Strategy #6: Messaging People in Relevant Facebook Groups
This strategy is a little controversial and may not be for everyone - but this is how Thomas Shields got his first 5,000 subscribers. Today he has over 150,000 subs.
His newsletter is all about the sport pickleball.
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Strategy #5: Cross Promotion
Cross promotion is when you a team up with a newsletter that has a similar audience - they promote you, you promote them.
This is an easy and FREE way to get your first few thousand newsletter subs.
And your newsletter doesn't even have to be that big before you can do this successfully.
There are some newsletters with only 100-200 subs and they're successfully landing cross promos.
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Strategy #4: Pen & Paper
This is exactly what it sounds like.
Get in front of your target audience, hand them a pen and paper, and get them to write down their email address.
Ideally you have something to incentivize signups, but even that isn't necessary. You could show up to a trade show in your industry and just put down a signup sheet that says "write down your first name and email address so signup for the weekly XYZ newsletter"
Sound too simple to be true?
This is basically what the Morning Brew did to get their first 2,000 subs.
Today, they have millions of subs and they're worth high 8-figures.
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Strategy #3: Starting Fights
Controversy is a very easy way to go viral organically and get your first few email subscribers out of it.
That's basically what Andrew Gazdecki did to promote his newsletter, Bootstrappers (which he used to promote his software startup, MicroAcquire):
Strategy #2: Posting On Reddit
This is what Eric Lam did to promote his newsletter, Exploding Ideas. He said that this got him 5,000 new subscribers - 100% free and organic.
He went into communities that overlapped with his audience, engaged with their content / posted his own content, and at the end of each post, plugged his newsletter.
You want to make sure you're actually providing value, not just spamming your link everywhere. Mass self promotion without providing any value could get you banned from some communities.
Here are some example posts from Eric so you can see what they look like in action:
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Bonus Strategy #3: Giveaways
This is a strategy that can work wonders - but you need to have an estabilished audience before you do it, or it just won't work.
I would say 1,000 subscribers is about the critical mass you would need to pull off your first giveaway.
When the YouTube Colin & Samir did this, they were able to pull 8,000 newsletter subs in one day.
They did this with a video titled "Deleting this video tomorrow", updating the video title to reflect the time left until the video is deleted.
In the video, they announced a giveaway.
They were giving away a "creator kit" worth $1,000.
Inside the kit were tech gadgets video creators would be interested in. To qualify, viewers had to join their newsletter.
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Marketing Examined
How Colin & Samir Use Giveaways to Grow Their Newsletter
How Colin and Samir elevated giveaways from bottom-tier lead-gen to success, gaining 8000 subscribers in one day. With a 24-hour window, pre-qualification tactics, and audience-aligned prizes, they showcase a powerful playbook for effective marketing.
Bonus Strategy #2: Refind Ads
While you can get thousands of subscribers for free, you can get 10x more in a fraction of the time if you're willing to invest in paid ads.
That's where Refind comes in.
Refind is a content discovery platform where users get curated articles and newsletters based on their interests.
By running ads on Refind, you can target an audience already looking for high-quality content like yours. It’s cost-effective and insanely powerful for scaling your list fast.
Want to go from 1,000 to 10,000 subscribers in record time? This is how.
The best part?
You get to lock in your subscriber acquisition cost at the exact number you want.
This is something we're going to experiment with in the near future.
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Bonus Strategy #1: Referrals
Referrals are like adding rocket fuel to your newsletter growth engine.
In fact, Morning Brew uses this in their newsletter to get millions of new subscribers.
Here's what it looks like:
It's set up so that you get rewards for referring new subscribers to their newsletter.
If you use Beehiiv, they have this feature built in, so that you can setup similar referral experience.
Another gigantic newsletter, The Pour Over, uses referrals as a part of their growth strategy. They have 900,000 subs.
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