide here.
Let’s Build Your Paid Newsletter
You don’t need to wait until you hit 10,000 subscribers or build the perfect paywall strategy to start monetizing your newsletter. What you do need is a plan for earning your readers’ trust — and keeping it.
And tools like beehiiv take care of all of the technical stuff so you can focus on what you do best. From flexible paywalls to upsell automations, built-in landing pages to one-click upgrade flows, beehiiv gives you everything you need to turn free readers into paying members.
→ Launch your paid tier on beehiiv today
And start building the newsletter business you actually want.
How EVWire Achieved 238% Growth Using beehiiv Platform Tools
Staying updated on the fast-paced electric vehicle (EV) industry can feel like trying to drink from a firehose—there's just too much information out there!
That’s where EVWire newsletter steps in, offering a streamlined solution for electric vehicle enthusiasts and professionals who want to stay in the loop without the overwhelm.
Meet Jaan Juurikas, the founder of EVWire and self-proclaimed "biggest EV geek."
Four and a half years ago, Jaan noticed a gap in the market: there wasn’t a single source bringing together all the essential EV news. Frustrated, he took action and launched his own newsletter, starting with just 100 eager subscribers.
Fast forward to today, and EVWire has grown into a must-read platform, boasting over 13,500 subscribers who rely on it for their electric vehicle updates.
This case study reviews the partnership with beehiiv that enabled Juurikas to supercharge EVWire's growth, harnessing innovative tools to build a vibrant community and enhance the newsletter's offerings.
Let's explore how Juurikas approached this challenge using beehiiv!
The Evolution: More Than Just Another Newsletter
EVWire isn't your typical newsletter. While most publications focus on opinion pieces or essays, Juurikas took a different approach from day one.
"My newsletters have always been heavy on the curation side," Juurikas shares. "Usually my newsletters have like 30 links in one email, right? So that's a lot. Each link has its own snippet and everything like what it is about or what happened."
But Juurikas’s vision extended beyond curation. He wanted to solve a bigger problem in EV news consumption.
"My biggest issue with all the EV news sites out there is that if you miss one day of reading it, you miss the info completely. It doesn't get stuck anywhere—that info, the context is just lost."
This insight led to the creation of EVWire's ecosystem approach, featuring specialized verticals such as Charging Wire and Battery Wire, regional news feeds covering Europe, the U.S., China, and country-specific coverage, as well as an EV events calendar with industry-wide coverage.
The Platform Migration That Changed Everything
Initially, Jaan Juurikas built EVWire on Kit (formerly ConvertKit) with a separate Webflow site—a setup that quickly became a nightmare. "The CMS for Webflow is just terrible. Like posting my articles, it was just a terrible experience," he recalls.
After learning about beehiiv and its capabilities, such as the built-in website and CMS, everything changed. "I immediately scrapped my ConvertKit and Webflow page and just went with the native beehiiv system, and it's been a great decision," Juurikas admits. “beehiiv publishes newsletters beautifully and automatically, which is why I switched,” he adds.
The migration delivered impressive results:
Subscriber growth: From 3,000-4,000 to 13,500+ subscribers (238% increase)
Engagement boost: Open rates jumped from 52% to 58% (maintaining 50 %+ consistently)
Community engagement: 1,000+ replies to welcome email alone
Business sustainability: Mix of B2B clients and paid subscriptions
Environmental impact: 1,300+ trees planted for paid members
Building Without Boundaries (or Funding)
Here's where the story gets really interesting.
Jaan Juurikas was preparing to raise funding and hire an entire engineering team to build his vision of "a mix between a Bloomberg terminal and Crunchbase" for the electric vehicle (EV) industry.
Then, beehiiv's website builder changed Juurikas’s plans entirely.
"I reached out to [Tyler] like, 'Do you think I'll be able to build what I want on your new platform?' And he said, 'Yep, we're launching it like January or whatever.' Right? So I was like, 'Yep, I'm all in. Let's do this. "
The Numbers That Matter: What Juurikas Built Solo
Instead of raising capital and hiring developers, Juurikas built his entire platform in just two to three months using beehiiv's website editor.
The scope of what he accomplished is staggering:
Platform Components Built
Live stock tracker with 100+ EV stocks across 7-8 categories
500+ planned company profile pages with auto-updating data
Multi-vertical news feeds serving different industry segments
Integrated newsletter system with automated content distribution
"I'm very glad I could get here without raising funds because this helps—my ownership of my own company remains, thanks to that," Juurikas explained.
The best part?
Juurikas admits: "I don't code, right. I don't know almost anything about coding. I just understand roughly what works and how. But if you combine what you have in beehiiv as a no-code platform with the AI tools out there, you can create whatever you can dream up”
What this means in real terms:
$0 in engineering costs vs. potentially $200K+ for a development team
2-3 months vs. 12+ months typical development timeline
100% ownership retained vs. dilution from funding rounds
Solo operation vs. managing a technical team
The Secret Sauce: Community and Authenticity
What makes EVWire special isn't just the technology—it's the community Jaan Juurikas has built.
Readers consistently praise three things: Juurikas’s authentic, no-nonsense approach, a little humor involved, and comprehensive information that "you don't usually get elsewhere."
The paid subscription model includes unique perks, such as early access to resources, exclusive deep-dive content, and the tree-planting initiative, which has resulted in the creation of a forest of over 1,300 trees.
Operational Efficiency Gains
"You guys literally ship new features every week. Like the shipping cadence is just crazy... for the customer, for my reader. It looks like it's coming from me like I'm actually building features which are actually from beehiiv."
Key efficiencies include direct analytics export to Google Sheets for trend tracking, cross-platform content tagging for multi-site display, and comprehensive automation capabilities.
"I don't need any other tool... I don't have to jump between tools almost at all," Juurikas explains.
The Growth Playbook That Actually Works
Juurikas’s advice for aspiring newsletter creators goes against conventional wisdom. Instead of starting with friends and family, he recommends going straight to your niche audience.
"Everybody says you should add your mom and your uncle. I say it's the opposite... If it's a niche thing, you should go for those niche people. You shouldn't add your mom. They will tell you they love it, but they don't actually care for it."
Juurikas’s proven strategy delivered measurable results:
Phase 1 - Smart Launch (21 days):
Create a countdown landing page and start engaging Facebook groups, asking what the EV newsletter should include.
Result: Juurikas started with 100 genuinely interested subscribers (not friends/family).
Phase 2 - Consistent Growth (4.5 years):
Publish a weekly newsletter with authentic voice and comprehensive curation.
Result: As stated earlier, the newsletter grew to over 13,500 engaged subscribers with multiple revenue streams.
Phase 3 - Platform Expansion:
Build a comprehensive website using beehiiv's editor without external funding.
Result: Juurikas had a self-sustaining business with complete ownership retention.
The Platform That Grows With You
Perhaps most impressively, Jaan Juurikas has brought three other EV industry writers to beehiiv, including acquiring another EV publication entirely within the platform.
"Super easy migration," Juurikas notes about the acquisition process. "I think anyone thinking of writing and not writing it on beehiiv is missing out, right? Because other platforms have such strong limitations and tradeoffs that are just not worth it."
Ready To Build Your Industry Empire?
Jaan Juurikas’s journey from 100 subscribers to a comprehensive industry platform shows what's possible when you combine passion, consistency, and the right tools.
EVWire proves that with beehiiv, you're not just getting a newsletter platform—you're getting the foundation to build an entire media business without coding, without massive funding rounds, and without sacrificing ownership of your vision.
Ready to turn your expertise into your own industry platform?
Join thousands of creators who are building their media empires with beehiiv's all-in-one newsletter and website platform.
From day one to Initial Public Offering (IPO) dreams, we've got the tools to grow with you. Start your free 30-day trial today!
Inbox to Income: The Newsletter + Website Formula You Need for 2025
How to Monetize Your Newsletter + Website in 2025: Real Strategies That Work
If you're a creator, founder, or solo operator trying to build a sustainable income stream online, you’re going to love what Alec from beehiiv and Gavin from Ezoic just dropped in their powerhouse webinar.
This wasn’t some fluffy “start a newsletter” pep talk—it was a tactical, honest roadmap to building an email list, monetizing with real dollars (not just impressions), and amplifying your earnings by combining it with a website. Oh, and yes: this is working right now for creators with fewer than 10K subscribers.
Let’s dive into the playbook.
Table of Contents
Who Is This Video For?
This post is for independent creators, niche publishers, side hustlers, marketers, and small business owners who are building (or want to build) email newsletters and websites in 2025.
If you're tired of chasing social algorithms or struggling to monetize your audience, you'll walk away from this post with step-by-step tactics, tools, and real-world examples of what works.
Top 6 Key Timestamps
1. [00:03:00] Why Email Is Still King
Alec explains how email beats social media by giving you ownership and consistency.
2. [00:07:30] Starting Your Newsletter
The Quick and Dirty Playbook From defining goals to building a list, Alec outlines the key steps.
3. [00:16:45] Monetization Breakdown
6 Proven Models Subscriptions, sponsorships, affiliates, products, boosts, and communities.
4. [00:38:50] Why Pairing a Website with a Newsletter
Supercharges Monetization Gavin breaks down the unit economics of layering in a website.
5. [00:45:20] First-Party Data = Higher Ad Revenue
How owning subscriber data boosts ad rates—and how to set it up.
6. [01:02:00] Real Case Study
Chrome Unboxed Joe from Chrome Unboxed shares how they grew to 30K subs and monetized with beehiiv + Ezoic.
Top Takeaways & Action Steps:
1. Start With a Clear Goal for Your Newsletter
Next Step: Ask yourself: Is your goal lead gen, sales, or audience engagement? Build content around that.
2. Don’t Wait for 10,000 Subscribers to Monetize
Next Step: Reach out to local sponsors or relevant brands even if you’re at 1K subs. Niche is powerful.
3. Use beehiiv’s Ad Network and Direct Sponsorship Tools
Next Step: Set up your beehiiv rate card, build ad blocks into your newsletter, and let brands book directly.
4. Create a Website and Embed Newsletter Links
Next Step: Drive traffic from your emails to a blog with programmatic ads. Set up with Ezoic to get started.
5. Use First-Party Data to Boost Website Ad Earnings
Next Step: Sync beehiiv with Ezoic and use embedded links. This raises ad rates for all visitors.
6. Offer More Than Just Content—Sell Services or Products
Next Step: Promote your consulting, physical product, or community via the newsletter with a strong CTA.
Key Resources & Tools Mentioned
beehiiv – Newsletter platform with built-in monetization tools
Ezoic – Website monetization platform with ad tech and first-party data support
beehiiv Partner Program – Affiliate program with 50% commission
Chrome Unboxed – Case study on newsletter + website monetization
Big Desk Energy – Tyler Denk’s newsletter using direct sponsorships
beehiiv Boosts – Newsletter-to-newsletter recommendation tool
Greg Isenberg’s Newsletter Framework – Audience > Community > Product approach
Closing Note
Here’s the real punchline: you don’t need millions of followers to build a high-earning digital business. You just need a newsletter, a website, and a smart system that captures, nurtures, and monetizes an audience you own.
Start by sending great content. Build relationships. Then layer in smart monetization—from sponsors and affiliates to products and ads. Combine the best of beehiiv’s publishing tools with Ezoic’s website monetization and you’ll turn every subscriber into a bigger piece of your business pie.
You don’t need to be the next Substack superstar. You just need to start sending—and start selling.
What TIME Magazine’s Newsletter Strategy Can Teach You
TIME Magazine isn’t just a print giant with iconic covers.
With over 2.5 million email subscribers, it’s a serious player in modern newsletter publishing with 14 niche newsletters.
From scannable layouts to hyper-targeted newsletters, TIME runs a tight email operation, and we’re here to break down exactly how they do it.
This post is your full guide to TIME’s newsletter strategy, dissected across five categories:
Design and Branding
Copy and Voice
Newsletter Types
Growth and Marketing
Key Takeaways for Creators
We’ll also show how beehiiv gives you the tools to do what TIME does.
Design: Clean, Consistent, and Mobile-First
TIME’s design philosophy is less “newsroom chaos” and more “Zen inbox clarity.”
Here’s how they pull that off:
Mobile-First Design: Emails load fast, read easy, and feel native on mobile devices—because most of their audience reads on their phones. Subject lines stay under 45 characters to fit on lock screens.
Minimalist Layouts: Think one-column layouts, plenty of white space, short blurbs, and bolded headers.
Visual Hierarchy: Headlines, blurbs, and calls to action (CTAs) follow a clear flow. Imagery is used sparingly—supporting the story, never overwhelming it.
Consistent Branding: TIME’s red-and-black color scheme, iconic logo, and recurring formatting make it easy to recognize (and trust).
Copy: Smart, Approachable, and Skim-Friendly
TIME’s newsletters sound less like a newsroom report and more like a sharp friend keeping you updated over coffee.
Here’s what they get right:
Smart, Friendly Tone: It’s intelligent without being robotic. Even the serious stuff feels human.
Headline Optimization: They A/B test subject lines like pros – short, punchy, and always with a hook.
Digestible Copy: Summaries are tight (two to three sentences), scannable (bolded phrases), and clickable (CTA links right after blurbs).
Personal Engagement: Even without name personalization, their tone says “this is for you.”
Newsletter Types: TIME’s Segmentation Game Is Strong
Instead of one monster newsletter, TIME runs an entire ecosystem tailored to reader interests. Here’s the breakdown:
Growth and Retention: How TIME Acquires and Keeps 2.5M+ Subscribers
TIME’s newsletters don’t just grow on brand equity alone. Their growth engine is strategic and replicable.
Growth Tactics That Work:
Inline CTA Placement: Newsletter links at the end of relevant articles like “This is part of The D.C. Brief—sign up here”
Dedicated Landing Pages: A central sign-up hub with one-line descriptions, checkboxes, and no friction.
Social Amplification: Newsletter shoutouts on Twitter, Instagram, even inside TIME100 and Person of the Year promos.
Event Tie-Ins: Newsletter access to TIME100 Talks, sneak peeks of cover stories, and early access perks
Pop-Ups Done Right: Tasteful lightbox prompts that never block the content but always drive value-based signups
Retention That Sticks:
Key Takeaways: What Newsletter Creators Can Steal From TIME
There’s no need to own a media empire. Here’s how you can implement TIME’s best moves today:
Build Smart Design Habits.
Use white space.
Stick to one-column formats.
Make it mobile-first.
Brand every issue consistently.
Craft Copy That Clicks.
Talk like a person.
A/B test subject lines.
Add short, bolded headers and clear CTAs.
Segment Like a Pro.
One audience ≠ one newsletter.
Offer editions by interest or format (e.g., weekly deep dive vs. daily recap).
Treat Growth Like a Funnel.
CTAs in content > random links.
Frictionless sign-up forms = more subs.
Repurpose traffic from social media, articles, and products.
Treat Your Subscribers Like VIPs.
Add perks: bonus content, early access, or sneak previews.
Welcome emails = higher retention.
Personalization doesn’t mean names. It means relevance.
Final Thoughts: What TIME Got Right—and You Can, Too.
TIME's newsletters aren't flashy.
They're thoughtful.
They're built for busy humans, not just “audiences.” They’re branded, bite-sized, and relentlessly reader-first.
And here’s the best part: You can do the same.
You just need the right platform and a little intentionality.
That’s where beehiiv comes in.
Whether you’re running one niche newsletter or building an entire content ecosystem, beehiiv gives you the tools to grow, monetize, and stand out—just like TIME.
Try a free, 30-day trial of beehiiv and start building your own email empire, one thoughtful issue at a time.
Content Marketing Platforms I Swear By After 5 Years in the Game
Content marketing platforms have shaped the way I work—for the better.
Over the past five years as a content marketer, I’ve built SEO strategies, managed editorial calendars, and juggled freelance gigs.
At first, it felt manageable.
But soon, I was buried under overlapping deadlines, messy briefs, and endless Google Doc versions.
That’s when I realized I needed the right tools to organize my workflow and reduce bottlenecks slowing me down.
To find the right mix, I tested dozens of content marketing platforms—both as a freelancer and on in-house teams.
In this guide, I unpack my learnings, show what’s in my current stack, and share how each tool works in harmony.
Why trust me?
I’ve spent the past five years creating content for SaaS brands like Buffer, Mailmodo, Videowise, and Supademo—both in-house and as a freelancer. Content creation tools are the backbone of my workflow. I have written this guide based on my years of hands-on trial and error.
Why I Needed a Content Marketing Platform
Before I had a proper marketing stack, my workflow felt like wading through molasses.
I was switching between Slack threads, email chains, and scattered folders to track down the latest version of a blog post.
Client guidelines changed mid-project, briefs were unclear, and I was spending more time organizing content than writing it.
As a freelancer, the chaos slowed me down. As an in-house writer, it slowed the entire team.
I needed tools that mirrored my workflows, helped me stay consistent, and improved my productivity.
What I Look for in a Platform (From Someone Who’s Tried a Lot)
Through trial and error (and tons of canceled subscriptions), I created a simple checklist for evaluating tools:
✅ Ease of use: If I can’t figure out the basics quickly, I move on.
✅ Built-in collaboration: The tool should help me communicate and collaborate smoothly with cross-functional teams and clients.
✅ Customizable: I prefer tools that let me tailor views, templates, and workflows to how I operate.
✅ Integrations: It must connect with the other tools in my stack.
My Top Content Marketing Platforms Right Now
Notion for Content Planning and Organizing
If I could marry a platform, it would be Notion.
I use it to plan campaigns, create marketing calendars, organize content assets, and track projects.
As a freelancer, it houses my client projects, key documents, and invoices.
Pros
✅ Highly customizable for both solo and team workflows
✅ Minimalist interface that’s easy to navigate
Cons
❌ Can become overwhelming if over-engineered
Pricing
Free for personal use. Paid plans start at $10/user/month (billed annually)
Ahrefs for Keyword Research and SEO Strategy
Ahrefs is my go-to tool for building content strategies grounded in data.
I use it to identify keyword gaps, reverse-engineer competitor rankings, and prioritize content opportunities based on traffic potential and keyword difficulty (KD).
It’s especially handy for pitching new ideas based on specific SEO strategies.
Pros
✅ Powerful keyword, backlink, and content analysis tools
✅ Reliable traffic estimates to guide prioritization
✅ Helps with on-page and technical insights in a single tool
Cons
❌ Expensive, especially for individual users
❌ Learning curve for newer marketers
Pricing
Starts at $108/month for individuals (billed annually)
Frase for Content Briefs and Optimization
Frase is my favorite for creating content briefs and on-page SEO.
I enter a target keyword, and Frase generates a detailed breakdown of top-ranking pages. I use this analysis to build structured outlines, identify keyword gaps, and later optimize my draft using its content scoring tool.
Pros
✅ Time-saving content research and optimization in one tool
✅ Easy to organize briefs and final drafts
Cons
❌ The content score feature might be an overkill for creative content pieces
Pricing
Start at $45/month for 1 user and offers 30 SEO reports and document creation (billed monthly)
Wordable for Publishing at Scale
If you've ever spent 45 minutes reformatting a Google Doc into WordPress, you’ll love Wordable. I do.
Wordable saves me hours of reformatting.
It lets me export Google Docs straight to WordPress. I use it when managing blogs for multiple clients or publishing high-volume content.
Pros
✅ Reduces content formatting and upload time
✅ Easy to use and comes with a simple setup process
Cons
❌ Easy to use with a simple setup process
Pricing
Free for 1 site and 2 users. Paid plans start at $29/year for up to 5 sites.
BuzzSumo for Research and Trend Analysis
BuzzSumo helps me see what’s working across a niche.
I use it to validate content ideas, analyze top-performing articles, and explore which formats (listicles, how-tos, opinion pieces) are trending. It’s also great for spotting influencer collaborations and backlink opportunities.
It’s particularly helpful when I want to reverse-engineer a high-performing topic or analyze the target audience’s content preferences.
Pros
✅ Offers solid data on engagement metrics, content trends, and influencers.
✅ Helps pinpoint formats and angles that resonate
Cons
❌ Reports can feel overwhelming without guidance
Pricing
Starts at $159/month, 7-day free trial available (billed annually)
Tools I Tried and Didn’t Stick With (And Why)
Every content marketer has a list of tools they want to love—the ones that work in theory but don’t seem to translate in the real world.
Here are a few that didn’t hit the mark for me:
ClickUp: Looked promising but had an overwhelming interface. I spent more hours building the perfect setup than actually using it.
Trello: I loved the simplicity, but Kanban boards didn’t offer enough structure for my content creation process.
Positional: Affordable, but its optimization suggestions felt limiting compared to Frase.
None of these were bad tools—they just didn’t align with how I plan, create, and ship content.
How I Combine Platforms Into One Workflow
The best part of my current stack is how well everything connects.
Here’s one example of how my process flows from start to finish:
Research and SEO Strategy
Ahrefs keyword explorer is where it all starts. I use it to find a long list of relevant keywords, run gap analysis to spot ranking opportunities and estimate traffic potential. It helps me prioritize topics that align with client goals and search demand.
Planning
I use Notion to manage campaign planning, editorial calendars, and individual project trackers. Each task links to briefs, deadlines, and status updates, so I always know what’s in progress.
Outline and Optimization
Next, I switch to Frase to build the content brief. It pulls insights from top-ranking pages so I can create outlines, spot content gaps, and generate SEO checklists.
Writing
I draft every article in Google Docs, which I link to the Notion database. The database also contains status, due dates, checklists, and client feedback.
Publishing
Wordable comes into the picture during the publishing stage. I export the Google Doc directly into WordPress, keeping the formatting intact.
Team Collaboration
Notion also acts as the collaboration hub. I invite editors, clients, and managers to leave comments, tag updates, or access shared documents in a central space.
Trend Spotting and Idea Validation
BuzzSumo helps me keep an eye on what’s trending. I use it to find seasonal topics and also to validate keywords collected through Ahrefs.
Choose the Right Content Marketing Platform
You don’t need 50 tools. A handful of the right ones that match your content lifecycle will do the trick.
Start by identifying gaps in your existing workflow and recurring concerns your team mentioned. Then, sign up for a free trial or plan to evaluate the platform’s solution to those specific bottlenecks.
Make sure your tools integrate well with each other, as it’ll help you reduce duplicate or repetitive work.
If your workflow includes newsletters, consider using beehiiv, a creator-focused platform for scaling and earning from email content without the headaches.
beehiiv Like a Pro: How to Launch, Grow, and Monetize Your Newsletter in 2025
If you're just getting started with beehiiv—or considering it—this blog is for you. We’re walking through the platform’s most important features with clarity, humor, and plenty of practical tips you can use today.
beehiiv is much more than an email tool. It’s your website builder, subscriber CRM, monetization engine, and growth toolbox—all in one place.
By the end of this post, you'll know how to:
Launch your first newsletter
Design and preview content for email and web
Segment subscribers and automate emails
Monetize through premium subs, ads, and referrals
Track everything from one clean dashboard
Table of Contents
Who Is This Video For?
New creators launching their first newsletter
Bloggers looking to upgrade from Substack or Mailchimp
Marketers who want better segmentation and data control
Writers, consultants, and indie entrepreneurs exploring new monetization options
Anyone who wants to grow an email-based business without needing code
Top 6 Key Timestamps:
1. [00:01:00] Intro to beehiiv Structure
Workspace > Publications. Think: one account, many newsletters or brands.
2. [00:13:00] Editor & Design System
Draft cleanly, style globally. Focus on writing, not formatting.
3. [00:24:00] Visibility Settings
How to show different content to free vs. paid subscribers (or web vs. email).
4. [00:38:00] Automations & Segments
Build welcome sequences, tag users, and trigger flows like a seasoned email pro.
5. [00:45:00] Monetization Tools Overview
Premium subscriptions, ads, boosts, and the referral engine.
6. [01:10:00] The Website Builder Sneak Peek
A drag-and-drop CMS coming soon with serious design flexibility.
Top Takeaways & Action Steps:
1. Set Up Your Workspace and Publication Right
Next Step: Fill in your brand info, set your default email sender/reply, and upload logos.
2. Use the Design System to Save Time
Next Step: Set global fonts, colors, and spacing in one place—no more manual formatting.
3. Create Smart Segments Early
Next Step: Tag users by signup source, behavior, or survey answers for better targeting.
4. Leverage Polls, Referrals, and Recommendations
Next Step: Add a poll to every newsletter. Set up a referral ladder. Activate Boosts for paid growth.
5. Experiment with Premium Content and Ads
Next Step: Add a paywall widget to test converting free users to paying subs. Or join beehiiv’s ad network for passive revenue.
6. Save Your Best Issue as a Template
Next Step: Once you have a layout you love, turn it into a reusable template to speed up publishing.
Key Resources & Tools Mentioned:
beehiiv Editor – Simple but powerful editor for email + web content
Design System – Global styling for effortless branding
Polls – Interactive content that drives engagement
Boosts – Paid growth engine with guaranteed ROI
Referral Engine – Incentivize subscribers to spread the word
API & Webhooks – Integrate with thousands of tools (Zapier, Make, etc.)
Monetization Dashboard – Track revenue from ads, boosts, and premium plans
Slack Community – The Hive – Join 3,500+ active users helping each other grow
Closing Note:
beehiiv is not just a newsletter tool. It’s a creator’s launchpad—offering real power to own your audience, tell your story, and grow a business on your terms.
Whether you’re just getting started or you’re migrating from another platform, beehiiv’s depth of features, clean UX, and all-in-one approach make it an incredibly smart bet for 2025.
Start small. Stay consistent. Use the tools. And don’t be afraid to ask for help—beehiiv’s community and support team are some of the best in the business.
How to Monetize Content Without a Massive Audience
Monetizing content sounds simple in theory: build an audience, add some links, cash in.
In practice? It's an iterative process.
Credits: Naval
The good news? Plenty of creators on beehiiv are doing it and doing it well.
From digital products to paid subscriptions and sponsorships, there’s more than one way to turn content into income.
In this guide, you’ll learn what worked, what didn’t, and how to find your own revenue groove — with real examples from successful beehiiv publishers.
Why I Started Monetizing My Content In The First Place
When I first launched my newsletter, monetization wasn’t the goal, it was about sharing something I cared about and building a relationship with readers. That’s how it starts for most creators.
But as the list grew, I realized something: if I wanted to keep showing up consistently and maybe even turn this into something sustainable, I needed to start thinking like a business.
Right now, my monetization stack is still lean. But one key piece? The beehiiv ad network. It’s built into the platform, easy to turn on, and gives me a low-effort way to earn without chasing sponsors or building custom deals.
As the newsletter scales, I plan to layer in more streams—referrals, affiliates, maybe my product. But the ad network was the first signal that, yes, this can be more than a hobby.
What Motivated Me To Explore Content Monetization
Most newsletter creators don’t start out trying to monetize, they start out trying to share something valuable. That’s exactly what happened with Scott Beale, the founder of Laughing Squid.
Scott had built a loyal following around weird and wonderful internet finds. But after years of blogging, he realized his email list was underleveraged. Moving to beehiiv gave him the tools to finally monetize and keep doing what he loved.
The First Time Money Hit the Inbox
Many publishers point to that first dollar as a turning point. For Last Money In, a finance newsletter, the first monetization came from a hybrid model: paid subscriptions + sponsorships.
Over time, they layered in premium content, increasing revenue to over $500,000 ARR. Their full story: Last Money In Monetized Over $500K ARR.
Why You Shouldn’t Wait for 10,000 Subscribers
A common myth: you need a massive list to make real money.
Not true.
Most beehiiv creators started monetizing with just a few hundred engaged readers. If your content is valuable and your monetization is aligned, even a small audience can generate real income.
Revenue Streams That Have Actually Worked
Let’s break down the real monetization models beehiiv publishers are using with actual performance details.
What Affiliate Marketing Looks Like
Affiliate links are an easy on-ramp, but they only work when:
Debunker, a newsletter launched by the fact-checking site Snopes, notes, "We didn't really set out to have the newsletter be a revenue product for us," highlighting that monetization initially stemmed from website traffic and advertising.
Successful partnerships, like the one with MasterClass, have created newsletter-specific advertising opportunities.
Looking forward, Wohl is exploring new monetization avenues, including CPM ads through beehiiv's platform and premium membership plans at $5/month. These plans will offer additional features and aim to convert newsletter subscribers into paying members.
Results: steady affiliate income while staying aligned with audience trust. Read the case study
Selling Digital Products Changed Everything
While not every beehiiv creator launches a product, the ones who do often say: “I wish I started sooner.”
Digital assets like guides, templates, and reports let creators sell once and earn repeatedly. The secret?
Launch to your email list (highest conversion)
Validate demand before creating
Price with value in mind (not just lowballing)
Even simple digital bundles have created four-figure months for small newsletters.
Sponsorships That Actually Work
Sponsorships used to mean cold emails and awkward asks.
With the beehiiv Ad Network, creators get matched with brands that already want to work with them. Fabien Brl, of SaaS Elite Academy, called it a “must-have monetization lever.”
He didn’t need to hustle for sponsors. They came to him, pre-vetted, audience-aligned.
Read how he made it work: Why Fabien Brl Calls beehiiv Ad Network a “Must-Have”
Why Email Is Still the #1 Channel for Revenue
All the case studies above point to one thing: Email is the anchor.
It’s direct.
It’s owned.
It’s predictable.
Platforms come and go. Algorithms shift. But email? That’s where your most monetizable audience lives.
And with beehiiv, you get baked-in tools to:
Segment audiences
A/B test campaigns
Add paid tiers
Tap into sponsorships
Track performance
That’s why nearly every successful monetization story starts — and scales — with email.
What Didn’t Work (And What Creators Learned From It)
Pulling Back on Ads
Display ads and programmatic banners might seem like passive revenue, but for most beehiiv creators, they weren’t worth it.
Laughing Squid moved away from traditional ad platforms after realizing they cluttered the experience and underperformed. On beehiiv, they could run cleaner sponsorships that felt organic.
The Myth of Viral Revenue
Going viral can get you views, but not necessarily value.
Creators who chased spikes in traffic often found that the new readers didn’t stick. Worse, they didn’t buy.
In contrast, slow-and-steady growth through email led to deeper relationships and stronger monetization.
Mistakes They Wouldn’t Repeat
From our scan of beehiiv case studies and interviews, here are the top regrettable missteps:
Monetizing too late
Not testing the paid product before launching
Working with mismatched sponsors
Not building an email list sooner
The Role of Consistency and Patience
Nobody makes serious money overnight.
They built trust. Experimented. Learned. Pivoted.
You don’t need 100 newsletters. You need to send the next one.
Consistency builds revenue. Full stop.
What I’d Do Differently If Starting Today
Let’s borrow lessons from the best and create a simple roadmap.
If you’re just starting, here’s what creators wish they knew earlier:
Launch on beehiiv: not Medium, not Substack. beehiiv gives you growth and monetization tools from day one.
Start your email list immediately: use these opt-in examples.
Pick one monetization model first: product, affiliate, or sponsor.
Validate before building: ask your readers what they want.
Use a simple welcome sequence: grab this confirmation template.
Track everything: what links are clicked, what emails convert, what sponsors perform.
Tools That Helped Creators Monetize Faster
Based on beehiiv case studies and actual creator stacks, here’s what works:
And if you’re focused on improving open rates, these help:
All the Ways You Can Monetize on beehiiv Today
If you’re wondering what’s possible starting right now, here’s the full menu.
1. The Ad Network
Automatic, built-in monetization. beehiiv matches you with sponsors based on your audience. Just turn it on.
2. Paid Subscriptions
Create premium content and charge monthly. Set up multiple tiers. Deliver gated content seamlessly.
3. Boosts (Referral Growth Meets Monetization)
Run referral programs where other creators promote you. beehiiv's Boosts let you grow your list and get paid to recommend others.
4. Affiliate Links
Drop links to products you trust. Use segmentation to target offers. Track clicks and conversions in-platform.
5. Digital Products
Think: eBooks, templates, courses, reports. Link Stripe, sell directly. No need for Gumroad or third-party tools.
6. Sponsored Posts & Newsletters
Outside of the ad network? You can still run custom sponsorships directly. Some creators even sell by the issue.
7. beehiiv’s Partner Program
Share beehiiv with others and earn recurring commissions. This is especially effective for newsletters aimed at creators or marketers.
Final Thoughts on Monetizing Content
Monetization isn’t about scale. It’s about strategy.
If you create valuable content, connect with your audience, and choose aligned revenue streams, you’ll start seeing results.
Whether it’s $50 in affiliate commission or $500,000 ARR, it starts with the decision to treat your content like a business.
And if you're not already on beehiiv? That’s your next step.
👉 Sign up for beehiiv and turn your content into a monetization machine.
The Top 20 Email Marketing Conferences You Should Know About
On the hunt for email marketing conferences to attend this year?
Maybe you want to stay current with industry trends, pick up some fresh ideas and insights, or hear what’s working for other email marketers.
Or maybe you’re looking to connect with people who live and breathe email marketing like you—because let’s face it, your next partnership, mentorship, or job opportunity could come from a single conversation.
Whatever your reason, the right conference can help you get closer to your goals.
In this article, I’ve rounded up some of the best email marketing conferences and webinars worth checking out.
Why Trust Me?
Kawusara has been immersed in the email marketing world for 5 years. She enjoys deeply researching and writing about the topic and sharing her unique insights in plain, simple language.
Table of Contents
The Best Email Marketing Conferences To Attend This Year
Here’s a timeline of email marketing conferences this year, arranged by date.
Some events have wrapped up, but I’ve still mentioned them so you can keep them on your radar for next year.
Let’s get into it.
1. Social Media Marketing World
The 2025 edition of Social Media Marketing World is over, but tickets for the 2026 event are already on sale at discounted rates.
Next year’s conference will cover marketing strategy, organic and paid social, AI in marketing, and include a session on email marketing by Jay Schwedelson, CEO of Outcome Media, titled: “The New Era of Email Marketing: Unveiling Secrets of Top Marketers.”
Other speakers include Michael Stelzner (founder of Social Media Examiner), Pat Flynn (CEO of Smart Passive Income), and Sean Cannell (founder of Think Media and co-author of YouTube Secrets).
Attendees with an all-access pass can join hands-on workshops on smartphone video creation, Google Analytics 4, and sales conversations.
Besides these sessions, the event offers several ways to connect with others, including an exclusive attendee Facebook group, table talks, and a VIP networking party.
Date: April 28-30, 2026
Location: Anaheim Convention Center, California, USA
Cost:
Virtual pass: $997 (now selling at $497)
Marketer pass (aka in-person): $1,497 (now selling at $897)
All-access pass (Virtual + Marketer perks): $1,997 (now selling at $997)
Contact: world@socialmediaexaminer.com
2. Unspam
Unspam is a three-day email marketing conference organized by Really Good Emails and Beefree.
It covers the latest email marketing trends, with sessions focused on email design, content strategy, and testing techniques.
With a 250-person cap, Unspam offers a more personal, community-driven experience. It starts with a welcome meetup, followed by two days of expert talks, group activities, games, and awards.
While Unspam 2025 has ended, session recordings are available on their YouTube channel. Be on the lookout for talks like:
Ew, Feelings: 7 Emotional Triggers that Drive Users to Take Action — Lianna Patch
The ICE-T Framework: How to Know Which Experiments Matter — Lindsay Tjepkema
Designed vs Text Emails: What Really Works? — Naomi West
That said, keep an eye out for the next Unspam event, which may be around the same time next year.
Date: April 22-23, 2025
Location: The Lord Baltimore Hotel, Baltimore, USA
Cost: Sold out
Contact: unspam@reallygoodemails.com
3. The Newsletter Conference
If you run a newsletter (or are thinking about starting one), The Newsletter Conference is one to keep an eye on.
It’s a one-day, in-person experience all about newsletters, with sessions on newsletter growth, earnings, and what it takes to build a successful newsletter business.
You’ll hear from newsletter founders, content strategists, editors, and executives from top media brands. Past speakers and attendees have come from places like Morning Brew, Forbes, The Economist, CNN, and The Financial Times.
The event also features a networking breakfast and a closing cocktail reception, giving you time to connect with fellow attendees and speakers in a relaxed setting.
While this year’s edition has already taken place, you can visit their website to stay updated on the next one.
Date: May 2, 2025
Location: The Times Center, New York City, USA
Cost:
General admission: $850
VIP (General admission + VIP welcome dinner on May 1): $1,250
Contact: https://thenewsletterconference.com/contact
4. Inbox Expo
Inbox Expo is a three-day in-person event that brings together over 300 professionals and experts to share their real-world experiences and lessons on email marketing.
The speaker lineup features top industry voices, including Clea Moore from Yahoo, Ferhat Acar from Turkish Airlines, Brian Minick from ZeroBounce, Carlos Gil from GetResponse, and more.
Tyler Denk (co-founder and CEO here at beehiiv) will also speak on Day 3, presenting “The Unspoken Truth About Email.”
Networking is a big part of the experience—with a cocktail reception on Day 1, a lively night-out party after Day 2, and a casual drinks session with Tyler Denk and fellow attendees to wrap up Day 3.
While Inbox Expo 2025 is sold out, you can join the waitlist or check their website for updates on next year’s event.
Date: May 21-23, 2025
Location: Omni Austin Hotel Downtown, Austin, Texas, USA
Cost: Sold out
Contact: hello@inboxexpo.com
5. The MarTech Summit
The MarTech Summit is a one-day conference all about marketing technology with speakers across diverse industries (technology, tourism, energy, etc.) sharing their insights.
You’ll get a mix of keynotes, panel discussions, and fireside chats, so it’s not just one format all day long.
The speaker lineup includes leaders from big names like L’Oréal and Decathlon, along with members of the MarTech Summit team.
While this isn’t an email-specific event, it gives you a bigger-picture view of the marketing world, and helps you see where email fits into everything else.
All sessions will be recorded and shared with attendees afterward (subject to speaker approval).
Date: May 23, 2025
Location: VP Plaza España Design, Madrid, Spain
Cost:
Summit Pass (for attendees): €295
Vendor Pass (for B2B solution providers): €995
Contact: hello@themartechsummit.com
6. Digital Summit
Digital Summit is a great pick if you want to stay up-to-date with digital marketing trends and connect with top marketing strategists.
It’s a two-day, in-person conference series held in different U.S. cities throughout the year.
The next stop is Digital Summit Denver, where sessions will cover a wide range of topics, including content marketing, SEO, paid advertising, data and analytics, lead generation, AI—and yes, email marketing too. Speakers are coming from companies like Google, Spotify, L’Oréal, Salesforce, and InLinks.
Each day includes dedicated sessions for networking with the speakers and attendees. You’ll also get access to the session recordings afterward, which makes it easy to catch up or rewatch anything you found useful.
Can’t make it to Denver? No worries.
Digital Summit is also hitting a few other cities later this year. Take a look at each location’s agenda and speaker lineup to see which one feels like the right fit:
Minneapolis — August 6–7
Philadelphia — September 30–October 1
Raleigh — November 12–13
Dallas — December 3–4
Date: June 2-3, 2025
Location: Colorado Convention Center, Denver, Colorado, USA
Cost:
Conference pass: $625
Premium pass (Conference + Masterclasses): $825
VIP pass (Premium + VIP lounge and other perks): $1,025
Contact: registration@digitalsummit.com
7. Email Innovations World
Email Innovations World is all about the latest in email marketing—covering trends, performance optimization, new technology, and the role of AI in email marketing.
You might want to check out sessions like:
AI-enhanced email production —Tony Wagner
Create Your Own Persona GPT to Improve Your Campaigns — Jeanne Jennings
Generative AI and Email Personalization — Dmytro Kudrenko
The main event runs over two days, but there are optional hands-on workshops you can attend before and after the event (on June 2 and June 5). These go deeper into things like coding responsive email templates, testing and optimizing performance, and using AI to build smarter campaigns.
There’s no shortage of networking and fun activities either—roundtables, speed networking, lunch and learn, group dinners, elevator pitches, and Family Feud: Email Edition.
Date: June 3-4, 2025
Location: Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel, Phoenix, Arizona, USA
Cost:
Workshop-only pass: $565
2-day conference pass: $1,395
All access pass: $2,325
Contact: regsupport@risingmedia.com
8. Deliverability Summit
The Deliverability Summit is the only event dedicated entirely to one crucial aspect of email marketing: deliverability.
It’s a three-day, in-person event limited to only 24 attendees and speakers. That means more focused sessions, conversations, and networking time. It kicks off with a welcome boat cruise, followed by two days of deep-dive learning and structured networking.
Morning sessions dive into advanced deliverability strategies, best practices for deliverability, and troubleshooting deliverability issues. There’s also a panel Q&A with all speakers for deeper discussion.
Afternoons are reserved for networking activities like deliverability roundtables, speed networking, a walk along Alicante Harbour, and a guided tour of the Alicante Castle.
Date: June 4-6, 2025
Location: Hospes Amérigo, Alicante, Spain
Cost:
All-access pass: €675.00 + VAT
All-access pass (+ Networking): €795.00 + VAT
Contact: hello@emailexpert.com
9. Atomicon
Atomicon is a one-day hybrid event (that is, both in-person and virtual options are available) for marketers, freelancers, and small business owners who are looking for new ideas, tips, and connections to grow their business.
The conference is organized into four tracks, so you can choose the sessions that interest you most at any given time.
Topics cover everything from social media growth and high-converting email automations to AI-powered lead generation and setting up processes that make your business run smoothly.
Atomicon also makes networking easy. The day before the main event is Fringe Day, which is packed with extra workshops, meetups, and networking parties to help you make the most of your experience. There's also an after-party following the main event.
Even if you’re joining the conference virtually, Atomicon has some pretty interesting virtual networking sessions for you, so you won’t miss out.
Date: June 10, 2025
Location: Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
Cost: £650 (currently selling at £449)
Contact: https://atomic.site/contact
10. The Advanced Email Conference
The Advanced Email Conference is the only event in Europe where every speaker comes from the brand side, meaning these speakers run email marketing inside their companies—no agencies, no vendors.
This year, the lineup includes 20+ email leaders from big UK brands like KFC, Hugo Boss, Nissan, JP Morgan, and BBC Studios.
It’s a one-day event packed with insights on crafting customer-focused emails, driving sales through email, integrating email into omnichannel strategies, and leveraging AI and automation.
There’ll also be Q&A panels and networking breaks so you can chat with speakers and other attendees.
Date: June 17, 2025
Location: 1 America Square, London, UK
Cost:
In-house/brand rate: £599 + VAT
Agency/supplier/all other rates: £849 + VAT
Contact: info@theemailconference.com
11. Digital Marketing World Forum (DMWF) Global
DMWF Global is a two-day, in-person event that brings together marketers from all corners of the digital world—think content, social media, influencer marketing, automation, and more.
The sessions are split across 10 tracks, with five running side-by-side on Day 1 and the rest on Day 2. Each talk is quick and to the point, lasting either 15 or 30 minutes.
If you’re an email marketer, consider getting a two-day pass to get the most out of both the Customer Experience, Email & Automation track on Day 1 and the AI & Marketing Automation track on Day 2. But if you’re only interested in one of those, you can grab a single-day ticket too.
Speakers come from big-name brands like Google, Microsoft, Unilever, Booking.com, Wise, and Sprout Social. Even if they’re not in your specific sessions, there are plenty of chances to connect during networking breaks and post-session hangouts.
Can’t attend the London event? DMWF has you covered with other locations around the world:
DMWF North America — New York, October 13-14
DMWF Europe — Amsterdam, November 25-26
DMWF Asia — Singapore, March 2026
Date: June 24-25, 2025
Location: Olympia London, London, UK
Cost:
1-day pass: £649
2-day pass: £799
Contact: hello@digitalmarketingwf.com
12. Email Marketing Automation Summit (EMAS)
EMAS is a one-day event designed for both beginners and seasoned marketers looking for fresh ideas and practical strategies to improve their email marketing automation.
In addition to automation, the event covers related topics like lead generation, deliverability, security, and omnichannel marketing.
This year’s speaker lineup includes senior executives from top brands such as KLM, G2, Miro, Semrush, and DoorLoop.
Alongside expert talks, the event features panel discussions and award ceremonies celebrating innovation in the space.
Date: June 26, 2025
Location: Circa Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Cost:
Visitor (Regular): €496.10
Visitor (DDMA Member): €375.10
Contact: https://emas.nu/contact/
13. MailCon
MailCon is a one-day, in-person event for email marketing professionals to explore topics like emerging marketing trends, new technologies, lead generation, and omnichannel marketing.
The event also includes a networking breakfast and lunch, plus an afterparty to help you build deeper connections with event participants.
This year’s MailCon is expected to host around 600 attendees, primarily marketers from sectors such as IT, ecommerce, automotive, healthcare, and finance.
While the agenda and speaker lineup for MailCon 2025 haven’t been announced yet, past speakers have included executives from Deloitte, Namecheap, BetterHelp, MoEngage, and ZeroBounce.
Date: August 3, 2025
Location: Convene, New York City, USA
Cost:
All-access pass (early bird): $459
All-access pass: $659
MailCon Mixer & Afterparty Access Only: $159
Contact: https://mailcon.com/contact-us/
14. Content Entrepreneur Expo (CEX)
CEX is the go-to event for content creators and digital solopreneurs looking to grow and make earnings from their audience.
The main event runs for two days, with an optional workshop the day before. You’ll get expert-led sessions, networking opportunities with other creators, and fun entertainment nights.
Speakers include successful authors, bloggers, newsletter creators, freelancers, and YouTubers who share real-world insights and hard-earned lessons.
Keep an eye out for sessions like:
How I Would Start as a Content Entrepreneur Today — Jay Clouse
A Successful Social Media, Email, and Podcasting Strategy Without Burning Out — Katie Brinkley
Unlocking the Power of Newsletters for Growth & Monetization — EJ White, Growth Manager at beehiiv
You’ll also find sessions on book publishing, AI, social media, digital ads, and the future of content creation.
If you're serious about building a successful content-based business, CEX belongs on your calendar.
Date: August 24-26, 2025
Location: Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland, Ohio, USA
Cost:
Conference only: $795
All access (Conference + your choice of 1 pre-event workshop): $1,095
Contact: registration@cex.events
15. The Canadian Email Summit
The Canadian Email Summit is a dedicated event for email marketers to connect with peers, explore new trends, and learn how to craft more effective email campaigns.
It features industry experts sharing real-world experiences and practical strategies to help you improve deliverability, boost email engagement, and build stronger connections with your audience.
Past speakers and attendees have represented major brands like Yahoo, KPMG, Rakuten, and Walmart.
Like most conferences, there are breaks between sessions to encourage speakers and attendees to connect.
For the latest updates on the next event, visit their website—or better yet, subscribe to their newsletter to get details delivered straight to your inbox.
Date: September 25, 2025
Location: TBA
Cost: TBA
Contact: https://emailsummit.ca/contact-us/
16. Litmus Live
Litmus Live is a multi-day conference dedicated to all things email marketing. While it was previously a hybrid event, the 2024 edition shifted to a free virtual format.
Details for Litmus Live 2025 haven’t been announced yet, but past conferences have covered topics such as building effective email strategies, improving deliverability and conversion rates, exploring the role of AI in email, and discussing the future of email.
Workshops and sessions have featured experts from companies like Constant Contact, ZeroBounce, GetResponse, Zapier, and, of course, the Litmus team.
The 2025 format—whether free and virtual like 2024 or paid and hybrid like 2023—is still to be confirmed, but the event usually takes place around September or October.
To stay in the loop, check the Litmus Live website for the latest updates.
Date: TBA
Location: TBA
Cost: TBA
Contact: conference@litmus.com
17. State Of Search
The State of Search Conference covers a broad range of digital marketing topics, including content marketing, SEO, social media, advertising, email marketing, and the use of AI in marketing workflows.
Whether you’re part of an in-house team, an agency, or a business owner, the sessions will give you practical strategies and the confidence to improve your marketing results.
The event also offers networking opportunities, including dedicated breaks and an after-hours cocktail party.
All sessions will be recorded and made available to attendees on the conference website after the event.
Date: October 27-28, 2025
Location: Grapevine Convention Center, Grapevine, Texas, USA
Cost: $997
Contact: https://www.stateofsearch.org/contact-us
18. GURU Conference
The Guru Conference is a free, two-day virtual event focused entirely on email marketing, covering everything from trends and technology to best practices for improving your campaigns.
While the full agenda hasn’t been released yet, free registration is open on their website.
This year’s keynote speakers include Amy Porterfield, Nicole Kidman, and Ann Handley. You’ll also hear from industry voices like Ross Simmonds, Jay Schwedelson (founder of Guru Media Hub), and Tyler Denk, co-founder of beehiiv.
Also, if you’re wondering if this free event will be worth your time, here’s what one Reddit user shared about their experience:
“In the past, I’ve been pretty impressed with the quality of this free conference.”
Date: November 6-7, 2025
Location: Online
Cost: Free
Contact: N/A
19. B2B Forum
As the name implies, the B2B Forum is where B2B marketers come together to learn, connect, and grow.
This two-day, in-person event is hosted by MarketingProfs and features sessions led by experts from companies like WordPress.com, Atlassian, SAP, and the University of Rochester.
This year’s keynote will be delivered by Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs. Also, topics will span everything around B2B marketing, including content strategy, email marketing, podcasting, social media, and the role of AI in modern marketing.
If you opt for an all-access pass, you'll also get to attend a pre-conference workshop of your choice.
Date: November 17-19, 2025
Location: Boston, MA
Cost:
Main conference pass: $1,335
All-access pass (Main conference + 1 workshop of your choice): $1,695
Contact: support@marketingprofs.com
20. Email Insider Summit
The Email Insider Summit is a four-day hybrid conference that kicks off with a welcome party on Day 1, followed by three days of expert-led sessions and networking.
The agenda for this event is still being finalized, but the April 2025 edition featured speakers from Salesforce, Wells Fargo, JCPenney, and Sephora. Topics covered everything from deliverability and implementing dynamic content to large-scale personalization and automation.
Mornings are dedicated to presentations and panel discussions, while afternoons are reserved for a wide range of social and networking activities. Expect everything from poolside hangouts and cocktail parties to pickleball, golf, kayak tours, and river cruises.
Among all the email marketing conferences on this list, this one stands out for its rich and diverse activities….and its hefty price tag reflects that.
Date: Dec 7-10, 2025
Location: Stein Eriksen Lodge, Deer Valley, Utah, USA
Cost:
In-person ticket: $5,495
Virtual ticket: $495
Contact: erin@mediapost.com
Tips To Make the Most of Any Email Marketing Event
Attending an in-person or virtual conference is great, but you need to be intentional about getting the value you signed up for.
Here are some tips that let you do just that:
Set Clear Goals Ahead of Time
Never show up at a conference without a goal. Before the event, ask yourself, “What do I want to walk away with?” This could be:
New strategies to apply in your work
Potential business leads
Job opportunities
Mentors
Having a clear goal makes it easier to know what actions to take, like which sessions and workshops to attend, whom to talk to, what to ask, and how to follow up afterward.
Connect With Speakers and Attendees
One of the best parts about attending a conference is the access you get to people in your industry.
Make the most of it by joining Q&As, roundtable discussions, and any networking activities on the agenda. Also, strike up conversations with speakers and fellow attendees.
For speakers, a simple way to break the ice is by complimenting something specific from their talk, like an insight that stood out or the way they presented it. For other attendees, ask what brought them to the event or what session they’re most excited about.
From there, you can briefly introduce yourself, share what you do, and naturally lead into a question or topic you’ve been hoping to discuss.
If the conversation goes well and you’d like to stay in touch, ask for their contact info or connect with them on LinkedIn right away.
Take Notes During Sessions
Be ready to take notes at conferences.
Bring a notepad and pen to in-person events, or keep a document or note-taking app open if you're tuning in online. Jot down key insights, useful resources, and any actionable tips shared during the session.
This helps you absorb and retain the information better and gives you something specific to reference when following up with speakers or other attendees later on.
Stay Proactive After the Event
The event might be over, but your work isn’t.
Reach out to the people you spoke with while the connection is still fresh. A quick message is all it takes—mention your pleasure in meeting them, thank them for the chat, and even better, mention something specific you talked about.
Next, review your notes and turn your key takeaways into a simple action plan. Set clear deadlines, decide what to test, and schedule time to evaluate the results.
If you’re part of a team, share your notes and action plan with them. It’s a great way to keep everyone in the loop, especially if you see some tangible results after implementation.
And if your company paid for your ticket, this shows the value of your attendance and helps justify support for future conferences.
Should You Attend An Email Marketing Conference?
If you’re considering attending an email marketing conference, go for it. You never know what could come out of it or where it could lead. Read through this list again and choose the one that best aligns with your interests and goals.
In the meantime, you can get started with beehiiv’s free virtual webinars.
These webinars are designed for content creators, newsletter owners, and digital solopreneurs who want expert guidance on growing their newsletter subscribers, optimizing newsletter performance, and mapping out sustainable monetization strategies.
Register for a free beehiiv webinar to take your online business to the next level.
How Daily Drop Used beehiiv To Scale a 7-Figure Travel Newsletter
Daily Drop started with a mission: help people travel more while spending less.
Created by Nate Buchanan (of the YouTube channel Kara and Nate), and run by Content Director Benji Stawski, the newsletter was born out of years of full-time travel.
The team kept hearing the same question over and over again: “How do you afford to travel so much?”
The answer? Points and miles — but simplified.
So, they built Daily Drop, a short, punchy newsletter that demystifies travel hacking and makes it accessible. Each email takes under five minutes to read but is packed with deals, strategies, and how-tos for traveling smarter.
Fast forward to today, and Daily Drop has:
Over 1.5 million subscribers
A seven-figure business
A lean team operating a media powerhouse
And the infrastructure to keep scaling, thanks to beehiiv
Table of Contents
Earning Done Right: Value-Driven Sponsors and Affiliate Wins
Built by Newsletter People: Fast Features and Stellar Support
Day One: 50,000 Subscribers With Zero Deliverability Issues
Most creators fight for their first 100 subscribers. Daily Drop launched with over 50,000.
How?
They had an unfair advantage: an existing user base from FareDrop (now Daily Drop Pro), their flight deals platform, and a huge audience from Kara and Nate’s YouTube and Instagram presence.
“We had a bit of an unfair advantage and sent our first newsletter to over 50,000 people without deliverability issues,” Benji says.
This gave them a massive head start — but instead of coasting on it, the team doubled down on content quality and consistency to turn that initial boost into long-term growth.
Early Growth: From Organic Lift to Paid Boosters
In the beginning, growth was largely organic. Daily Drop’s initial subscribers came from cross-promotion: mentions in Kara and Nate’s YouTube videos, links in FareDrop communications, and shout-outs on social media. This organic strategy gave Daily Drop a solid foundation of loyal readers who were already interested in travel hacking.
Once that audience was tapped out, Daily Drop turned to paid ads, and it changed everything.
“Most of our new subscriber growth now comes from paid ads,” says Benji.
They used messaging like:
“Learn to travel for nearly free – our daily email shows you how.”
Targeted campaigns on Facebook and Instagram drove tens of thousands of new sign-ups. And thanks to solid content and onboarding, these new subscribers stuck around.
The team also focused on high-quality content from day one – delivering real value (like timely points deals and beginner-friendly guides) to earn trust and word-of-mouth referrals. As a result, open rates were strong early on, and the subscriber count kept climbing as readers told their friends about the newsletter.
The key? Great targeting + great content + great infrastructure = scalable growth.
Switching to beehiiv: The Quest for a Scalable Platform
One of the pivotal decisions in Daily Drop’s journey was choosing the right platform to host and send the newsletter. In the very early days, the team used an Ecommerce oriented email tool (a holdover from the FareDrop product) to send Daily Drop. It handled basic email sends, but it wasn’t built with newsletters in mind.
After only a few months, the team knew they needed a more robust, growth-focused platform. That’s when beehiiv came onto their radar. Built by former newsletter operators, beehiiv promised an all-in-one solution tailored for exactly what Daily Drop was trying to do. The team was drawn by several key factors:
Simplicity and Speed: beehiiv’s interface was clean and intuitive, which meant the Daily Drop crew could move fast. With Beehiiv, creating and scheduling emails has become easier and faster than their old setup. The platform’s performance was also evident immediately – no more laggy send times or clunky workarounds.
Deliverability and Scale: As a newsletter-native platform, beehiiv came with enterprise-grade infrastructure and high deliverability out of the box. The Daily Drop team saw this as crucial for hitting millions of inboxes reliably.
Advanced Analytics: Moving to beehiiv also unlocked a treasure trove of analytics and audience insights. Suddenly, the team could easily track open rates, click-through rates, and engagement trends across various segments of their audience. These accurate, real-time metrics let Daily Drop gauge what content resonated most and which subject lines were crushing it – informing their editorial strategy with data.
Flexible Earning Tools: Given Daily Drop’s plans to earn via sponsors and affiliates, beehiiv’s support for ad integrations and sponsorship placement was a plus. It wasn’t just an email tool; it was a platform to grow a newsletter business.
Convinced by these benefits, Daily Drop made the switch to beehiiv. The migration was smooth – the team moved their entire subscriber list over and set up their custom domain without a hitch. Almost immediately, they noticed improvements.
The deliverability uptick was clear from day one, with more emails hitting primary inboxes and fewer getting caught in filters. And with beehiiv’s analytics dashboard, Benji could see their open rates jump and consistently stay higher than on the old platform.
Favorite Features: Automations and Segmentation at Scale
One beehiiv feature Daily Drop quickly fell in love with was Automations.
With a rapidly growing list, manually onboarding and educating new subscribers was impossible – but it’s crucial to get newcomers up to speed on points and miles basics (so they stick around).
beehiiv’s automation tool allowed the team to set up a welcome email sequence that triggers for every new subscriber. As soon as someone joins, they automatically receive a friendly welcome message and a series of onboarding emails spread over their first week.
These emails introduce the Daily Drop ethos, highlight popular past tips, and explain key concepts (like “Miles & Points 101”) to bring readers of all experience levels up to speed. This kind of scaled onboarding, which would be daunting to do manually, runs in the background 24/7 thanks to beehiiv – ensuring new subscribers feel at home from day one.
Even more game-changing has been beehiiv’s subscriber segmentation features. Daily Drop’s audience isn’t monolithic; it ranges from total beginners to seasoned travel hackers, and from credit card enthusiasts to deal-focused flyers.
beehiiv makes it easy to slice and dice the audience based on behavior and interests. The team can tag and group subscribers by metrics like engagement level (e.g., highly active readers vs. occasional openers) or by their interests indicated through link clicks (e.g., who clicks on credit card offers versus who clicks on flight deal alerts).
They’ve used this data to tailor content more effectively. For example, if a segment of readers consistently clicks on beginner guides, the team can send them a targeted email with “best of” beginner tips, or promote the free Miles & Points 101 course to that group. Meanwhile, power users might get more advanced content or exclusive offers.
This smart use of segmentation means each reader gets more of what they’re interested in, which in turn boosts engagement. Open rates have climbed on these tailored sends, and affiliate conversion rates have improved because the right offers are reaching the most receptive subset of readers.
As Benji puts it, “Being able to segment our subscriber base and see who’s interested in what – so we can gear content towards them – has been huge.”
Lean Team, Big Results: Operating a Media Company
One of the most striking things about Daily Drop is how such a small team can service such a massive audience. We often imagine a newsletter with over 1.5 million readers would need an army of writers, marketers, and IT staff. Yet Daily Drop runs incredibly lean.
Apart from Benji overseeing content, the team includes a handful of writers and editors, a deals expert, a marketing lead, and a developer – a fraction of the headcount a traditional media outlet might have for an audience this size. How do they pull it off?
“Our team can focus on writing great content instead of worrying about tech overhead,” Benji explains.
With so many functions rolled into one platform, beehiiv saves the Daily Drop team from wasting time juggling a dozen tools or patching together tech. Email creation, sending, web hosting for newsletter content, subscriber management, analytics, and even earning options are all built into beehiiv. This means fewer logistical headaches and subscriptions to manage, and more time to focus on what matters – creating great content and forging partnerships.
Since moving to beehiiv, Daily Drop has seen improved email deliverability and consistently strong open rates (often well above industry benchmarks for media newsletters). With more readers actually seeing and opening the emails, the newsletter’s impact grew overnight.
Higher open rates combined with better targeting have led to surging affiliate revenue – when Daily Drop recommends a travel credit card or an airfare deal, readers are more likely to click and convert, because they trust the content and it’s reaching the right people. This boost in affiliate conversions has meaningfully improved the newsletter’s revenue without sacrificing the reader experience or authenticity.
Daily Drop can show potential advertisers granular data – like how engaged the audience is, or how a campaign performed with a specific segment – giving sponsors confidence that their message is reaching a prime audience. This has helped Daily Drop secure high-quality sponsorship deals, increasing earnings from the newsletter in a way that aligns with their readers’ interests.
Earning Done Right: Value-Driven Sponsors and Affiliate Wins
From the outset, the Daily Drop team knew they wanted to earn in a reader-friendly way. Rather than plastering the newsletter with random ads, they pursued value-aligned sponsorships and affiliate partnerships that would genuinely benefit their subscribers.
“Our rule is simple,” Benji says. “If it’s not something we’d personally use or recommend to our travel-loving friends, it doesn’t go in the newsletter.” With this philosophy, Daily Drop earns through trust and relevance.
Affiliate links (particularly for travel credit cards and booking platforms) are a natural fit. When the newsletter mentions a top credit card that comes with a huge points bonus, it uses referral links that earn a commission if readers apply and are approved.
Because Daily Drop’s content is already focused on helping readers get those exact kind of deals, the affiliate promotions feel organic – essentially extensions of the editorial mission. And thanks to beehiiv’s targeting capabilities, the team can send the most relevant offers to the subscribers who are likely to benefit.
For instance, if a subset of readers frequently clicks on hotel deals, an affiliate offer for a hotel credit card or a booking site can be directed their way. This smart targeting has led to higher conversion rates, meaning more readers actually take action on the deals, and Daily Drop earns more affiliate revenue without increasing send volume.
It’s a win-win: readers score travel deals or rewards, and the newsletter generates income to keep content free for everyone.
On the sponsorship side, Daily Drop has carefully chosen sponsors that fit the travel theme and bring value.
Past sponsors have included luggage brands, travel insurance companies, and reward program promos – all things a points-savvy traveler would care about. beehiiv makes it easy to integrate sponsor content or dedicated ad sections within the newsletter template, so the team can feature a sponsor’s message in a visually appealing way without disrupting the overall look and feel.
The newsletter’s revenue from affiliates and sponsors has grown in step with its audience. At the same time, beehiiv’s efficient tooling saves the team significant time (which, as any small operation knows, is money).
Benji estimates that automation alone saves hours of manual work each week, and the reliable deliverability means they’re not leaving money on the table due to emails going unseen. In short, beehiiv helped Daily Drop turn a massive subscriber base into a sustainable business, all while keeping readers happy with relevant, high-quality content.
Built by Newsletter People: Fast Features and Stellar Support
Perhaps the most pleasant surprise for the Daily Drop team has been beehiiv’s pace of innovation and customer support.
“Coming from other platforms, we were used to waiting ages for feature updates or never getting a response to our requests,” Benji notes.
beehiiv turned out to be a completely different experience. The platform is evolving rapidly, with new features and improvements rolling out seemingly every other week.
Case in point: when Daily Drop wanted more control over their referral program and deeper audience segmentation, beehiiv’s team was already on it – delivering enhancements that addressed those needs almost immediately. This agility showed the Daily Drop crew that beehiiv isn’t a static tool; it’s a growing platform that’s always adding creator-friendly features.
“The platform feels like it was built by people who’ve actually run newsletters,” Benji says, highlighting perhaps beehiiv’s biggest differentiator.
Knowing that beehiiv’s infrastructure and team could keep up with Daily Drop’s ambitions gave Benji confidence to push the envelope – like scaling to daily sends, trying new content formats, and investing in ad campaigns – without worrying that the platform might become a bottleneck.
In fact, beehiiv’s reliability and innovation have become an invisible backbone of Daily Drop’s operations, allowing the team to focus on strategy and content rather than tech troubleshooting.
Advice for Aspiring Newsletter Creators
Daily Drop’s journey offers a treasure trove of lessons for other newsletter creators. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to scale your existing newsletter, here are some words of wisdom from Benji Stawski and the Daily Drop experience:
Start Small and Just Start: “Don’t wait for everything to be perfect,” Benji advises. Even if you have a tiny audience, begin delivering value to them. Those first 100 or 1,000 readers are the hardest to get – but they’re also your most passionate fans who will kickstart word-of-mouth. Use whatever advantages you have (an existing social following, friends and family, etc.) to seed your initial list, but the key is to start. You can always refine and expand later; you can’t grow something that doesn’t exist.
Stay Consistent: One of Daily Drop’s non-negotiables was consistency – they send the newsletter 6 days a week, rain or shine. Consistency builds trust with your audience; readers come to rely on you as part of their routine. It also forces you to keep improving your process.
“Sending daily taught us so much about what our readers want, just by sheer repetition,” says Benji. Whether your cadence is daily, weekly, or biweekly, stick to it religiously. Over time, that consistency is what turns a newsletter from an email into a habit for your subscribers.
Focus on Content First: Fancy growth hacks and earning strategies mean nothing if the content doesn’t deliver. Daily Drop’s growth ultimately stems from valuable content that people want to read and share.
Invest in understanding your niche and audience. In Daily Drop’s case, that meant truly simplifying complex info (like credit card fine print) into fun, quick tips. Whatever your topic, aim to be the best or most unique source of insight on it. High-quality content is your strongest growth engine – it keeps readers opening emails and encourages them to refer others.
Evolve and Experiment: The newsletter landscape changes, and so will your audience’s preferences. Don’t be afraid to tweak your format, try new segments, or adjust your tone as you learn what resonates.
Daily Drop, for example, added new features like a Facebook community, a YouTube channel, and a podcast over time – expanding beyond just the email while keeping the core newsletter strong. Within the emails, they’ve experimented with memes, GIFs, subject line styles, etc., to keep things fresh. Some experiments will flop, and that’s okay. The key is to listen to feedback and data (open rates, clicks, replies) and iterate. beehiiv’s built-in A/B testing and analytics make it easier to test these small changes and measure impact.
Final Thoughts: Start Where You Are. Grow With beehiiv.
At the end of the day, Daily Drop’s trajectory shows that any newsletter can achieve remarkable growth with the right mix of great content, smart growth tactics, and the proper tools. As Benji and team demonstrated, you don’t need a huge staff or endless resources – a focus on your readers’ needs and a platform like beehiiv that scales with you can take you a very long way.
Daily Drop’s rise proves one thing:
You don’t need a massive team, VC money, or years of experience to build a media business.
You need:
That’s what beehiiv offers.
Whether you're just starting or ready to scale, beehiiv is the platform powering today’s fastest-growing newsletters — like Daily Drop.
👉 Sign up for beehiiv and start building something incredible today.
Your Openers Are Boring (Here’s How to Fix Them)
Let’s be real: your first sentence can make or break your newsletter.
Take this line from one of my top-performing emails:
“The more I reflect on the last few years, the more obvious it becomes that I’ve failed far more times than I’ve succeeded.”
It crushed—not just because of the subject line, but because that opening made people stop scrolling.
We’ve all done it. Subscribed to a newsletter, opened it, skimmed the first two lines... and bailed. That’s not always because the content sucks—it’s often because the intro didn’t give us a reason to care.
Strong openers = stronger engagement. It’s that simple.
In this post, I’m breaking down:
What makes a killer opener (and what kills your retention)?
The types of intros that work for creators.
And how you can apply it starting today.
Whether you’re covering news, trends, storytelling, or selling a product, if you don’t nail the first 5 seconds, it doesn’t matter what comes after.
Why Strong Openers Matter (Especially in Newsletters)
This isn’t about fluffy copywriting tips. It’s about retention.
A great opener does three things:
The Proof Is in the Scrolls
beehiiv’s platform data shows an average open rate of 37.98% in 2024. But opens are just the start. What really drives engagement? Clicks and scroll depth—and that starts with the first sentence.
If you lose them in line one, everything else is wasted.
The Most Common Opener Mistakes I See
Let’s clean house. These are the biggest traps:
Starting with "Hey everyone..." ← lazy and generic
Burying the lead ← don’t wait till paragraph 4 to get to the point
Sounding like ChatGPT ← yes, ditch the robotic intros
Making it all about you ← your reader needs to see themselves in the intro
Here's an example of what not to do:
“Today, we’re going to talk about a really exciting trend in digital marketing that I came across recently…”
🛑 Boring. Vague. Forgettable.
The Best Newsletter Openers I’ve Seen
Let’s look at a few that hit hard—fast:
🧠 For a crypto audience:
“Bitcoin is pumping. But your grandma still doesn’t care.”
It’s funny, simple, and instantly tells you what the newsletter is about: making crypto accessible.
💼 For business builders:
“Want to buy a boring business and retire in 5 years?”
It’s aspirational and specific. And it’s written like she’s texting a friend, not pitching.
📬 For the creator economy:
“MrBeast just turned down $1 billion. Here’s why.”
You have to keep reading. That’s the point.
Types of Writing Openers That Work (And When to Use Them)
Let’s break them down by style and where they shine.
1. The Question
Great for sparking curiosity.
“Why do 80% of newsletters fail after three issues?”
“Ever wonder how YouTubers go broke with 5M subscribers?”
Use it when your content solves a problem or explains something people already wonder about.
2. The Contrarian Take
Hook readers by flipping the script.
“Email open rates don’t matter. Here’s what does.”
“Writing less might actually grow your newsletter faster.”
This works when your content challenges assumptions.
3. The Bold Statement
Hit ‘em with a punch.
“Your welcome email sucks.”
“The only SEO strategy that still works is stealing.”
It’s risky—but sticky.
4. The Micro Story
Start with a mini anecdote or scene.
“Yesterday, I emailed 11,000 people. I got 6 replies, and 3 were angry. Here’s what I learned.”
Stories = human. Use them.
How to Tailor Openers to Your Audience
The intro that crushes for crypto bros won’t work for nonfiction book lovers. Know your people.
Ask yourself:
If your newsletter is for indie authors, open with a publishing pain point.
If you’re writing to marketers, open with a tactic that saves them time.
📌 Pro tip: Go through your own inbox. What made you open or keep reading? Steal those structures.
Don’t Just Write Openers—Test Them
You won’t get it perfect on the first draft. So don’t try.
Instead:
Write different versions.
Run an A/B test if your ESP allows.
Use beehiiv’s built-in click maps and open rates to track what works.
beehiiv also makes it dead simple to test subject lines, intros, and layouts—and the analytics dashboard shows exactly what keeps people engaged.
Real Talk: Your Readers Decide in 3 Seconds
If your opener doesn’t pass that test, the rest doesn’t matter.
So write for that moment. Make it count.
Final Thoughts: Start Strong or Don’t Start at All
Your opener is the first impression—and sometimes the only one.
You don’t need to be a pro copywriter. You just need to:
Know your audience,
Deliver value fast,
And sound like a human.
Even a one-liner can turn a skimmer into a subscriber.
So next time you sit down to write your newsletter, don’t start with the content. Start with the hook.
👉 Want more like this? Sign up for beehiiv—it’s what top newsletters use to write, grow, and monetize.
How To Approach Email List Segmentation In 2025 [beehiiv Example]
Email list segmentation is an underutilized strategy by creators wanting to scale their newsletters.
In January 2024, I started my first local email newsletter.
The premise is simple: I write a weekly review of a local restaurant and give my two cents on the experience.
By around July 2024, I began to gain momentum with acquiring new subscribers.
The subscriber base rocketed higher.
Now, almost 18 months since I sent out the newsletter’s first edition, I’m on the verge of hitting 2,000 local subscribers.
It’s a pretty big milestone for me, especially since the newsletter is focused on a relatively small part of England.
There was plenty of trial and error along the way.
Naturally, I’ve made quite a few mistakes.
![How To Approach Email List Segmentation In 2025 [beehiiv Example]](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/30bb5184-3558-480f-97cd-52643de75d03/image5.png?t=1748713413)
Email list segmentation helped me to identify where I was going wrong with subscriber acquisition and ask important questions like:
Which acquisition channels generate the most sticky subscribers?
Do some subscriber segments have higher open rates than others?
What effect does the sign-up date have on subscriber engagement?
Are subscribers for certain towns and villages more engaged than others?
Before I began segmenting subscribers, I had no idea which acquisition channels were producing the most engaged subscribers.
When I speak to email newsletter creators, many are often frustrated by low engagement.
The creators are not satisfied with the percentage of subscribers opening their emails or engaging with their content.
But they’re not doing anything to investigate trends among sets of subscribers they’ve acquired.
In other words, these email newsletter creators are sitting on a ton of actionable data, and they don’t even know it!
This data could end up reshaping their entire subscriber acquisition strategy.
For instance, segmenting subscribers based on acquisition channels (such as Facebook and Instagram) could help creators identify which channels produce the most engaged subscribers.
I’m going to use this whistlestop guide to show you just how simple it is to segment subscribers and unlock a treasure trove of actionable insights.
beehiiv makes email list segmentation ridiculously easy.
After reading this article, you’ll have zero excuses, I repeat, zero excuses, to skip pulling back the curtain and look at how your subscriber base breaks down.
What Led Me To Email List Segmentation?
I had been relying almost exclusively on Meta ads (Facebook and Instagram) to grow my subscriber base.
The targeting capabilities were unmatched.
I could lean on Meta’s algorithm to put my newsletter in front of people who had already shown interest in local food, restaurant culture, or Somerset events.
It was working.
![How To Approach Email List Segmentation In 2025 [beehiiv Example]](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/318cc245-b6be-4b0c-9371-f2fb9aab5d8a/image14.png?t=1748713499)
I was often picking up subscribers for as little as $0.30, and that’s still the case today.
My open rates were strong, and I was seeing decent click-through rates on the links inside my emails.
But I am a naturally curious person, and I wanted to see if I could expand beyond Meta.
I did not want to become too reliant on one channel.
So I started experimenting with new acquisition strategies.
One of the first tests I ran was a sponsored square widget on a local online newspaper’s website.
It was a simple ad promoting my newsletter to local readers.
It made sense on paper.
The readers were in my target geography, and I figured many of them would be interested in local dining tips.
And it worked.
Sort of.
The subscribers started flowing in.
My list was growing faster than ever.
But something was off.
As my subscriber numbers rose, my open rates started to dip.
Even worse, the number of people clicking on the restaurant links in the emails, which I had come to rely on as a measure of how engaged and interested my audience was, began to decline.
At first, I chalked it up to seasonal variation or a weak subject line.
But it kept happening.
And I could not ignore the timing.
The drop in engagement lined up almost perfectly with the start of that widget ad campaign.
That was my lightbulb moment.
![How To Approach Email List Segmentation In 2025 [beehiiv Example]](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/08234fe3-2151-4af9-9ca2-a8a2651678b5/image8.png?t=1748713683)
I needed to understand whether different acquisition channels were bringing in different types of subscribers and whether some of those subscribers were just less engaged from the outset.
That is when I started segmenting my list.
With segmentation, I was able to tag subscribers based on where they came from: Meta ads, the newspaper widget, organic traffic, word of mouth, and so on.
Pretty quickly, I saw the pattern.
The subscribers from the local news widget had much lower open and click-through rates.
It made sense in hindsight.
These were people casually browsing a news site, likely looking to kill a few minutes on their lunch breaks.
They were not actively seeking out food content or restaurant reviews.
In contrast, Meta had been serving my newsletter ad to people already showing interest in the kind of stuff I was writing about.
Without segmentation, I never would have spotted this.
I would have kept throwing budget at low-quality acquisition sources, mistaking list growth for success.
How To Create An Email List Segment
Segment Types
When I first started segmenting my list, I didn’t give much thought to what type of segment I was creating.
I was just excited to finally be pulling apart the layers of my audience.
But as I got deeper into analyzing subscriber behavior, I realized the type of segment you choose has a huge impact on how useful the data ends up being.
Each segment type - Static, Dynamic, and Manual - comes with its own strengths and drawbacks.
And depending on what you are trying to learn or do with your newsletter, the right option is not always obvious.
![How To Approach Email List Segmentation In 2025 [beehiiv Example]](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/ac57b522-72a2-4256-8ff6-fb6bf9a02303/image6.png?t=1748713917)
Static
Let’s start with Static segments.
I have used Static segments when I want to freeze a specific slice of my list at a moment in time.
For example, when I ran the widget ad on the local newspaper website, I immediately tagged those new signups and dropped them into a Static segment.
This gave me a locked-in group of subscribers I could measure engagement for, separate from everyone else, without it changing later as new subscribers rolled in.
This was very useful for comparison.
If I saw that 500 people from the widget ad had an open rate of 24 percent and a click-through rate of 2.1 percent, I could then weigh that against my Meta-acquired subscribers without worrying that the group was being diluted over time.
But Static segments are a bit rigid.
They are a snapshot, and once you create them, they do not change.
If I forget to tag subscribers or someone slips through the cracks, they will not be included.
There is no going back to automatically sweep them up.
So I mainly use Static segments when I am doing short-term testing or A/B style comparisons between channels.
Dynamic
When I need something a bit more fluid, I turn to Dynamic segments.
This is where things really started to click for me.
Dynamic segments update automatically.
So if I set the condition to pull in subscribers from a certain postcode, or anyone who has clicked on more than two links in the past 30 days, beehiiv keeps that list fresh.
It is perfect for my more ongoing, behavior-driven strategies.
Let’s say I want to promote a new restaurant in Bath.
Maybe I got invited to an opening night, or I am doing a giveaway.
Instead of blasting that to all 2,000 subscribers, I can create a Dynamic segment for anyone who lives near Bath and has clicked on Bath-based reviews in the past.
I have seen better open rates and more replies when I tailor content this way.
Dynamic segments are really a game-changer for local targeting.
But they are not without their downsides.
They rely on the data being clean and well-structured.
If you have not been consistent with your tagging or if some subscribers do not have geographic data, you might miss out on a big chunk of the audience you thought you were targeting.
Still, I use Dynamic segments the most often now.
They are ideal for recurring campaigns, especially when I am resurfacing older reviews to newer subscribers based on interest signals.
Manual
Then there is the Manual segment type.
This one feels a bit old school, but it still has its place.
With Manual segments, I can upload a list of emails directly, maybe from a spreadsheet or some one-off source like event attendees.
I used this when I hosted a local social gathering for newsletter readers.
I collected emails at the door, cleaned the list, and manually uploaded it.
Then I sent a follow-up newsletter just to those people, thanking them for coming and linking out to a special behind-the-scenes post I wrote about the event.
Manual segments are clunky if you are dealing with large, fast-moving lists.
But for hyper-specific outreach, like thanking a group or following up with contest entrants, they are a great tool.
The main limitation is that you are responsible for every part of the list.
No tagging, no rules, no automation.
It is all on you.
In the early days, I leaned heavily on Static and Manual.
Now that the newsletter’s audience has grown and I am pulling in subscribers from different towns and acquisition channels, I have shifted my focus more toward Dynamic.
The key thing is to choose the segment type that matches the job you are trying to do.
Static for snapshot testing.
Dynamic for automated behavioral or geographic targeting.
Manual for one-off curated groups.
It is less about the tech and more about the intention.
And for a newsletter like mine, where local relevance is everything, the ability to slice and dice my audience in smart ways is what keeps my engagement strong, even as the list grows.
Segment Conditions
Segment conditions are filters you apply to define and analyze groups of subscribers based on shared characteristics or behaviors.
While they are often used to send targeted campaigns, they are just as powerful when used to uncover patterns within your audience.
You can define segment conditions with practically any piece of data, including but not limited to:
Acquisition sources
Subscriber tags
Subscription tier
Sign-up date
Custom fields
In fact, you can even have a segment with conditions as specific as subscribers who opened or clicked on a certain edition of your newsletter.
I’ve included an example of this below.
![How To Approach Email List Segmentation In 2025 [beehiiv Example]](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/5c63b146-a9c5-4481-ac97-808e328ccae3/image17.png?t=1748714106)
When you apply different conditions, you can make sense of your segment data in ways that inform your content, cadence, and overall newsletter strategy.
For instance, when reviewing how well a recent edition about a Yeovil food market performed, I can break down open rates and click-throughs by acquisition source.
Did the people who found me through Google perform better than those who signed up through Instagram?
In comparing these subsets using segment conditions, I can identify which platforms drive not just the most subscribers, but the most engaged ones.
Another valuable lens is the subscription tier.
Let’s say I’m running a free and paid version of the restaurant reviews newsletter.
By filtering data based on tier, I can quickly analyze how paid subscribers interact with content compared to free readers.
If I see that paid users click more often on links to long-form write-ups or reservation-only events, I know to double down on that premium value in future editions.
The sign-up date condition also opens up a time-based view of subscriber behavior.
![How To Approach Email List Segmentation In 2025 [beehiiv Example]](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/94f2d719-d374-4ea1-b854-06b36a357398/image15.png?t=1748714133)
By isolating those who joined in the last month and comparing them to long-time readers, I can see how engagement evolves over time.
If newer readers are more responsive to headlines with specific place names, while older readers prefer broader coverage or themed guides, I can adjust the newsletter layout accordingly.
Custom fields are another tool that reveals deeper patterns in segment behavior.
For example, if I collect favorite dining times or preferred types of cuisine at signup, I can create segments to see how these variables relate to email engagement.
Do evening diners tend to engage more with weekend content?
Do fans of Mediterranean food respond better to photo-driven reviews versus plain-text formats?
Each of these questions becomes answerable when segment conditions are applied to historical data.
Segment Examples
In the segmentation section on beehiiv’s platform, you can play around with an endless number of different ways to slice and dice your audience.
Here’s just one example of a segment I’ve made in beehiiv for my restaurant reviews newsletter:
![How To Approach Email List Segmentation In 2025 [beehiiv Example]](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/2b3c753c-eff2-418d-bbd3-a12e93259178/image7.png?t=1748714222)
What does this mean?
This segment consists of people who have unsubscribed after a specific date and initially subscribed via my website.
I like getting super granular with the segments.
It’s also useful to look at bigger cohorts, too, as it helps me see “bigger picture” trends.
Here’s another example of a segment I often look at:
![How To Approach Email List Segmentation In 2025 [beehiiv Example]](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/a090d6e1-456d-4c3f-847d-8da2e5db570f/image12.png?t=1748714246)
This segment includes people who have opened every single email (100% open rate) since subscribing to the newsletter.
These guys are my most loyal, engaged subscribers.
If I wanted to, I could set an extra condition that ensures subscribers in this segment have been reading the newsletter for at least three months.
Here’s what that would look like:
![How To Approach Email List Segmentation In 2025 [beehiiv Example]](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/f32ef6c2-f223-4ef9-ad15-64a165161ab5/image11.png?t=1748714273)
Adding this extra condition is important because it gives me an accurate list of diehard subscribers who have been reading the newsletter for at least three months.
Segment Engagement
Once you’ve saved your draft segment, beehiiv’s platform works its magic and generates a ton of data for you to sink your teeth into.
Thankfully, as you can see below, it’s all presented in a way that’s super easy to scan.
![How To Approach Email List Segmentation In 2025 [beehiiv Example]](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/f2d96635-213c-4597-9789-519962bf3f39/image13.png?t=1748714314)
427 subscribers have read every edition of my newsletter since opting in.
As per the conditions I set for this segment, these subscribers have all been reading the newsletter for at least three months.
Of those 427 subscribers, 64 have since unsubscribed.
If you want to make some quick changes to your segment, you can click on the “Configure” tab and start tweaking your segment conditions.
![How To Approach Email List Segmentation In 2025 [beehiiv Example]](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/7548805e-2351-40c0-bad8-70a11e81134f/image1.png?t=1748714351)
I like having this flexibility, particularly if I’ve gone too granular and want to open things up with fewer conditions for a segment.
I can make those changes to the segment right away, and beehiiv will refresh the data.
How To Apply Subscriber Tags To Segments
When I’m creating new segments, I like to apply subscriber tags so I can keep track of who’s who.
To create some relevant tags, you’ll need to head over to “Audience > Subscribers" and then switch to the "Tags" tab.
![How To Approach Email List Segmentation In 2025 [beehiiv Example]](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/4a32847c-2843-4a99-a375-91a99b52ed58/image3.png?t=1748714398)
You can then create a color-coded subscriber tag that’s ready for applying to relevant segments.
![How To Approach Email List Segmentation In 2025 [beehiiv Example]](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/a836d35b-4cf4-47f3-a8fb-1969b5e6aa37/image10.png?t=1748714420)
For this segment, I’ve applied my “most engaged subscribers” tag to all subscribers in this cohort.
When I’m scrolling through my email list of subscribers on beehiiv, I can now quickly flag up my “most engaged subscribers” and take a look at how they are engaging with the content.
Are they clicking on in-content clicks?
Are they referring new subscribers to the newsletter?
Are they responding to polls in the newsletter?
These are all important questions I want to know the answers to.
I can also add a subscriber tag to a segment of my most disengaged subscribers.
Once added, I can then scroll through the list and look at which editions of the newsletter they’ve opened.
Are they only opening emails when I mention specific towns in the subject line?
These data points are worth investigating, particularly if you’re not satisfied with your current average open rate and see room for improvement.
How To Send Emails To Segments
Another potential use case of segments is sending emails to exclusive groups of subscribers.
Once you’ve finished composing an edition of your newsletter, you can click on the “Audience” tab and choose who gets to receive it.
As you can see below, with the “Scale” plan, you can include and exclude specific segments of subscribers from receiving editions of your newsletter.
![How To Approach Email List Segmentation In 2025 [beehiiv Example]](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/c220c336-ae04-4ed3-a976-42cd4edfacd2/image4.png?t=1748714451)
This is useful if you’re trying to create content aimed at very narrow cohorts of subscribers, or even split-test content across a few different sets of subscribers.
The possibilities are really endless.
Segmenting Is About Understanding Your Audience
![How To Approach Email List Segmentation In 2025 [beehiiv Example]](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/7ce6f3e7-c334-4904-b433-4264d86f7739/image16.png?t=1748714479)
Ultimately, the goal is not just about trimming down the number of subscribers in my newsletter.
I’m more interested in understanding what truly captures the interest of the people who choose to receive my restaurant reviews.
Knowing which parts of the newsletter resonate helps me create content that keeps readers coming back.
Finding where my subscribers are most engaged gives me valuable insight into what they enjoy and expect.
This makes it easier to focus on sharing the kind of recommendations and stories that matter most to them.
It also helps me recognize where I might need to put more effort into attracting new readers who will appreciate the newsletter as much as the current ones do.
The quality of my subscriber list is more important than just having a high number of sign-ups.
Those who open emails regularly, click through, and respond to the content are the real supporters.
They are the ones who make writing and sharing worthwhile because they care about what I have to say.
Instead of worrying about the size of the audience, I focus on building a community that values honest, useful reviews.
This means making sure the newsletter feels relevant and engaging to those who receive it, which ultimately leads to better connections and more meaningful conversations around food.
Keeping this focus helps me grow the newsletter in a way that benefits everyone involved.
It means attracting subscribers who will stay loyal and genuinely enjoy what I share, making the whole experience more rewarding both for me and for the readers.
If you’re not using beehiiv’s segmentation tools, why not?
Even free users get access to all of the segmentation features I’ve mentioned in this article.
Yes, all of the above is possible using a free plan.
It’s pretty generous.
But when you’re a bootstrapped email newsletter creator, this is exactly what you need.
beehiiv’s platform is setting you up for success and giving you the tools needed to make smart decisions around your newsletter strategy.
Not already a user? You can get started with beehiiv right away for free.
