Growth Newsletter #120

For his birthday, MrBeast got 12,491,044 new followers on Instagram in 72 hours.

Hell of a b-day gift if you ask me.

He didn't do it with Instagram Ads. Instead, he did a giveaway of $10,000 to 5 winners:

Around 20M people liked and commented. Meaning around 20M people added the post to their stories as well—which feels a lot more organic since it's normally where your friends just post photos/videos about their daily life. 

On top of that—you had to follow him to actually claim your prize. 

In short: $50,000 to acquire 12.5M new followers or $0.004 per follower. To contextualize that, Twitter recommends a target CPA of $2 per new follower for their Follower Ads.

(Note: The post was eventually taken down because you need to explicitly declare that the giveaway is not endorsed or run by Instagram itself. Keep that in mind!)

Most cold emails are terrible.

Effective cold emails share these characteristics:

1. Concise. People will archive an email at the sight of a wall of text. Keep it to 80-120 words and 5-7 sentences. If you have a hard time editing to shorten it, use ChatGPT or Notion AI.‍
2. Targeted. After getting a cold email for a newsletter sponsorship tool, I signed up immediately. Why? Because it was the solution to the exact problem I was facing—and they knew I likely was because they did their research and saw we have sponsors. Do your research and make sure you're emailing the right people.‍
3. Personable. Be informal and open. Don't be stiff or formal.‍
4. Authentic. You can flatter recipients a little bit, but don’t claim to be “blown away by their work” if you haven’t read it. You should be able to back up everything you say.‍‍
5. Focused. Stick to only one goal. Is it a call? A referral? A demo? Define your goal before sending your email. This will inform your CTA.‍
6. Original. Stand the f*ck out. Avoid all the cliches like "I hope this email finds you well" or "quick question."‍
7. Clear. Don't include anything that your reader might not understand. Assume they don't know about your company unless you know they do. Don't include references that they might not get. Be crystal clear.

Do these 7 things and you'll drastically increase response rates.

To make it even easier, use ChatGPT or Notion AI for help with copywriting. Ask them to make your email shorter, more casual, and remove any jargon.

To increase response rates even more, make it a warm email. 

Don't you hate it when you hit a site and you're immediately asked for your email address just so you can access the content?

A lot of companies still think that gating all of their content is the only way to grow their list and get leads.

This is generally a terrible experience. You're being asked to give something up before getting any value. It makes users feel “disempowered and disrespected.”

So consider ungating your content. Visitors will be more likely to share it with their colleagues or on social media, and will have a much better opinion of you and your brand.

One case in point: After removing lead capture forms from its site, the agency Aha Media Group saw its page views jump up by 143%. Newsletter signups grew by 55%, and its social media follower growth by 45%.

(This will only become more true with AI and the proliferation of content.)

Some tips and considerations for ungating:

1. Try giving before asking. For example, we make our playbooks open to the public. But our playbook pages also include an optional subscribe form. Anyone who’s enjoyed our playbooks will be more inclined to give up their info to find out about future ones.We've also toyed with making the first half ungated and the back half gated.‍
2. Add "content upgrades." Ungate your content but include embedded forms that offer some complimentary piece of content you can only get via email. This can be email-based mini courses, templates, or ebooks.‍
3. Add a timed modal. If someone has been on your page for several minutes and has scrolled down a decent amount, you can assume they've probably been reading and are engaged. At that point, you can trigger a modal popup asking for them to subscribe. Even better if it's with a content upgrade.