Writing Captivating Newsletters

Teaching is my business. Content is the classroom. Every post, newsletter, or podcast is a chance to help someone think differently about partnerships, leadership, or growth. That’s the real reward. But building a content-led business is still a new journey. There’s no 100-year playbook. We’re all figuring it out as we go. That’s why I lean on frameworks. One of the most useful I’ve found comes from Chenell Basilio into what makes content “insanely valuable.” She mapped six emotional drivers that high value content unlocks: 1. Saves money 2. Saves time 3. Makes you feel smarter 4. Unlocks a new way to grow 5. Speeds up execution 6. Adds levity or human connection When I create, I use these as a filter. If a piece doesn’t trigger at least two, it probably won’t stick and we don't ship it. Here’s how that plays out: Newsletter • Each edition must be more than interesting • It has to be bookmark-worthy • A resource you’ll forward to a colleague LinkedIn • Each post aims to be practical and clear • The kind of ideas you can quote in a team meeting • The resource you'll 📸 and read over ☕ Podcast • The prep for each episode must be world class • Each episode must deliver a 'human aha' • Listeners should be compelled to use it to open conversations inside their own business And here’s the part people don’t see: it takes a tribe. Yes, I’m the one writing. But I have a tiny team behind me making sure this gets to you in the right format, at the right time, in a way that’s useful. Without them, this system doesn’t run (thank you Claire, Brad, Kyle and Tom!) It’s a journey. Not just for me, but for anyone building a business by teaching and sharing ideas. And if you’re on that path too, my advice is simple: Don’t aim to be consistent first. Aim to be valuable. Because when the value is real, consistency follows. -------------------------------- ♻️ Repost this to help someone you know 📬 Like help to close deals others can't? Join my free newsletter: https://lnkd.in/gZtdkx_U ➕ Follow me, Phil Hayes-St Clair for more like this

My 5-Step Content Creation Process – From Ideation to Publication (Got me 48k LinkedIn followers and 11k newsletter subs) 1️⃣ Plant Whenever I have an idea, I plant its seed in my Apple Notes or Notion. How I Get Ideas: ⦿ Client Work: When I run into a new problem, I write a practical guide on how to solve it. (Example: How to write headlines. Fast.) ⦿ Curiosity: I consume a lot of content outside of marketing and advertising. I’m especially into music, poetry, theater, philosophy, psychology, history, and film. This helps me find interesting ideas that I can later connect to marketing basics to make them more interesting. (Example: How Patagonia’s marketing connects to Aristotle) ⦿ Conversations: Random input from outside triggers new ideas. Sometimes it’s real-life conversations, but mostly posts and comments I read online. This helps me write more relevant content. (Example: Scriptwriting with AI.) 2️⃣ Water I usually wait between two weeks and six months for an idea to ripen. During that time, I slowly add to it – thoughts, quotes, visuals, facts, and other pieces of research that I come across. 3️⃣ Harvest Every time I need to write a newsletter (every two weeks), I pick an idea from my garden that feels ripe and try to turn it into something useful. My Three Pillars of Useful Content: ⦿ Savable: People can easily understand it, save it, and come back to it when they need it. ⦿ Stake: Useful content is vulnerable. The best posts make me close my eyes and count backward before hitting publish because they usually involve sharing personal work, ideas, or stories that might make me look dumb. But that’s what makes it interesting—nobody wants safe, cookie-cutter content. ⦿ Simplify the Complex or Complexify the Simple: Explain a difficult task step-by-step or take something basic and dive deeper, approaching it from a fresh perspective. 4️⃣ Trim ⦿ Cut the Fluff: Once I have a messy first draft, I start editing. I strip out all the fluff and obvious stuff. It’s tough, but I keep reminding myself, “Your reader is smarter than you. They’ll get it.” ⦿ Promo Post: I write a promo post for LinkedIn, promising my readers what they’ll learn if they check out the newsletter. This helps me focus on the main point, cutting out anything that doesn’t support that promise. ⦿ AI: I use GPT to find more examples, proofread, and help me nail the right words. (🤖 My favorite editing prompt "Carefully compress the sentence below. Eliminate unnecessary words and replace longer words with shorter ones, ensuring the sentence retains its original meaning, info, and tone.") 5️⃣ Distribute Once the newsletter is out, I repurpose it into short-form content for LinkedIn, Reddit, and Twitter. In total, it usually takes me 16-20 hours of work from the moment I pick an idea until it’s ready to ship, visuals and all. Well, I hope that was useful ;)

How 3 simple words grew my newsletter to 70,000+ subscribers: But first, you should know why my first newsletters FAILED… In 2018, I started a newsletter called ‘The Feifer Five’ — featuring 5 things I liked each week. Two big problems: 1) The name said nothing about the content 2) It didn’t state WHY it should matter to YOU Surprise, surprise: it topped out at 5,000 subscribers. In 2021, I changed the name to ‘Build For Tomorrow’ — and the content was broadly about “change.” Growth was slow. Then I remembered what sales coach Myron Golden told me… Every offer must be: 𝗠𝗘𝗔𝗦𝗨𝗥𝗔𝗕𝗟𝗘—an exact, quantifiable thing. 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗔𝗕𝗟𝗘—it fits into a short sentence. 𝗨𝗡𝗗𝗘𝗥𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗡𝗗𝗔𝗕𝗟𝗘—clear, concise language. 𝗗𝗘𝗦𝗜𝗥𝗔𝗕𝗟𝗘—something people already want. I realized: My newsletter did none of these things! So I started with what I’m best at: helping people see problems clearly, and spot missed opportunities. Then I thought about what people want most: quick, easy, useful info. They’re too busy for anything else! Finally, I had my new concept: “One Thing Better” — checking all of Myron’s boxes. These are the 3 words that changed everything, because they are all about CLARIFYING MY VALUE. And they led to 70K+ subs. 𝗪𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗹𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘆? Write out YOUR mission — and then refine until you’re measurable, stateable, understandable, and desirable. That’s how to create your own ‘One Thing Better’. P.S. Subscribe below to get clear, actionable ways to improve almost everything in your life and business: jasonfeifer.com/newsletter

An ecommerce company recently approached my team to do an email audit as they were facing challenges with low open and click-through rates. After analyzing their email account, here are our main recommendations to revive their email marketing channel: 1. Strategic Email Segmentation: Currently, your emails lack personal relevance due to a one-size-fits-all approach. This is a crucial area to address. Action Plan: Implement segmentation based on purchase history, engagement levels, browsing behavior, and demographic information. 2. Personalized Content Creation: Generic content won't cut it. Your audience needs to feel that each email is crafted for them. Action Plan: Develop emails specifically tailored to the different segments. This includes curated product recommendations, personalized offers, and content that aligns with their interests. 3. Subject Line A/B Testing: Your current subject lines aren't doing their job. You need to be implementing ongoing A/B subject line tests, as this is low-hanging fruit to improve your open rates. Action Plan: Regularly test different subject line styles and formats to identify what resonates best with each segment. Keep track of the metrics to inform future campaigns. 4. Mobile Optimization: A significant portion of your audience reads emails on mobile devices. Neglecting this is causing a decrease in your email engagement rates. Action Plan: Ensure all emails are responsive and visually appealing on various screen sizes. Test your emails on multiple devices before sending them out. Additional Campaign Strategies We Recommend: - Launch a Monthly Newsletter: This should include new arrivals, style guides, and user-generated content. It’s an excellent way to keep your brand in the minds of your customers. - Seasonal Campaign Integration: Tailor your campaigns to align with holidays and seasons. This approach can significantly boost engagement and sales during key periods. - Re-Engagement Campaigns: Specifically target subscribers who haven't interacted with your brand recently. Offer them unique incentives to rekindle their interest. Next steps: 1. If you found this helpful, please leave a comment and let me know. 2. If you own/run/work at an Ecommerce company doing at least $1 million in annual revenue, message me so my team can audit your email channel to see if there's a good fit for working together.

I grew to 10k+ newsletter subscribers in 1 year. Here are the 6 biggest pieces of advice I'd give to ANYBODY growing their newsletter: 1. Focus on organic growth This is the single most important thing to do. I wasted so much time to "hack" the growth. There's no "hack". Pick a niche problem, find a target audience, identify the value your content can provide, and ship it consistently. Growth will happen organically if your content truly adds value to readers. 2. Pick a growth channel Unlike social media, newsletter has no default distribution, so you need to find the best channel to promote your newsletter. For me, LinkedIn is my growth channel to promote my newsletter. Just pick ONE channel to start. Focus is everything. 3. Content-Market Fit is EVERYTHING You achieve CMF once you've hit 5,000+ subscribers organically with good engagement (>45% open rate). For me, I hit my CMF in Oct 2024 when I hit 5,089 subs with pure organic growth. If you couldn't hit that after 1 year, maybe it's time to change your niche or audience or both. 4. Be relentlessly consistent Writing newsletter is easy. But writing newsletter consistently week after week, month after month — that's tough, very tough. Most people will give up after a few months. If you can keep showing up, keep shipping, your time will come (I guarantee that). 5. Use pre-CTA and post-CTA This is a game changer. Before your newsletter is published, post on LinkedIn as a teaser to your issue with a CTA link. After the newsletter is published, post again on LinkedIn to direct more traffic to your article (remember to gate the article + collect emails for access). I got 3,000+ new susbcribers after using this approach. It works. 6. Use Meta ads to scale Only run ads after you've hit CMF (point 3). Go to Facebook Ad Library, identify the best-performing ads that other newsletters (in your space) are running, refer to their ads creative + modify the copy based on your niche. Run and keep optimising your ads to reduce the CPA to $1 - $2. Start with Step 1-5, use Step 6 cautiously. If Step 6 works, you're unstoppable. Have any questions about growing newsletter? AMA anything in comments 👇🏻

Open rates are the most misleading metric in sales. They make you feel like you’re getting traction but reality, the data is completely broken. Here are 4 reasons why (and what to actually measure): 1. Email clients handle open tracking differently Gmail and Outlook handle tracking pixels in totally different ways. Send the same email and Gmail might show 60% opens, while Outlook shows 40%. That’s a 20% delta — if the pixel even fires at all. 1. Apple Mail killed open tracking Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection preloads emails, images, and pixels before a user even sees the message. So your platform logs an open… but the person never read it. This impacts every iOS user so….basically everyone. 1. Bots and security scanners inflate opens Enterprise security tools scan inbound emails for threats which includes opening and parsing them. This triggers your tracking. Now you think your subject line crushed it, but half your opens were bots. Nobody read it. 1. Pixel blocking tools everywhere The opposite is also true: real opens that don’t get tracked. Chrome extensions, ad blockers, and privacy tools can all suppress pixels entirely. So someone could open your email, read it top to bottom, maybe even forward it and your platform will show zero engagement. Here’s what you should measure instead: 1. Reply rate This is the single most important metric in the entire game. It answers the only question that matters: Did a human engage? Every reply is good. Yes. No. Even “stop emailing me.” They show Google and Microsoft that humans are responding to your emails. That you're not just some bot dumping generic outreach into the void.  No replies = you're either in spam, or your message is irrelevant. 1. Bounce rate A bounce means the email address is dead or fake. If your bounce rate is above 1%, you’re seen as a spammer. And that flag doesn’t just apply to one campaign, it pulls down your sender score across the board. Even your best emails stop reaching inboxes. If you don’t fix your list, you're just spraying garbage. 1. Opt-out rate This one tells you whether you’re hitting the right audience. When someone unsubscribes or worse, reports you, what they’re saying is: “You’re not relevant. I don’t want to hear from you.” And they’re not wrong. If your targeting was on point, if your messaging was contextual, if your outreach spoke directly to their pain they wouldn’t be opting out. Even if they don’t respond right away, they’d read. They’d stay in your pipeline. They’d keep the door open. This is usually a result of lazy ICP work. Either you’re going too broad, or your criteria are completely misaligned with what the market actually looks like. ——— We built the entire Forge stack to solve exactly this: → Leadsforge to source clean, qualified data → Salesforge to execute multichannel outreach at scale → Warmforge to protect your domain health behind the scenes Open rates don’t build pipeline. Replies do.

We generated $210K ARR in 8 months with Cold Outreach (for one of our clients) by *simply* refusing to give up. (Breaking down our 4-step process here👇) In June, we onboarded a Global Tech Recruitment SaaS as a consulting project. They’d been trying to go-to-market in the past, but never managed to build a channel to attract B2B clients. 🏆 Our mission? Help them build scalable Outbound Systems and train their team to run them independently. 1️⃣ Set up the Outbound infrastructure We set up 10 domains and warmed up 30 email accounts for them with Mailforge. Showed them how to use tools like Apollo, Prospeo.io and Clay for prospecting and lemlist for automating multi-channel Outbound campaigns. We then trained their team to: → Refine their ICP (focusing on companies hiring for tech roles globally.) → Segment leads using intent data (without burning Clay credits) to prioritize high-$$$ accounts. → Nail their offer + messaging to speak directly to decision-makers, and use Twain to slightly alter the first email per prospect. We wanted to get the right replies. Not just generate hype from “fake positives” with no intent to use the service. 2️⃣ Optimized the strategy using performance data from the first 3 weeks of campaigns As we gained traction, we quickly realized a pivot was necessary. By October, although we were getting positive replies the data showed that global campaigns should be broken down to localized campaigns, and that companies with 20+ employees were slower to convert. So we recalibrated our ICP to focus on those with 1-20 employees (more agile, faster decision-making) and tweaked our messaging. The result? responsive pipeline + quicker wins. 3️⃣ The Re-contacting play One of the most underestimated tactics we deployed was Re-contacting. Three months after their initial Outreach, we went back to: → Companies that didn’t reply. → Those that said they weren’t interested. → Prospects that showed interest but hadn’t converted. We used personalized messaging based on previous responses, positioning ourselves as a partner rather than a persistent vendor. The result? Cold leads revived and turned into warm opportunities. 4️⃣ Expanded the TAM to build runway In November, we expanded targeting to companies not actively hiring, building relationships before they needed to fill roles. Ensuring enough leads to run campaigns for the next 6 months. The Results? ✅ 392 positive replies in 8 months ✅ 35 clients closed ✅ $210K estimated ARR with avg ACV $4,000 The difference between a dead lead ☠️ and a closed deal 🤝 is recontacting and knowing when to pivot. If you need any help with your Outbound strategy drop me a DM 💬 PS: I hope it's clear that Lemwarm wasn't used in this campaign.

"I read your newsletter.” “Oh yeah? What do you think?” “I like it. It’s… pretty random though.” …Huh. Was that a compliment? A critique? I’ve been turning that line over in my head for a few weeks now. Because they’re not wrong, the Newsletter isn’t always neat or narrowly focused. Some weeks it’s about marketing strategy. Some weeks it’s brand storytelling. Sometimes it’s a reflection on burnout, leadership, or just the weirdness of trying to build things online. That’s the point. Growth, like creativity, rarely follows a linear path. Neither does this newsletter. It is random. But it’s not aimless. So this week I wrote about the core beliefs that shaped my newsletter into what it is: 1)Small experiments > big assumptions Growth rarely comes from grand plans. It comes from testing, tweaking, and doing the work in public. The newsletter is one big experiment and that’s the fun of it. 2)Thinking out loud is underrated Writing helps clarify ideas. Sharing those ideas helps pressure-test them. This is a place for working things out, not just broadcasting things that are already done. 3)Curiosity is a growth skill The best growth marketers aren’t the ones who “know everything.” They’re the ones who keep asking better questions. This newsletter is built around that mindset. 4)Momentum beats motivation I don’t always feel inspired. But I do feel responsible to keep showing up. And once I start writing, things usually click. This is a practice, not a performance. 5)You’re allowed to evolve Some weeks I write about paid ads. Some weeks it’s brand building, founder marketing, or community. It changes because I change. So do you. That’s normal. 6)Connection > distribution I’d rather have 5,000 readers who get it than 50,000 who skim it. The Growth Note isn’t content for the algorithm. It’s for people doing real work. 7)The boring stuff matters Growth is often unsexy. Better onboarding. Faster load times. Cleaner copy. I love shining a light on the work that actually drives compounding results. 8)Takes aren’t helpful without context There are enough LinkedIn hot takes. I’m more interested in why something worked, when it didn’t, and what it looked like in the real world. 9)This is a long game I’m not trying to go viral. I’m trying to build trust. I hope this newsletter becomes something people look forward to, not just a flash in their inbox. 10)Growth isn’t just a job, it’s a lens It’s how we solve problems. How we think about leverage. How we get a little more efficient, a little more creative, a little more impactful. That’s what this is all about. So yeah it’s a little random. But it’s intentional. It’s honest. And it’s mine.

I’ve trained 700+ entrepreneurs to create content. Most struggled with the SAME ideation problem: Their content ideation relies on creativity bursts. - They wait for “inspiration” instead of following a process. - They confuse copying trending hooks with an ideation strategy. The truth is that the right content ideas don’t appear by magic. They’re the result of a structured process. Without that process, everything becomes guesswork: - “What should we post today?” - “Our competitors did this, let's try!” - “Maybe we should try this new hook” And here’s what happens: - For the Team → confusion and ideation fatigue - For the Brand → inconsistent narrative, no clear message - For the Audience → fragmented story that doesn’t make sense Founder: “Yes, we struggle to get the right content ideas.” Me: “You need a 5-step content ideation wheel:” 1. Choose your Content Pillars Break your narrative into 3 recurring topics: your broader vision, your industry, and your unique expertise. 2. Ideate 30 Sub-Ideas List 10 sub-topics per pillar for a total of 30 sub-topics. The goal for you is to never face a blank page again. 3. Try 8 Formats Use different angles (carousel, infographic, before/after, story, team post...) to see what fits your voice best. 4. Publish & Engage Stay consistent with 5 posts a week, 15 minutes engagement before and after. 5. Analyze & Reuse Track impressions, profile visits, save rate, engagement and overall performance. Then, double down on the topics that work best. Follow me, Pierre Herubel, for daily marketing tips.

We started a biweekly newsletter 1.5 years ago to diversify beyond LinkedIn. Our approach: built an actual media format that front-loads value instead of directly pitching the service. So far we have 5k subs and a 50% open rate. How it works: Most of our organic content goes right here on LinkedIn. It’s still the best channel for reaching an audience. But like all social media, it’s a rented audience. We depend on the platform/algorithm, which we don’t control. If our account gets disabled or our reach drops, we risk losing our main acquisitions channel. That’s one reason we encourage our LinkedIn readers to subscribe to our Content Founder newsletter. The Content Founder is our owned audience. We know who it reaches, independent of any algorithm. It’s a great way to diversify risk in the attention economy. More importantly - LinkedIn has a 3,000 character limit. We can offer much more value when we expand the format. We grew our initial audience by publishing lead magnets on LinkedIn: • Notion templates • content founder breakdowns • an educational email course We gave those away for free to anyone who shared their email. More recently, we’ve been publishing newsletter previews as posts on LinkedIn to drive new signups. Each newsletter issue follows the same structure: 1. Personal intro 2. Anchor topic - a tactical breakdown with actionable advice 3. Coffee inspo - short updates + random stuff (favorite deodorant, cool book, etc.) 4. Content Founder spotlight - someone who built a personal brand led business 5. Highlight a song we love + link to our Spotify playlist We pick anchor topics at the start of the month from LinkedIn posts that performed well. We repurpose them into a newsletter with all the info we couldn’t fit into 3,000 characters. That’s how we maintain the 2 newsletter/month cadence. PS. in this video, I explain our newsletter strategy and talk about a new format we’ve been testing. Check it out :)