Generating $250k for a 15k-person newsletter

👋 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 $25-500k+ / month with newsletters.

New reader highlights: Welcome to Clayton, Founder & CEO @HW Media | Lainna, Director of Newsletter Growth @Forbes | Alex, VP of Content & Audience Development, Healthline @Red Ventures | Jonathan, VP Performance Marketing Partnerships @Dotdash Meredith

Hey - it’s Nathan.

I want to talk to you about a 15,000-person newsletter that we helped generate $250,000+ for in < 90 days.

(Most of you will have much larger newsletters which is why, at $15+ per reader, I think the unit economics here are interesting).

Remember me writing about the media mullet - simple, ad-supported media in the front, one or more high-LTV offers in the back?

This is one way to execute a high-LTV playbook.

That was our goal working with my buddies Jesse Pujji and Andrew Warner.

Jesse built one of the original Facebook agencies, sold it for well into the 8-figures, and now runs a portfolio of bootstrapped businesses doing $20M per year.

One of those companies is his newsletter, Bootstrapped Giants, which he’s partnered with Andrew to run.

We helped them launch two products for B2B founders, and…

The sales metrics were exceptional:

• $17,000 in sales of a $47 low-ticket product ($1.15 per reader)

• $250,000 in up-sells to a $5,000 B2B accelerator ($17 per reader)

And now we’re selling the $47 product to cold traffic from Meta at a 3.5% CVR ($1.65 / sub) in the first 7 days.

We’re going to get to negative CAC, giving them infinite runway to get their high-ticket offer into the 7-figures.

I’m going to tell you how we did this whole thing, but first -

I wanna gush about my team.

I’m really proud of what we do - we’re hyperfocused on driving revenue and making every client feel like we’re an extension of their company.

Here are some reactions from Jesse and the BG team:

I run through walls for the people we work with and if you want to see if we’d be a good fit for you on paid growth, sponsorships, or product/service sales, you can learn more here.

Alright, here are my learnings -

1. Solve one problem for one type of customer VERY well 

When we dug into BG’s list demographics, we found something crucial: 50% of Jesse’s subscribers were either running or interested in starting a B2B company.

Instead of trying to be everything to everyone, we leaned hard into this segment.

First, we used ChatGPT to analyze free-response surveys asking where readers needed help.

The result was a word cloud with one bigass phrase, “Sales & Marketing”, 4x the size of anything else.

Message received!

Deeper qualitative research was next.

Jesse and I spent 10 days emailing back and forth with 50 readers about their specific roadblocks.

We got extremely detailed feedback from readers doing $0 all the way to $120k a month like this:

The patterns were clear:

• Founders felt stuck in fulfillment, unable to systematize customer acquisition

• They were paralyzed in choosing between marketing channels

• Many felt "salesey" and uncomfortable with outreach

• Most attributed their current clients to "luck" or referrals

So we created something hyper-specific: a $47 B2B Blueprint containing Jesse's actual playbook for lead generation and sales.

Not theory - the exact tools his team uses at GrowthAssistant ($15M ARR):

• His lead list development process + tracking sheet

• LinkedIn outreach scripts

• His entire step-by-step process for setting, closing, and following up on 30-minute sales calls

• Real sales call recordings from his companies

2. Great copywriting trumps design

The key to converting cold traffic wasn't fancy design or some complex funnel (here’s the sales page).

It was understanding what the customer wanted and having a strong copywriting framework.

Here’s my unedited summary from our team notes:

We structured the launch sequence to systematically address these points:

1. Paint the dream outcome

2. Acknowledge specific problems they told us about

3. Show how the Blueprint solves each one

4. Share testimonials from founders who were in their position

5. Present the offer (positioned as 10x less than perceived value)

6. Create urgency with a legitimate reason

It’s hard to overstate: These are copywriting principles that work in everything from B2B SaaS to recipe media properties across sales pages, email headlines, ads, and landing pages.

3. Overdelivering on a low-ticket product is a huge trust-builder

We had founders writing in about finally feeling confident in their sales process, knowing exactly where to find clients, and having a real system instead of hoping for referrals.

I was on a call the other day with a guy who owns Banks.com (killer domain, right?).

He bought the blueprint for his team to use. He swears by it and we had a cool “Wait, you worked on this thing I love?” moment.

Having everyone feel like they were getting a 10x value:price ratio on the low ticket was key to launching a $5,000 offer less than 30 days later.

A few other quick ‘lessons learned’ before I let you go:

1. For your first low-ticket launch, time-limited releases (offered for X days) help you concentrate demand in a short period so you can validate an idea quickly

2. For your first high-ticket launch like a cohort or event, do a scarcity-limited release (X number of spots) for the same reason

3. Communities are hard - cohorts are much easier to launch than communities and don’t commit you to continue beyond cohort 1 while you’re testing

4. Urgency emails (2-3 emails in the last 24 hours of an offer) can drive 20-50% in additional sales

5. Email nurture is getting flipped on its face - no one wants your marketing emails, lead by giving value vs. extracting value (see this post from Alex Lieberman)

6. Alex Hormozi is the McKinsey of sales frameworks and every entrepreneur or executive who touches revenue should read about his framework for offers

That's the letter.

- Nathan

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