If you want to grow your list with Meta ads, you need to be using these 7 creative formats.

I've seen these formats help B2B brands acquire newsletter subscribers for $1.39 CPL (cost per email subscriber), and even $0.43 CPL for B2C newsletters.

And these costs aren't from campaigns that are spending a few hundred dollars per month on Meta.

I'm talking big budgets. $50k, $100k, and $300k+ per month in ad spend…

And still acquiring email subscribers for <$1-$2 each.

That's what we do at the GrowLetter agency. We’ve help the world's largest brands, publishers, and creators add over 10M+ email subscribers profitably.

For example:

A “format” is a type of ad. Like a template.

These aren't 7 individual ads. These are 7 formats that have created hundreds of ads that brands and creators have used to acquire hundreds of thousands of newsletter subscribers.

I don't recommend copying ads. These are designed to give you inspiration for the types of ads you should emulate to be successful.

Note: I'm going to use big brands that serve broad audiences, like 1440 Media, as a primary exampled because they use nearly all these formats. But these formats can work in ANY niche or industry.

If you want a swipe file with more examples of ads using these formats, reply to this email and I'll send it, free.

Now, the ad formats…

Text on screen, video in the background with background music.

No voiceover, no direct-to-camera pitch. Make the copy big and easy to read. The copy does the selling. The video just gets people's attention and allows this format to work well on all placements — feed, story, reels, etc.

This is similar to a motion graphic. But instead of just static text on screen and a video in the background, you'll write a script, typically 20 to 45 seconds long, and use a voiceover that pitches your newsletter.

You'll put the captions of the voiceover on screen so they're big and easy to read.

Any video in the background that fits your brand can work. It could be a moving landscape or cityscape, a car ride, drone video, or a B-roll video or animated video that's relevant to the brand and newsletter.

Also — Most people are using AI to create voiceovers of the script they write, using tools like Eleven Labs, Kapwing, Capcut, and others

These ads are “screenshots” of popular social media apps, tools, or other online interfaces people are accustomed to seeing.

Of course, they're not real screenshots.

You can make these types of images with Canva or AI tools to make them look like a tweet, for example, but you've written the copy yourself.

Common UI hacking graphics:

This is where you use an image of something authentic that fits your brand, and you put text over it that pitches your newsletter.

It could be an image of you speaking at an event, a landscape, your office, or anything that fits your brand or the theme of the ad. Ideally, the image is something you would naturally see on social media.

Many times, the text will look it's written IN the environment — like it's written on a whiteboard, window, or sticky note. That can be done with AI (ChatGPT images and Canva's AI designer is a popular way to do this).

An image with a big block of text. Yeah, it's ugly, but it works if the copy is good.

In this format, you'll take a video of text on some type of IRL object.

It could be a simple sheet of paper you print out. Or your own book, multiple sticky notes, words on a whiteboard, and more.

After you film this IRL text you’ll record a voiceover that reads the text, word for word, or elaborates on the text.

It's dead simple, but like many of the other ad formarts, it works if the copy is good.

Exampels:

This is the classic UGC or direct-to-camera yapping video. A 30-60 vertical video with a strong hook that pitches your newsletter. You can film these yourself or hire hundreds of actors from platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, and more.

Here’s my full guide on how to make these types of videos and write scripts for them.

Start using these ad formats in your marketing, and you'll attract lower-cost, higher-quality newsletter subscribers from Meta that buy your stuff!

If you want a team of experts to do this for you, check out the GrowLetter agency.