26 Proven Ways To Grow Your Newsletter Right Now

Trying to earn thousands with an email newsletter?

There’s never been a better time to start.

Naysayers continue to shout, “Email is dead,” but do you know what’s louder than naysayers? Data.

In 2024, there are an estimated 4.48 billion email users — over 50% of the world’s population. By 2026, there will be an estimated 4.73 billion global email users.

Email’s on the rise, and you can tap into the growing market. 

But there’s one downside: There’s more competition than ever. To earn thousands from your newsletter, you need to know how to stand out and grow your list.

In this guide, I’ll break down the 26 evergreen newsletter growth strategies you can tap into to fuel list growth.

Whether you’ve just started your email newsletters or you’re looking for new growth methods, you’ve come to the right place.

You’ll learn several new tactics you’ve never heard of and see real examples of successful newsletter operators who are leveraging them to grow their lists fast.

Ready to tap into exponential growth?

Let’s dive in!

Master the Essentials First

Newsletters are the greatest tool you can use to earn thousands online from an owned audience.

By using the right growth tactics, you can get the most out of your newsletter. Below, we’ve compiled an in-depth list of the top growth tactics and strategies you can use to fuel newsletter growth.

But here’s the thing…

You can use all of the growth tools as much as you want. But if the quality of your newsletter isn’t there, you’re going to be running in that hamster wheel until you eventually burn out.

Sure, you can convince people to join your list, but they’ll unsubscribe just as fast as they subscribed if your content sucks.

Before you grow a successful email list, you need to first understand how to create a successful email newsletter.

Setting up the right foundation is the best path to tap into significant growth.

Here’s how:

Getting Started With Your Newsletter

You need to be intentional with your newsletter.

What kind of content are you creating?

What problem are you solving?

Why should people read it?

If you aren’t able to answer these questions immediately, you need to understand your audience more.

Knowing Your Audience

Your newsletter starts and ends with your subscribers. You need to think of your newsletter as a product because it is one. It’s an information product. If your information is boring, dull, and unhelpful, then people won’t consume it. It’s that plain and simple.

To make the best newsletter content possible, you need to understand everything there is to know about your audience:

• Their pain points

• Their needs

• Their wants

• Their desires

• What scares them

• What excites them

• What they fear

• What they do daily

• What they consume

• What problems they’re trying to solve

• Their worldview 

If you don’t know this information, then you need to do more research.

You can use beehiiv’s poll feature to gain subscriber feedback within your newsletters.

For example, you can ask your audience what kind of content they want to learn about.

Planning Newsletter Content

Once you have the foundational research done on your audience, it’s time to plan your newsletter content.

You can create a newsletter that’s filled with:

• The latest industry news

• Helpful, actionable tips

• Entertaining and educational storytelling

• Or a combination of the three

Your newsletter content is the most important aspect of a successful newsletter. You want to make sure you get it right.

As mentioned above, you can use beehiiv to run polls to gain subscriber feedback to directly ask them what kind of content they want to read. You can also use it to ask your readers to rate your individual newsletters to ensure that you keep your quality up. This is something Jack Raines does well in his newsletter, Young Money (as seen below):

26 Ways To Grow Your List

Now that you have the foundation of your newsletter built, you’re ready to start growing.

Whether you’re starting from 0, 1,000, or 10,000 subscribers, the growth tactics below will help you get where you need to go.

First, we’ll cover tactics you can use to get quick wins, followed by some that will take a moderate amount of time, and finally long-term growth channels and strategies.

Ready?

Let’s go.

Here are some quick wins that you can get within days (and even hours) to grow your list:

1. Share with family and friends.

If you’re starting from scratch, do you want to know the fastest way to get to 100 subscribers?

Tell your friends, family, and co-workers about your newsletter.

This is shockingly simple… and also the easiest way to get your first 50-100 readers.

Go through your contact list on your smartphone, and tell them that you just launched a newsletter and that you’d love their support. Then, send them a link to your newsletter signup page.

Once you’ve spoken to your friends, family, and co-workers, it’s time to hit up social media.

Make a social media post on Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, or wherever you’re active. Heck, make a TikTok dance to promote your newsletter, if you have the courage.

Then, DM your internet friends and tell them to subscribe. If you’re remotely active on any social media, this will easily get another 20-50 subscribers. And if you want to get even more, tell them to spread the word to their friends.