Welcome to The Newsletter Operator!

In today’s email:

• How to make a high-converting landing page for your newsletter

• The best links of the week – in a new format

• 20+ landing page examples you can steal

Let’s dive in!

Deep Dive

How To Make a Landing Page That Converts Over 50% of Visitors To Subscribers

Your landing page might be the most overlooked part of your growth strategy.

Here’s why:

• Most newsletters don’t put much thought into it

• They end up with a page that converts ~20%-30% of visitors to subscribers

• With a few simple tweaks, your landing page conversion rates can be over 50%

…which means double the subscriber growth, just from tweaking one page!

Here’s my 10-step process to make a great landing page

Step 1 - Put Everything "Above The Fold"

Above the fold is the part of a page shown before scrolling. Your copy, image(s), and form should fit here.

All we need is an email so a long website or sales page isn’t needed. Adding more sections below the fold will likely reduce your conversion rate.

Step 2 - Only Ask For An Email Address

The more you ask for, the lower your conversion rate.

Step 3 - Give The User Only 2 Options

To (1) enter their email and subscribe or (2) exit the page.

Remove links to the menu, about page, past newsletters, etc.

Keep links to your terms and privacy policy in the footer, but everything else needs to go!

Step 4 - Your Headline Should Have a Clear Benefit

Your headline should explain the value you provide to readers in a simple way.

Don't make your headline:

• The name of your newsletter

• A statement about the topics you cover

Do in your headline:

• Promise the reader something they want

• Show how your newsletter solves a problem

To quote Donald Miller: “a caveman should be able to glance at it [your headline] and immediately grunt back what you offer”

Step 5 - Your Subheadline Should Say These 3-6 Things

A. When it's sent

B. What they will learn

C. How long it takes to read

D. Who reads it or writes it (Authority)

E. How many people read it (Social proof)

F. That it's free (if it's not, don't mention this)

Your subheadline should explain how you'll create the value you explained in your headline.

Here you should also:

1. Emphasize how fast and easy is it for readers to get that value.

For example:

“Become a Smarter Investor In 5 Minutes” > “Become a Smarter Investor”

2. Make it believable (use social proof and authority)

For example:

“Trusted by 10,000+ Investors”

“Read by professional investors at Goldman Saches, BlackRock, Citadel”

Step 6 - If You Can't Communicate All Those Things In Your Subheadline - Put Them In Other Places

Like:

• Below the form

• In the button text

• In a testimonial section

(More examples in step 9.)

Step 7 - If You Have Testimonials, Use Them

…and if you don’t have testimonials, ask for them

Use testimonials that show how your newsletter helped a reader.

Make the testimonials more believable by adding images, full names, and titles.

Step 8 - Add a Visual

Give visitors a taste of your newsletter with an image.

Or use this space to show off your testimonials with images of your readers.

Step 9 - Get Ideas From Great Newsletter Landing Pages

Here are the best I’ve found:

• 1440

• TLDR

• Chartr

• Refind

• Okdork

• Elevator

• Backlinko

• Trends.vc

• Milk Road

• Nano Flips

• Retail Brew

• Roca News

• Starter Story

• Growth Daily

• Justin Welsh

• Read The Joe

• The Newsette

• 5 Bullet Friday

• Growth.Design

• Marketing Brew

• DTC Newsletter

• The Hustle (Old)

• Contrarian Thinking

• Marketing Examined

Step 10 - Pick The Right Page Builder

Getting started with a beehiiv or substack landing page is fine. But these offer limited capabilities and customization.

If you’re looking to implement the best practices I shared above, I recommend Carrd.

It’s cheap, easy to use, and integrates with my favorite ESP – beehiiv.

The Best Links

Growth 

How Daniel Murray grew Marketing Millennials to 90k subscribers (link)

Why LinkedIn company pages are a HUGE opportunity (link)

An AI newsletter adding 1k+ subscribers per day (link)

Monetization

A step-by-step guide for finding sponsors for your newsletter (link)

These 4 ways are the only ones you will need to find newsletter sponsors (link)

Newsletter News

The Daily Upside launches a new publication, Power Corridor (link)

The Generalist moves back to Substack (link)

Converkit is launching a “Creator Network” (link)

New Beehiiv features to customize your reader's onboarding experience (link)