If you're thinking of starting a newsletter, or perhaps you’re migrating over to beehiiv (great choice, by the way), then this is the checklist you’ve been looking for.

Checklists are supposed to be short and sweet, so that’s how I’ll keep this intro.

Let’s get started then.

Pre-Launch Preparation

I know I said this was a checklist, but before you start ticking boxes, I need you to go through the pre-launch prep. 

This is mainly for newbies— So, if you already have a newsletter and are migrating to beehiiv, skip to the ‘setting up your newsletter on beehiiv’ section. 

For newbies, don’t you dare skip. This is critical to your success.

Define Your Objectives

If I were to ask you, “What’s the point of your newsletter?” What would your answer be?

Are you nurturing leads, dropping industry knowledge bombs, or are you a thought leader in your niche? 

It’s critical that you are crystal clear on your goal.

Research Your Target Audience

Next, you’ll determine and categorize your audience. Identify their pain points, interests, and the type of content they want. 

Ask yourself questions like:

• How and when do they prefer to consume content? 

• What's their age range? 

• Where are they located? 

• What problems keep them up at night? 

• What are they passionate about? 

Then, do some digging - check out forums where they hang out, see what they're chatting about on social media, and take a peek at newsletters from your competitors.

Plan Content Schedule

With your target audience in mind, now you can map out core content pillars. Core content pillars are the overarching themes or topics your newsletter will focus on. 

They should align with your newsletter's goals and purpose while directly addressing your target audience's interests and pain points.

For example, if you're creating a newsletter for a SaaS (software as a service) company, some potential core content pillars could be:

• Product updates and new feature announcements

• Industry trends and insights

• Customer stories, use cases, and success spotlights

• Expert tips, tutorials, and best practices

• Company news and behind-the-scenes looks

Using AI Prompts for Content Planning

You can use AI to brainstorm and determine your pillars for you. For example, prompt ChatGPT with:

You can then have ChatGPT organize a content calendar for you by using the following prompts.

• Sequenced Topics: "Please create a spreadsheet to organize the topics into a content calendar for a [DAILY/ WEEKLY/ BI-WEEKLY/ MONTHLY] email newsletter. Ensure that topics are evenly distributed and logically sequenced."

• Randomized Topics: "Please create a spreadsheet to organize the topics into a content calendar for a [DAILY/ WEEKLY/ BI-WEEKLY/ MONTHLY] email newsletter. Randomize the order of the topics while ensuring each is associated with its respective pillar."

Note: When planning your content calendar, highlight relevant dates in your niche (e.g., Mother’s Day for a parenting newsletter).

Determine Newsletter Frequency

How often you send your newsletter will be based on your content strategy and audience preferences.

Here are a couple of examples:

• A product update newsletter may be best as a monthly roundup

• A curated content newsletter might be more frequent, like daily or weekly

Ultimately, it’s up to you how often you send your newsletter. 

Branding

Branding is an essential part of any newsletter, and one that stands out is MilkRoad. It is instantly recognizable, and you know what you’ll get in every email. 

To develop your brand, begin by writing down its core values, personality, and messaging to create a consistent and recognizable identity across all your marketing channels.

Using tools like Canva or Adobe, design a visually appealing logo and choose a color palette that aligns with your brand identity.

Define the tone, style, and language you'll use in your newsletter to resonate with your audience and reinforce your brand personality. 

Below is an example of my branding if I were to develop a brand for a new email newsletter in the basketball Niche.

Core Values:

1. Integrity: "Providing honest and accurate basketball tips."

2. Expertise: "Sharing knowledge from experienced players and coaches."

3. Engagement: "Fostering a community of passionate basketball enthusiasts."

4. Reliability: "Delivering consistent and high-quality content."

Personality:

1. Knowledgeable: "Deep understanding of basketball techniques and strategies."

2. Approachable: "Friendly and easy to understand."

3. Enthusiastic: "Passionate about basketball and eager to share insights."

4. Supportive: "Encouraging readers to improve and succeed."

Messaging:

1. Actionable Tips: "Delivering basketball tips that readers can immediately apply to their training."

2. Industry Insights: "Sharing the latest trends and developments in basketball."

3. Community Building: "Creating a space for basketball enthusiasts to connect and share experiences."

Design Visual Identity

Logo Design:

"Using tools like Canva or Adobe, I will design a visually appealing logo that represents basketball's dynamic and energetic nature. The logo will include elements such as a basketball, a hoop, and dynamic lines to convey motion and excitement."

Color Palette:

"The color palette for my brand will consist of vibrant and energetic colors like orange (symbolizing the basketball), black (for professionalism), and white (for clarity). These colors will evoke feelings of excitement, energy, and trust."

Define Tone, Style, and Language

Tone:

"The tone of my newsletter will be friendly and encouraging yet professional. It will convey enthusiasm for the game and a supportive attitude towards helping readers improve."

Style:

"The style will be a mix of concise tips and in-depth tutorials. This ensures that readers get quick insights as well as comprehensive guides."

Language:

"The language will be informal yet informative, using basketball jargon familiar to enthusiasts. It will maintain an encouraging and motivating tone, making readers feel empowered to take their game to the next level."

Pre-Launch Preparation Checklist

☑️ Define your newsletter purpose

☑️ Determine newsletter frequency

☑️ Use AI to generate content ideas

☑️ Build a content calendar

☑️ Highlight special dates on the content calendar

☑️ Brainstorm initial content ideas

☑️ Identify your target audience

☑️ Research audience preferences

☑️ Plan content to address audience pain points

☑️ Define your brand identity

☑️ Create logo and choose a color scheme

☑️ Establish your brand voice

Why Trust Me? Russell, the founder of the InboxConnect marketing agency, has over five years of expertise in email marketing. Under his leadership, the agency has become known for innovative strategies with notable successes, including campaigns for renowned clients like Payoneer.

Setting Up Your Newsletter On beehiiv

Now that the research and planning phase is complete, it’s time to set you up properly on beehiiv.

Account Registration

Create your beehiiv account here and follow the signup process. 

Once you’ve created your account, the first thing I recommend is filling in your profile details. Navigate to Settings, then Profile, and complete the following checklist.

Setting Up Your Profile

☑️ Profile Picture: This will be the avatar that appears on your profile and in your posts.

☑️ Full Name

☑️ Bio: Enter a brief description for your profile

☑️ Email

☑️ X (Twitter) Handle

☑️ Linkedin Url

☑️ Facebook Url

☑️ Instagram Url

☑️ Tiktok Url

☑️ Youtube Url

Also, within the Profile settings, you can customize which notifications you want to receive and change your password here.

Setting Up Your Company Details

In the settings menu, click on the company tab and begin to fill in the details to manage your general website settings. 

☑️ Add company name

☑️ Add company address

Note: Navigate to Settings → Company → Publications. Here you can add other beehiiv publications/newsletters you may have. It is also here where you can add other team members by navigating to the Team Tab and then managing your team and permissions. 

Publication Settings

The publication settings allow you to customize your newsletter. You can find them by going to Settings → Publication. Here’s an article to help you understand this part of the process. 

Set up the following first.

☑️ Logo

☑️ Name

☑️ Thumbnail

☑️ Welcome Email

☑️ One-Line Description

The application menu is where you'll access and input details on:

• General basic info

• Domains and custom domains

• Any premium features

• RSS feed features

• Importing subscribers and content

• Exporting content

• Create your subscription forms 

• Set up your widgets

These will all need to be set up before you send a single newsletter. 

Checklist

☑️ Set up your Logo

☑️ Enter your Name

☑️ Upload your Thumbnail

☑️ Write a One-Line Description

☑️ Write Your Welcome Email

☑️ Fill in General Settings

☑️ Configure Domains

☑️ Enable Premium Features By Connecting A Stripe Account

☑️ Set up RSS Feed

☑️ Import Subscribers

☑️ Import Content

☑️ Export Data

☑️ Setup Custom Widgets

Website Builder/Settings

It’s time to design your website. 

Navigate to the website builder tab from your main dashboard and begin designing your home page. Make sure to go through each tab. styles, layout and settings.

Checklist

☑️ Home Page Design

☑️ Signup Page Design

☑️ Upgrade Page Design

☑️ Custom Page Design 

To learn more about upgrades and landing pages, read our article here. 

Monetization Set Up

Ads

The beehiiv Ad Network allows beehiiv creators to earn revenue by featuring ads in their newsletter. beehiiv finds advertisers, sends Ad opportunities to publishers, provides all the ad creative (images, copy, links), and manages the payments. 

It takes two minutes to apply for access to the Ad Network.

Checklist:

☑️ Apply to the Ad Network

Subscriptions

Another way to monetize your newsletter with beehiiv is to offer premium subscriptions. Known as ‘Paid Newsletters’, premium subscriptions require readers to pay a monthly or yearly fee in exchange for you to send them exclusive emails/content.

Here’s how to set up your Premium Subscription:

1. Connect to Stripe

If you haven’t already done this, do it now. 

Visit Settings → Publication → Premium

2. Set Your Prices

Once you've connected your Stripe account, set a Monthly Subscription Price or an Annual Subscription Price.

Checklist:

☑️ Connect To Stripe

☑️ Set Your Prices

☑️ Promote and Send Your Premium Content

 ☑️ Add a paywall to your newsletter

Boosts

Under Grow → Boosts you can access your dashboard, but you will need to set everything up first. 

To get started with Boosts make sure to read this article here. 

The article will teach you how to:

• Add funds to your beehiiv wallet

• Track your campaign performance and spend

• Create and manage your active offers and Boosts

Checklist:

☑️ Set Up Boosts (Visit app.beehiiv.com to get started) 

☑️ Fund Wallet

☑️ Activate Boosts

Audience Set Up

Segments

Make sure you add basic segments for your newsletter for better targeting and personalization. 

Add the following segments plus any segments unique to your brand or niche. 

☑️ Deferred

☑️ Bounced

☑️ Welcome Email Bounced

☑️ Unengaged 

☑️ Engaged

Subscriber Data

First, personalize your newsletter by adding custom fields and Tags to your subscriber data.

Custom fields

Add the following custom fields as a minimum:

☑️ First Name

☑️ Last Name

☑️ Location

Then, depending on your niche or audience, your would add other custom fields to suit. Building custom fields that align with your subscriber form is highly recommended. 

For example, if you ask people what their biggest challenges are on the subscriber form, use those as custom fields.

SubscriberTags

Subscriber tags make segmenting, analyzing, and interacting with your audience easy. 

They go beyond custom fields by letting you tag leads based on acquisition sources, specific posts, subscriber types, custom categories, and more.

☑️ Set Up Subscriber Tags

Polls

Use polls to get your audience to provide useful feedback so you can continue to deliver the content they want.

Go to the Audience tab → Polls → New Poll. Once you’ve created your poll, you can insert it into your newsletter anywhere you’d like by typing /poll in the editor.

Surveys

beehiiv’s survey forms are a great way to gather intel on your subscribers. Use survey forms to find out:

• Who they are

• Where they’re from

• What they do for work

• What they had for breakfast (just kidding)

• How they found your newsletter

• What content they want to see more of

Set up the following two survey forms as a minimum:

☑️ Subscribe Surveys

☑️ Unsubscribe Surveys

Subscribe Forms

Using beehiiv’s subscribe forms, you can now capture emails addresses from external web pages outside of beehiiv’s native platform.

For example, if you have a website on Webflow or use a webpage builder like Carrd, you can simply embed a subscribe form to collect email addresses and add them to your beehiiv publication.

You can read more about this here.

Writing Set Up

Posts

Before you write your newsletter, you’ll want to set up templates to save you time. beehiiv gives you the freedom to create your own templates very easily. 

First, go to “Start Writing→ Down Arrow Toggle Top Right → Use Template”

Then using the user friendly editor, draft your template. Once you’re happy with it, save it as a new template and give it a name. 

Checklist:

☑️ Set up new templates

☑️ Save templates

Content Tags

Content tags are a great way to keep your content organised and easy to find for your website visitors. 

To add content tags click on “Write → Content Tags”

You can easily create categories and assign them to posts with beehiiv. Read more about how to set up content tags here. 

Some examples of content tags are:

• Case Studies

• How-To Guides

• Tutorials

Checklist:

☑️ Set Up Content Tags for content pillars

Automation Setup

To add content tags click on “Write → Automations”

Automations allow you to create multi-step email journeys based on different triggers. 

Triggers are an action that a subscriber takes—like signing up for your newsletter.

Common Automations are:

• Welcome Series

• Re-engagment Automation

• Reminder Automations

Checklist:

☑️ Set up a Welcome Automation

☑️ Set up a Re-engagment Automation

☑️ Set up a Survey Reminder Automation

Partner Program

1. Introduction to beehiiv Partner Program

2. Benefits of Affiliate Partnerships

3. Strategies for Building Partnerships

Grow Set Up

Referral Program

Under Grow → Referall Program you can build a fully integrated referral program.

beehiiv’s referral program is an excellent way of gaining new subscribers by providing your existing audience with an incentive to share your content.

Follow the steps in this guide to set up an Integrated Referral Program with beehiiv

Checklist:

☑️ Set up a referral program 

Recommendations

Curate and share your favorite newsletter publications with your audience. 

By recommending other publications, you establish yourself as an expert in your field and learn more about your audiences' interests. 

To set this up go to your dashboard, click on Grow → Recommendations. Then follow this guide here. 

Checklist:

☑️ Set up recommendations

Testing and Optimization

Pre Send Testing and Optimization

Test your signup forms with a test email address to sign up for your newsletter and interact with the signup process to identify any friction points. 

Note any issues with form functionality, ease of use, and overall user experience. 

For example, look out for confusing form fields or if the confirmation email lands in the spam folder.

Next, test your email templates by sending test emails to yourself. Review the visual and functional aspects of your newsletter, comparing it against competitors’ newsletters. 

Look to improve your layout, readability, and overall aesthetic appeal.

Also, test your automations to ensure they are functioning correctly. 

Make sure you received the welcome email. Fill in the survey and check custom fields and tags are working. Run another test where you don’t fill in the subscribe form so you can test the reminder automation. 

Finally, verify that unsubscribing is smooth and that the user receives confirmation.

Checklist:

☑️ Sign up for Your Newsletter With a Test Email

☑️ Test Welcome Email

☑️ Test Subscribe Form

☑️ Check Custom Fields and Tags

☑️ Test Unsubscribe

Sending Out Your First Edition

First, head over to ‘Write → Posts → Start Writing’.

If you have a template you want to use, be sure to hit the drop down arrow next to start writing and select the desired template. 

You’ve come this far so, It’s now or never, write your newsletter on a topic of your choice. 

Give it a once over and check that you have used the custom fields to personalize the welcome message and make people feel welcome. 

If everything looks good, you can now schedule your newsletter send. When you do, make sure you fill in all the post settings.

Monitor Deliverability

It’s early days but get into a habit of monitoring your emails performance by checking your analytics. 

Keep track of every send and benchmark it against your competitors.

Keep track of:

• Open Rates

• CTR

• Bounce Rates

• Unsubscribe Rates

• Spam Reports

Finally, check to see if you have received any feedback from your audience via replies or polls. 

Checklist:

☑️ Write First Newsletter

☑️ Add Personalization Via Custom Fields

☑️ Input Correct Post Settings

☑️ Schedule Newsletter

☑️ Monitor Results

Conclusion

Well done, you now have a newsletter that is set up for success and have hopefully published your first newsletter. 

But, it’s only the beginning, so I encourage you to take a look at the beehiiv academy for more information on everything beehiiv newsletters. 

For those of you still on the fence about starting a newsletter, I highly encourage you to sign up for a free trial with beehiiv. 

All that’s left to do is go through this checklist and hit publish…

Happy mailing!