Keyword monitoring, 5-minute favors, and proven newsletter tactics.

Welcome all you growth-loving founders and marketers!‍

Fun fact: daycare here kicks out your kiddo on Sept 1st, and kindergarten starts Sept 18th.

So I'm writing this the night before after spending the day on a beach with kiddo and puppy—hmm maybe I should just do that more often. Not a bad way to get the creative juices flowing, right?

Anyway, let's talk about keyword monitoring, 5-minute favors, and proven newsletter tactics.

– Neal

2 proven ways to turn visitors into subscribers

Sure, we can all slap a form in our footer to get more newsletter subscribers.

In our experience, that doesn't do very much.

Neither does the one at the bottom of your 20-minute blog article.

Here are 2 that have worked for us:

#1. Pop-ups/Modals

Beware: Don't do this 👇. Especially not immediately.

Everything about that makes me sad.

Instead, have they been on the page for 5 minutes and have they made it 40%+ or more down the page?

Great, then they've gotten value—pop up a modal and pitch the value they'll get.

Better yet, use a lead magnet related to the piece of content they're reading.

#2. Gated content

Throwing a form in your blog's sidebar is unlikely to move the needle. Adding it into the middle of the content can definitely do better—but both feel like old banner ads.

So we gloss over them.

Instead, for long-form, in-depth articles, like our playbooks, we would gate the second half of the playbook. If they were invested, they'd subscribe.

Don't just add a form and assume people will use it.

We all get too many emails—give people a reason to add more to their inbox.

Do a 5-minute favor before cold emailing

Insight from Randy Ginsburg.

The average person gets ~120 emails per day. Founders and decision makers get even more thanks to being bombarded with cold emails.

Getting someone to read your cold email is an uphill climb—and not deleting it is Everest.

To do it right, you need to bait interest and then hook it.
↳ An enticing subject line = the bait
↳ A great opening line = the hook

Unless you're Elon Musk, launching into your experience and credentials aren't enough to get someone interested when they're desperately just trying to hit inbox zero.

It’s like someone walking up to you at a party and saying "yeah, I went to Harvard."

A much better hook: Start your cold email with a five-minute favor.

The five-minute favor is a concept introduced by Wharton psychologist Adam Grant in his book Give and Take. It's simple:

Spend five minutes every day doing something that helps others. Just five minutes. Don’t expect anything in return.

Examples:

Share something they’re working on with your audience.
Write a review of their book or podcast.
Donate to a cause they support.
Engage with their social posts.
Fill out one of their surveys.
Make an introduction.

Help them out, then casually mention the favor in your cold email opener. They'll be far more likely to respond—particularly in a positive manner.

Growth marketing is increasingly about community building, and less about clever hacks.

Apply a community mindset to your cold outreach, and it'll become much warmer.

Monitor keywords to jump into convos

Insight from Reilly Chase.

This is for the scrappy folks in the crowd. The "do things that don't scale" people.

Being active in communities is a great way to build up your initial user base and network.

BUT! You don't want to just pitch yourself. No one likes that. And is often grounds to be kicked out of the community.

So instead, you want to be active in relevant convos and provide value. But constantly monitoring Slack communities, Reddits, and social media is a huge pain.

Use these tricks to do it faster:

#1. Slack: Join communities that your target audience use.

Under Preferences, set up notifications for keywords related to your product—you'll get pinged whenever you should weigh in.

#2. Upwork: Use the paid tool Earlybrd.io to track job descriptions with keywords related to the problem your product solves, e.g., “custom Shopify site.”

Get alerts about relevant jobs as they’re posted—then apply and pitch your product.

#3. X/Twitter: Bookmarking search results is the move.

Go to the search page and enter “min_faves:200 [keyword]” then sort by Latest.

You’ll find tweets related to your keyword with at least 200 likes

(Use “min_retweets:200 [keyword]” for retweets instead.)

#4. Quora/Reddit: Use the paid tool Syften to track keywords.

It’ll send Slack or email notifications as these get mentioned. It'll also work for Slack, Upwork, Twitter, ProductHunt, and various others.

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Just remember: Being helpful and kind is the priority. Provide value first, and just make it known what you do and how you can help them more.

News and links

News you can use:

Facebook has now also removed news for users in the UK, Germany, and France ahead of laws requiring them to pay for news content. It'll be interesting what happens to traditional media with social media outlets pulling them.
The US is suing Google for unlawfully stifling competition by paying companies like Apple to make Google the default search option on phones and browsers.
Meta is now working on a direct competitor to GPT-4 (as is Google), so expect to see a ton of alternatives to ChatGPT in the new year.
Google Chrome keeps rolling out "Enhanced Ad Privacy" which allows websites to serve ads to users based on their browser histories—unless you disable it. It only keeps the data for three weeks and it's anonymized.
TikTok is experimenting with a “Shop” tab that shows you a feed of products.
Twitter/X Blue users on iOS can now hide their Likes tab—meaning people won't be able to peruse those embarrassing memes you liked.

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