The top newsletter ads of 2024

👋 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 $25-250k / month with newsletters.

New reader highlights: Welcome to Victor (The Average Joe), Stephanie (Boardroom), and Erika (1440).

In May, I was invited by one of the widely known AI newsletters to compete side-by-side against another newsletter growth agency in their ad account.

I’m going to talk about what we did to cut their CPL by 25% (while also improving their open rate and click-through rate).

Now let me be clear -

While we did win the partnership, I’m not here to rag on the other agency.

Quite the opposite.

They did a f*cking awesome job and we had to push very hard to come out ahead.

Both of our efforts were a win for the client and (hopefully by the end of this email) a win for your team.

Here are my top takeaways from the head-to-head:

1. Don’t sleep on winning formats

The ‘format’ is critical in your ads.

Its job is to stop the scroll and give your script the room to do its thing.

Outside of of the newsletter space it’s really just known as the ‘visual hook’.

You see visual hooks work in all kinds of newsletter ads.

Here’s what we’re seeing perform in Q2 ‘24:

• iPhone Notes

• Tweet screenshots

• Text over a B-roll video

Sometimes we come up with our own (shoutout to Jason Levin’s interview ads, which have killed it for a few clients)

But we also monitor ad accounts across niches religiously.

This pen & paper ad format has been making its way across Twitter (view the ad below).

We’ve been seeing 2-6% ad click-through rates using it - it’s the top performer in ad accounts right now.

2. Show your lead magnets some love  

Lead magnets get a bad rap in the newsletter world.

Can they result in low-quality readers? Absolutely.

But do them right and they can be a game-changer.

This client has a thoughtful, course-based lead magnet.

Anyone who takes this course can go from 0 to reasonably competent in AI in a few hours.

It took them 5-10 hours to put together, but it was worth it.

We’ve seen a 10-15% improvement in CPL from just this variable, which at their scale is significant.

3. Copywriting is king

One of our winning ads was the exact same hand-with-pen-and-paper ad format as the competing agency.

Driving to the same lead magnet.

Yet our version of the concept had a massive (20%+) improvement in engagement (open rate/click-through rate) over theirs.

This test isolated the exact winning variable.

It was the copywriting.

Well, there was technically 1 confounding factor.

The hands are different.

Maybe I just have the most beautiful hands newsletter ads have ever seen….

….but my money’s on the copywriting.

I used to run an 8-figure mobile app portfolio and became obsessed over great copy during that time.

(Remember Lensa, the AI avatar app that was everywhere in 2022? We brought in their marketing guy as my head of marketing. He was awesome.)

We spend a great deal of time cohorting our clients’ readers and developing ad concepts hyper-specific to those segments.

One persona.

One problem.

One level of market awareness.

I talk more about this here.

This is the single most important thing you can do for your ad strategy - #1 and #2 above don’t even come close.

Good luck and happy copywriting.

That’s the letter.

- Nathan May

P.S. - a few founders have reached out mentioning members of their team haven’t been able to sign up for the newsletter. For now, this list is private - if you need a team member added, shoot me a message and I’ll get you squared away.

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2. Have a question on growth, monetization, or content? Reply here, on LinkedIn, or shoot a note to [email protected]