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100 subscribers in a single day
I just added nearly 100 new subscribers to my email list in a single day.
The way I’ve done that is by promoting one of my free resources in someone else’s newsletter. If you’ve just joined here from that experiment, then you already know first hand.
But I’ve just come to a realization.
List swaps, newsletter sponsorships, and cross promos are one of the most effective ways to grow your email list or newsletter and it’s something I’ve been avoiding for way too long.
Case in point, I first had this conversation with Kieran over a year ago.
He basically said ‘all systems go!’
But it was 100% on me that it took this long to get it out.
And by every industry benchmark, it was a success. I will say as a side note, for this particular resource, Kieran warned me: email marketing is a much smaller, niche section of his audience. However, ignoring his advice completely, things still went well.
Another resource of mine, one Kieran was way more excited about, might have been useful for more people in his audience.
But there was a problem.
It wasn’t productized yet. It’s really useful, I just don’t have a way to hand it to someone free and say “here, this solves your problem.”
So we both decided: published is better than perfect.
But the important part of today’s email isn’t how the arrangement was made, what’s more important is what kept me from doing promos like this for so long, when they’re so damn effective.
What kept me was not having a lead magnet.
At least not one I felt was useful to other people’s audiences.
Sounds silly… but it’s a lot easier to do list swaps or newsletter ads when you can offer something free and valuable to someone else’s audience that’s relevant to what you offer because they’ll look good, and so will you.
Run a newsletter ad to something half-assed, or possibly even awesome but un-related to your offer and reputations get hurt, or efforts get wasted.
That’s why I created Minimum Viable Email List in the first place.
To solve the lead magnet problem that haunted me for years. Relying on only a newsletter opt-in. They typically have decent conversion rates coming from writing platforms like Threads or X. But they pale in the comparison to the conversion rates you’ll see on a well crafted lead magnet, that doesn’t just attract leads, but genuinely helps people out, and gives them value whether they buy anything from you or not.
Which is important.
Because I genuinely don’t care if most people don’t buy from me.
Because “most people” isn’t really how I earn a living anyway.
Most of my business comes from bigger brands, with marketing budgets, hiring me to write, strategize, and analyze the results of their marketing campaigns. And the work I do here and in my Skool community is just my way of giving back for now.
So anyway…
If you’ve had a look at MVE, and you like what you’ve seen, I’ve got something even better for you.
It’s called Leif, the Lead Magnet Generator…
Basically it’s a markdown file with a very specific set of instructions, that you upload to Claude, and it will guide you through the lead magnet map process that I typically run folks through when we’re working together on it one-to-one.
In many cases, it’s all you need to launch your first (or next) client attracting lead magnet.
For those who are considering paying for help on it, it’s a taste of what you’d get working with me.
Here’s the link:
See you there,
Kevin Hood