beehiiv's big launch: An honest review

👋 Hi friends -

Welcome to The Newsletter Growth Memo. Twice a month, I share short reflections with my newsletter clients + other operators.

Zero formality, ads, or affiliate links - just a guy sharing learnings from working with media operators doing $25k-$2M+ / month with newsletters.

New reader highlights: Milly, Founder @ Generalist World | Nolan, SVP of Partnerships @ Wellput | Danny, Content & Partnerships @ Shadowlion

beehiiv dropped its winter release last week.

Three big features: dynamic content, digital products, and an AI web builder.

It was a MAJOR product drop and can basically be summarized into 3 wins for you if you:

Let’s talk about where digital products (e.g., communities, courses, accelerators, etc.) are going.

First, there is an exodus of attention and trust from traditional institutions and media.

In other words, people increasingly want to learn and buy from individuals they know/like/trust.

And that’s great for people who sell information.

Now, maybe your feelings about digital products have been tainted by kids flashing Lambos while they teach dropshipping out of Miami penthouses.

But there are plenty of high-integrity information sellers.

A few white-collar offers from people I know making a minimum $1M (many $2-10M):

beehiiv is positioning itself at the center of the white-collar digital product wave.

And so I want to write to you about all of the MANY things that suck about launching digital products that they’re in a position to solve.

For context - I’m launching a course on paid ads (tap here if you’d like to be notified when it goes live) next week.

Why?

First - never get your hair cut by a bald barber!

Increasingly, our clients sell digital products.

We’ve helped them launch $7,000+ coaching programs, $5,000 accelerators, etc.

But never a self-paced <$1,000 course.

And so I need to have ‘been there, done that’.

Second, many people should not pay an agency to do paid ads.

Perhaps they already have full-time people on this.

Or they’re early, <$30k/month in revenue (in which case, they definitely shouldn’t hire an agency).

I'm listening closely to the needs of my audience (i.e., you), reflecting on what's being asked of me, and creating things that solve those problems.

So, how’s beehiiv going to help me and other people with digital products?

The opportunity: Launches are a mess of expensive tools strung together…

Plus a ridiculous amount of time to set all of this up.

beehiiv already has email and website.

The same way Shopify is a business-in-a-box for ecommerce stores, beehiiv can help anyone turn email into a full-stack media business.

Here’s a brief behind-the-scenes breakdown of a course launch and how beehiiv could support nearly every pillar.

Email is unequivocally the best way to get people to buy things.

The role of email nurture is to convince someone of 4 things:

Great writing helps your reader understand.

Great copy helps them feel understood.

beehiiv’s personalization features are going to be INCREDIBLE for this.

(I had Justin Welsh on Personal IPO 8 weeks ago. We walked through how, by ONLY personalizing the opening line of his sales emails and the headline of his sales pages, he generated an extra $650k, +60%, in sales.)

I paid someone $3,500 to design my sales page for my launch next week.

(You can see a WIP version here - note this has placeholder images / not finalized)

But the core ingredients of a sales page are fairly standardized. You will almost ALWAYS see:

1/ Eyebrow (Who it’s for)
Example: For newsletter operators, creators, and founders.

2/ Headline (The big promise)
Example: Grow your newsletter with subscribers who buy from you and your sponsors

3/ Proof snapshot (Credibility in 1 second)
Example: The paid ads system powering dozens of the world’s top newsletters

4/ The problem (Why they’re stuck)
Example: Your paid ads are chasing vanity metrics, buying subscribers who never open, click, or buy.

5/ The mechanism (Why your method works)
Example: We’ve 2x-3x’d the engagement/LTV of multiple newsletters by building their creative strategy around specific reader personas and measuring which ads drive the most profitable readers.

6/ What’s inside (Your system)
Example: Start → Create → Scale → Measure.

7/ Guarantee (Remove the fear)
Example: 90-day, 100% money-back guarantee.

8/ CTA + urgency (Drive action now)
Example: Enroll now - doors close Dec 1 at 11:59pm ET.

What’s stopping beehiiv from templatizing this and other sales pages so that ANY user can launch a digital product?

It’s another way your beehiiv subscription would pay for itself.

And if your email list, website, AND sales page are all on one platform, why would you ever churn?

Stripe-native checkouts (which beehiiv uses today) are built for selling a single product at a single price point.

But that's not how you build an A+ sales funnel. You need:

A great example: Nicolas Cole made $650,000 in 7 days launching a product called Category Newsletter Creator (CNC) last year.

Here’s their day-by-day sales volume.

The TLDR: They made 20%+ more revenue ($100k+) from having an upsell in the checkout process (CNC plus products called PBL and Vortex)

When I launch the Newsletter Meta Ads Academy next week, it will be $350.

But I want to offer it for 2 payments of $175 to make it more accessible.

Right now you need to be on SamCart ($160/month), GoHighLevel ($200/month), or Clickfunnels ($200/month) to do that.

All features that beehiiv can roll up.

This is the part that is the least creator-friendly. When someone buys a product, you need to:

I had to scope out this document for a Make/Zapier specialist.

If beehiiv owned the checkout, it could handle 75% of this internally (all field updates, automation enrollments, etc.).

I don’t see beehiiv hosting entire digital course/community infrastructure (maybe - that sounds hard!).

So I won’t spend time on it / am just including this to be exhaustive. Ultimately, it’s another step that requires tools + bandwidth for build-out.

One could argue that this email is a beehiiv product roadmap request from Nathan in disguise

Maybe… (Tyler + beehiiv team, I know you all read this thing - let’s talk!)

Hopefully, it’s also helpful for you to see behind the scenes of my product launch and where I think beehiiv might be headed.

That's the letter.

- Nathan