The SEOFOMO newsletter grew to 36.6K subscribers in just 5 years, and now its creator is here to give you 7 tips to replicate her success. Join Aleyda Solis as she talks through what worked and what didn’t when launching her extremely successful set of email newsletters.

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Welcome to a new edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Aleyda Solis. And in today's edition, I am going to share with you my top seven newsletter growth tips that I have learned through my own success and failures with my three newsletters -- the SEOFOMO newsletter, AI Marketers, and MarketingFOMO. 

So hopefully you learn from those let's say actions that I have taken that have had the expected or the better growth than I planned to have and avoid all of those other challenges that I have gone through in the last few years. 

Let's go through them.

The first one, run giveaways. Potentially, this is the one that I think that has worked pretty well in the best possible way recurrently. Like, of course, people love free stuff. This is nothing new.

But I believe here that it is critical to provide something that is actually easy for you to deliver because, yeah, sometimes if you do giveaways or run giveaways of physical swag, for example, or actual physical products that you need to deliver, sometimes the delivery costs can be much higher than the actual value of the products. I once had to send a mug that pretty much cost 6 euros to India, I believe, and that cost me like 40-something euros, right? So that is definitely something that you don't want to go through.

So giveaways, make it something relevant in your sector, something that is easy to deliver again. So in my case, since I am in SEO, for the SEOFOMO newsletters, the giveaways that have worked in the best possible ways were those in which I gave away tools, software, online courses.

The giveaway that was the best was the one that pretty much it had a bundle of 20K worth of tools. It's something that I, of course, highlighted, and yeah, it worked pretty well. So there's definitely that.

Something also to take into account potentially is that whenever you bundle the rewards or the awards of the giveaway, try to make it in a way that it will satisfy any type of profile of your audience.

Allow me to explain. The person I remember that won the big 20K worth of tools and resources giveaway was someone who was just starting in SEO. So the person got in touch with me and said, "Look, thank you very much. I love the giveaway potentially. I'm just starting, so I just want to have the access of the online free course and community that you're giving and the basic tools. But all of these tools, I wouldn't know what to do with them. So you're free to give them to another person." That was something very kind of the person, of course, to do. But it made me realize that the next time I should bundle better the award so it works better and satisfies whoever wins the giveaway.

The second one, free resources magnets. Like lead magnets, this is nothing new.

But the thing is how you run them, right? Me, especially as an SEO myself too, those landing pages with just a headline not saying much of what the user will find behind, after they register or subscribe to it, that kills me.

I believe the best way to run these free resources magnets is well, yes, you need to start a landing page. You need to explain what it is about. You can also provide ebooks, tools, online courses.

The ones that have worked great for me have been the free checklists and cheat sheets and dashboards that I continue expanding all the time and frequently. So it gives me the chance to promote them now and then again. Also, like longer trials of very well-known tools that I have included in them too. So I have this SEO checklist, cheat sheet, tools, resources bundled, and I list them and I explain what they are about.

I provide pretty much like a good description of the expectations of what the user can actually expect to get access to when they subscribe so that they don't unsubscribe later on. I believe that this is what I want to avoid, right? They just subscribe just to get access to the resources, but because you don't deliver, you don't align what you provide with the expectations, they will unsubscribe later on. This is the worst that can happen. So it's important the way that you communicate and promote them I believe.

And you continuously expand on them so there's also this, well, interest to keep them as a subscriber or for them to stay as subscribers because they know that you will be providing them more and more.

These are also resources that, for example, I give access to and I link to in my welcome email. Whenever someone subscribes to the newsletter and confirms their subscription, they will get a welcome email explaining what the newsletter is about, when they will receive the next one, linking to the previous edition and linking to all of the resources that they pretty much have access to because these are the resources for those subscribers, so they will always have access to them.

The referral program is the third one.

So this is funny because this was one of the things that I tried to do, but as soon as I got SEOFOMO running and when I started five years ago, in 2020, pretty much there was no solution that was easy to implement for newsletters.

But then SparkLoop was launched a few months literally after that, and it really facilitated the implementation because it's a solution that's really thought and designed for newsletters. I'm pretty much sure that at this time point, there are many others. But since I already use them, well, this is the one that I use, and it's actually integrated with Kit/ConvertKit. So if you run a newsletter with ConvertKit, they provide a solution that is integrated with them because they are part of the same platform now.

But yes, this solution and referral programs in general are, I would say like the best way to keep your audience, your subscribers, your community engaged and reward them for referring you, to bring more friends over, to bring colleagues, to bring more subscribers.

Again, in this case, I want to highlight the same point that I gave before with the giveaways. Try to design the rewards in a way that they are attractive, meaningful enough for your audience, but are easy to deliver for you, especially at the start, right? You don't want to be having one-on-one calls with the people who have referred you three people because, otherwise, you will spend your whole day like that very likely. This is a reward that I give for those have referred me 500 subscribers, for example.

So make sure that you design the rewards in a way that is something that is attractive, is meaningful in your sector or in your area, but that is also physical for you to deliver very quickly. Online goods, tools, and resources are perfect for this, especially for the first stages of the referral program. 

The fourth one, the referral network, and this is relatively newer. I will say since a couple of years ago, it was ConvertKit, now Kit, and Beehiiv that started to provide pretty much referral platforms that they hosted. A network of newsletters where newsletter creators could subscribe to and they could obtain which other newsletters they will refer to whenever they got a new subscriber.

So for example, when someone comes to the subscription landing page of SEOFOMO, after you subscribe, you will see other newsletters that I recommend you to subscribe to because they are complementary or they are similar and are relevant for the same type of audience. This is what I expect, right? And the same with others towards SEOFOMO. They will refer me back.

This is great because these two platforms now that are the most popular ones for newsletters targeted towards creators, they have these networks of newsletters that are very easy to configure, that allows you to, well, include yourself for free and to refer others for free.

There are also some let's say pitches or upgrade possibilities there for you to pay for the referral or to be paid to refer, which I have to say I haven't tried myself, but there's that. If you want to invest heavily to grow faster, that can be also an option or a possibility for you to test. 

The fifth one here is social media promotion, very straightforward.

Again, I have seen cases because I have seen what other creators do with their newsletters that have even run Facebook ads, right, and the monetization let's say model that they have allows them to do that, right?

You don't necessarily need to do that I would say if you have a big enough audience, if you consistently and usually engage in social platforms that are relevant toward your audience. So LinkedIn, for example, or Bluesky, now and then. Whenever you share something new, a resource, a tip, a guide, you can mention later on these are the same types of tips or resources or guides or news that I share every week or every x days through my newsletter that you can subscribe to completely for free and stay updated, and a link to your newsletter.

Or ask your audience to search for your newsletter so you have a branded search right there. Of course, first confirm that you will rank in the first position for that query. But yes, you can do that too. So I would say that this can be a really good, easy, and straightforward way for you to promote and refer to your newsletter.

I believe, when I think about this, about referring top of the funnel users and audience that you engage with to more bottom of the funnel because the newsletter is something that you own much more than branded platforms, like social media platforms can be. 

The sixth one, community, online and in-person promotions.

So at every single event and meetup that I go to in person and also in communities where I engage online, my profile, Aleyda Solis, SEO consultant and also SEOFOMO wrapper, whenever someone asks about newsletters or a resource or whatever that I have shared through SEOFOMO, I engage in a way that I mention that, hey, this is something that I actually know about because I literally just covered it two weeks ago or a month ago, right? So there's definitely that.

It shouldn't be something to be ashamed of. I know that a lot of people are very self-aware to self-promote, and I totally get it. The key here is let's say to do it in a way that is natural, that is organic, that is spontaneous, that it's not spammy, of course, and only whenever it is relevant for the audience to learn about your newsletter. 

The seventh and last one is SEO, of course. Myself, as an SEO consultant, I know this pretty well, and I have tried to optimize my own SEOFOMO hub and presence to rank first for SEO newsletters.

You know what is the tricky part there? That pretty much because of the search intent, the intent of the queries, Google will very much right now rank lists of newsletters that other creators or readers have written about not only a single one, but reviews of the top 10 newsletters of this sector or the best newsletters that I am subscribed to about X or Y, right? 

Even if you have a very amazingly optimized landing page, it's very unlikely that you will end up ranking with your commercially-driven page, right? So a good way to achieve this is to also piggyback on the third-party sites produced in many cases talking about the newsletters in your industry. Go and reach out to them. Do a little bit of connection there, reaching out with the websites' owners, asking them, "Hey, have you tried my newsletter? Have you subscribed? You can take a look at previous editions here without having to subscribe first. It's to show you how useful it can be for your audience and for yourself to subscribe to."  And it's very likely the next time that they update, they refresh the page, they will include you. 

Finally, as a bonus, this is something that might not necessarily be a tactic connected or that you should develop just because of the sake of the growth of the newsletter. But I believe that this, from a product standpoint, your main newsletter product is something that you need to take care of.

When you think about your newsletter, it should a topic that is niche enough, but also meaningful enough. You should have a good angle so it gives you new insights to share all the time, that it's worth it to keep updated about, and you should do it with consistency, with a consistency or frequency that actually makes sense because, of course, you don't want to spam your audience.

I mean, if I sent SEOFOMO every day, it could be certainly too much for many of them, and I wouldn't necessarily have all the time, too much to cover new that is actually meaningful in SEO. So it will go against what I want to actually achieve with the newsletter. So this is the thing, right? You need to balance it out. 

With SEOFOMO, SEO you might think it's like a niche. Yes, it's a niche, but a lot is happening all the time. A lot is going on all the time. So it is worth it to learn about it and keep updated weekly. Yes, it's a niche, but it has a big enough audience, a big enough soup industry let's say.

Then, on the other hand, when I started MarketingFOMO a couple of years ago, interestingly enough, even if it is even a bigger industry because it encompasses everything which is marketing, realistically because there are so many other digital marketing newsletters, it has been much harder for me to grow realistically, right?

I keep it going. Consistency is key. I won't stop. But it has been much more difficult because of all of the competition out there, and some of them are even daily. For some people, it actually makes sense to keep it updated daily rather than weekly, right? That is completely fine.

Let's see the other example here with AI Marketers. AI Marketers, I literally started three weeks ago, and it has gone from 0 to 1.2K subscribers in a time that I consider to be a record.

This is the thing. When I launched AI Marketers, I had a couple of people coming to me, and it's like, "Aleyda, why did you launch AI Marketers? You should have launched AIFOMO." I know that from a branding perspective, building the FOMO empire here of newsletters, I wanted to call it in a way that was descriptive enough and meaningful so the people knew what they were going to subscribe about. I wanted to make sure that people knew that it was not an AI newsletter in general. Why? Because that is too broad. I would have fallen into the same challenge with MarketingFOMO.

AI newsletters, like dozens of them that are sent even daily. Actually, at this point, it actually makes sense, if you're trying to follow up with everything AI, to read them daily. I didn't want that. I wanted to do something targeted towards marketers because that is my actual, more specific industry. The angle that I wanted to take is like AI news, resources, guides, tips, and tools targeted to marketers only. It has proven so far to be attractive enough.

So whenever, if you think, "I would like to start a newsletter, but is it too niche," not necessarily. If there's a lot going on that makes sense to follow up with on a weekly basis, why not? Of course, you should balance it out and make sure that you provide a lot of signal-versus-noise type of criteria here that you need to assess, of course.

I hope that with all of these tips and do's and don'ts, you're able to literally start your newsletter from scratch potentially, but with even better, more focusing on those audiences and those resources that actually make sense for you to keep the effort going.

Remember, consistency is key. Don't expect it to grow from one day to another. Yes, it's true that I have this number of subscribers at this point, but it has taken five years to get there. Keep it going. Thank you very much.