DEEP DIVE
If you’re starting a newsletter, the most important thing you need is content market fit.
Is your content insanely valuable, indispensable, and solving a real program? If so, everything else in your business will be easier.
With content market fit it’s easier to:
Grow your audience
Sell sponsorships and products
Position yourself as #1 in your niche
Without it, it's incredibly difficult to build a sustainable media business.
How do you identify content market fit?
Well, there’s no perfect formula. But here’s what you should aim for:
A) 1000+ subscribers organically
These subscribers come from sources like social media, readers sharing your content, search, and word of mouth (not paid ads).
B) 1−3 positive replies per newsletter (or more)
Readers are replying to your emails or polls with responses like:
“I can’t believe this is free”
“I would paid for this content”
“How do you put out content like this every week?”
“How do you only have [small number] of followers?!”
“Best advice / newsletter I’ve read about this topic or niche”
Don’t expect this type of responses from every newsletter. But your best content should get positive replies.
Also, ask people to reply and share feedback!
At the end of each newsletter say something like: Did you like this newsletter? Let me know by replying to clicking the poll below. I read every response.
C) 80%+ positive poll rating
Every newsletter you send should have a poll (at the end) with 3 options to respond that correlate to:
5 stars
3 stars
1 star
Poll examples
Be creative. Make the poll unique to your brand and style.
Aim for a 80% or higher “5-star” to “love it” poll rating.
D) 50%-60% unique open rate (or more)
Open rate is not perfect, but it’s still worth tracking. With 1-10,000 subscribers you should aim for a 50%-60%+ unique newsletter open rate.
Readers should be opening the majority of your newsletters.
At 20,000-100,000+ a lower open rate is acceptable.
Here are my open rate and engagement benchmarks.
C) 5%-10% unique CTR
Readers should be clicking and interacting with your content.
Since open rate has become unreliable because of Apple Mail Privacy Protection, clicks and CTR are the most important email metric to track.
If you don’t have many links or call to actions, consider adding more. This will help your deliverability and engagement in the long run.
That’s it!
If you have all these things, you likely have content market fit.
That means your on the path to publishing insanely valuable content and creating a newsletter that can become a large and profitable business
How do you find content market fit?
This is the hard part. Luckily it’s straight forward: You need to publish and get feedback.
Publish a newsletter and social content. Then beg for feedback.
Here’s exactly what to do:
A) Publish a weekly newsletter
Weekly is the perfect cadence to start. It’s frequent enough for readers to build a habit of opening yet still possible for you to write and publish in a few hours per week.
At first, you need to be spending more time on social content than newsletter content.
If you don't have a large email audience yet, you need to spend more time creating content to get people on your email list then for the people already on it.
Email newsletters don’t have built in discovery or sharing. Social content does.
B) Publish to one social channel 3-7 (or more) times per week
Social is where your content can be discovered, shared, and improved faster.
Publishing on social creates a fast feedback loop. You quickly see what type of content gets love, hate, or ignored. After that, you can improve quickly.
To find content market fit you need to experiment. You need reps. Shots on goal.
On social you can run 5-7+ “experiments” per weekly that could reach a large potential audience.
C) Beg for feedback
The only way to know your writing is good is when people tell you.
Don’t expect feedback to magically appear, ask for it!
Every newsletter should have a poll
End social posts with asks for feedback
Nearly every newsletter should ask readers to reply
Send a survey with 5-10 multiple-choice questions quarterly
Set up a call with readers who reply and respond to surveys
Ask readers what they need help with. Then write content in response to that reader's question or problem.
Last thing
If you’re new to writing online, this may sound hard. Maybe scary.
I get it. I started from scratch with no audience and no experience.
But it’s worth it. Over time it gets easier as you build momentum and your audience snowballs. The tips I share in this newsletter and on my website will help.
Your content is the product in a media business. It takes time to improve it.
Start publishing now. Even if the content isn’t perfect. Publishing fast and frequently is the only way to make it.
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