Marketing Qualified - A Reel Axis Publication
Posts
B2B marketers need to steal this newsletter growth hack

B2B marketers need to steal this newsletter growth hack

Also: 5 post Friday.

Marketing Qualified
July 12, 2024

GM, and welcome back to Marketing Qualified. Excited to talk about B2B marketing? We are! Let’s go!

B2B marketers need to steal this newsletter growth hack. It generates millions of subscribers, but no one in B2B uses it.
5 post Friday. Some of our recent favorites from across the internet.

🥷 B2B marketers need to steal this newsletter growth hack.

If you study some of the top newsletters in the world, you’ll start to notice a pattern.

They use a specific tactic at the end of their emails.

It’s a tactic that’s helped creators like Sahil Bloom skyrocket to 1M subscribers in less than 3 years. Morning Brew says that implementing this tactic helped them achieve hyper-growth, and now they have over 4M subs.

Smaller newsletters have noticed and are starting to use it, too. And it’s helping them grow their subscriber lists faster than ever.

This got us thinking: If it’s working so well for individual content creators and newsletter-focused companies like Morning Brew and The Hustle, why aren’t any B2B brands trying to steal it???

So what’s the tactic?

A referral program.

At the bottom of each email, they offer giveaways, prizes, and discounts in exchange for sharing it with friends. If your friend subscribes, you get the credit. The more subscribers you send their way, the better your prize.

How to steal it for B2B

We think more B2B brands should be stealing this tactic to grow their newsletters or improve their overall email marketing strategy.

Picture this…

The next time you host a webinar, you have a referral section at the bottom of your email promoting it. As a result, you get 5% more people registering for no additional work.

Or your team just spent six months building out a massive research report. You’re super proud of it. You email it out to your customers with a referral section at the bottom. Your cost to acquire the 200 extra downloads through the referral program was $0. The cost per download of the LinkedIn ad campaign you’re running for it is $65 each.

These are just two examples, but hopefully, you get the idea. The sky is really the limit when it comes to how creative you could get with this tactic.

In most of the existing referral program examples we found, the programs offer promo items or tchotchkes (we admit we had to look up how the heck tchotchke is spelled 😂).

B2B brands could do this, too. But we’d recommend thinking bigger.

Companies could offer discounts on their customers' monthly subscriptions, free tickets to industry events, sponsorships at their annual conference, access to exclusive content, etc.

If someone refers you a subscriber who goes on to purchase your high-ticket B2B product/service, that would be a massive ROI for you!

Don’t be afraid to exchange more than some stickers or a t-shirt in order to acquire that referral.