How I’ve grown my email newsletter from 0–800 in 8 hours of launch?

For the last couple of weeks, My mom had been experiencing severe backpains and seeing her like this, made me wish I could do more for her. Every low moment has pushed to me get back to the hustle — so I decided I’d take on a Sideproject.

I have personally found a lot of noise when it comes to good content around product, design, and growth. I consume a lot of good content every day and found people interested in getting more quality content which can help them to grasp some valuable knowledge. So, I decided to share the best possible content with people around me. But, everybody kept telling me that newsletters are dead. But, I am very fascinated by the way The Hustle has done their business over it. So, I decided to launch a newsletter and see if I can get some early subscribers without sending the first newsletter. And, I was amazed by the results I got.

8 Hours. 800 Subscribers. Zero Newsletters Sent

I always got to hear from my mentor cum partner Amit Agarwal that

Growth is not magic. It is all about doing small things in the best possible way.

And, I did exactly same.

Here are few learnings that I have from this side project :

1. Decide the right tool for your newsletter

The first step was to look for the right tool for collecting email addresses and then sending out a newsletter without writing a single line of code effectively. I noticed that one of the friends, Tiffany, had been using Revue, her response on the product helped me to form an opinion. I decided to go with it.

It is an amazing tool if you are looking for sending out newsletters in your network. They have very clean UI to collect emails and send the newsletter. The volume of my use-case was sizeable, hence their premium service was the perfect fit for me.

From experience I know that no one really evaluates a newsletter based on design or UI. It should be in a readable format, packed with enough information that people think is useful for them and their peers.

2. Your closed network will always be the first ones to buy anything from you.

In last five years, launching multiple products, has taught me that your closed network of friends are always the first ones willing to try out your product.

So, I shared on my social networks about newsletter’s launch and started observing whether the people are interested in reading the content curated by me.

The second thing I did by sharing with few people <15 over emails about this side project. And, people have started buying into this small side project. They start sharing about this. My first hundred subscribers came from people I have worked with closely or have known for a long time.

3. Hacking into network of your first set of users can skyrocket your growth

This is the small thing I have learned while launching Toymail. If your first set of users are excited about your product, you should find ways to go into their network. There are more chances that you will acquire users from their network without spending a dollar.

I did the same thing. I have started identifying people from subscribers list who are influential in their network. Because, I know if these people talk about my newsletter, there will be subscribers from their network. I have started asking every such person to share with three people in their network who could get benefited from this newsletter. I wanted to track the ROI also.

Any referral campaign without measuring ROI is not scalable at all.

So, I had asked them to share the names of the people they are referring so that I could ensure they are getting my emails.

This small hack worked like magic for me and helped to grow my numbers very fast.

4. Creating FOMO always work.

Fear of missing out on something pushes users to try out the product. This is what Snapchat and Facebook have cracked very well. Taking learnings from these two stories, I have started sharing on social media about the response I am getting. This created curiosity in the mind of readers and converted them to subscribe to a newsletter about to be launched.

Another small hack I used to find who are the people actually waiting for the newsletter. I delayed the newsletter. And, the results were not expected. 10 percent of people from my email list of 800 reminded me about the delay in the newsletter.

And, I am finally back to my hustle mode, while hacking into stuff. I haven’t done anything like magic. All I did were very small things in the best possible ways. And, you know the result now.

If you want to talk about product, design and growth. Feel free to reach out to me anytime.

P.S : First published here