How The B-Side Gets 60% Open Rates on beehiiv

Most newsletter creators begin with one goal: Spend evenings and weekends grinding away on a newsletter side hustle until it earns enough to do it full-time.

Waking up every day with the freedom to run a successful newsletter is something many people dream of.

Andrew Grillo had a different idea. Instead of independently launching a newsletter, he figured why not just launch it within an organization with 150 years of experience in storytelling.

So, he pitched an idea to his employers at Boston Globe Media: a daily newsletter targeted towards Gen-Zs in Boston.

And they agreed.

Genius, right?

Fast-forward 5 months. After launching on beehiiv in late October 2022, The B-Side newsletter has grown to over 10,000 subscribers.

What’s even more impressive is that the newsletter boasts an incredible 60% open rate! For a weekly newsletter, this kind of engagement is impressive, to say the least. But, for a daily newsletter—it’s almost unheard of.

In this beehiiv case study, we interviewed Andrew Grillo, Director of New Product Revenue at Boston Globe Media and General Manager of The B-Side newsletter. In it, we explore the reasons why he launched on beehiiv, how he grew list grew to over 10,000 subscribers in five months, and how he gets 6,000 Gen Z’s to open his newsletter every single day.

In Grillo’s view:

The B-Side: An Overview

The B-Side is a newsletter taking a unique, alternative approach to news for Gen Zs in Boston. The strategy? It’s twofold: Curate an exciting, easy-to-consume daily newsletter and highlight short video news stories on social media.

In other words, the news product will only live on email and social media.

The newsletter offers a bite-sized, refreshing take on the important and fun stuff happening around the Boston area. All about connecting with university students and young professionals in Boston, The B-Side is best summed up by its tagline, “The daily dose of news you actually want to hear.”

Andrew shared, “We’re striving to be the go-to media source for 20-to-30-year-olds in Boston. For us, it means getting that list size closer to 50,000 people. At our current trajectory, we think we're getting pretty close to it.”

He continued, “It has a huge emphasis on producing a great daily newsletter and then also on social—focused on vertical video—and breaking down stories that way.”

The Backstory

Why did Andrew and his small team at Boston Globe Media start a newsletter?

Because they saw a problem: Gen Zs aren’t consuming news media.

At least not in the traditional sense. The young crowd isn’t reading newspapers. They’re not watching good ole fashioned evening news broadcasted on TV.

Instead of writing off Zoomers completely, Andrew Grillo decided to take a chance on them. It’s not that young adults aren’t interested in the news. They’re just not consuming it the way we’ve done it for decades.

Hence, The B-Side.

A strong culture of innovation is championed from the top down. The pitch for The B-Side came out of a company-wide Hack Day, a bi-annual event at which all employees can pitch ideas to the company’s Senior Leadership Team.

Andrew shared, “The B-Side really started from this idea that Gen Z and Millennials need to get news in the formats that they're accustomed to consuming. So gone are the days of newspapers and even websites.”

He commented how the goal is to meet younger audiences where they’re at to unpack what’s happening in Boston—led by a younger voice.

“It's creating a one-to-one connection with an audience. We saw the success of newsletters starting with Morning Brew. But that boom kind of has trickled down into the local level. You see it with Axios Local in 6 AM City. Boston Globe Media saw that those venture-backed companies were moving into the Boston territory.”

“B-Side is really our response to that. We know that consumption is shifting that way, but we also feel like—being the incumbent in the market—we can provide that authentic lens into Boston. So we're leaning into the creator nature we're seeing in the media ecosystem.”

The Crew

Andrew shared, “We have myself general-managing it. So that's all things growth—marketing and revenue. We have the tailwinds of being a more established media company, so we have our marketing department searching out partners and ways to grow our list, plus one of the best events teams in the business seeking meaningful points of connection for our audience.

We are able to leverage the expertise and institutional knowledge from other BGM newsrooms to help power and inform our content. This not only builds credibility and trust; it is attractive to a lot of advertisers to whom our sales team will be selling [this] to in Q2.

“We have a team of two 20-something-year-old creators that are really focused on breaking down what's going on in the city and the events and happenings that are relevant to that 20-something-year-old consumer.”

“On the content side, it's Emily Schario, who's our head of content and lead writer. So she's putting together the majority of the newsletter each day. We have Katie Cole, who's our multimedia producer. She’s making graphics for the newsletter and is really focused on social. Then we have an editor, Kaitlyn Johnston, who comes over from one of our existing newsrooms at Boston.com and is making sure, editorially, we're holding up the standards of the organization and pointing Emily and Katie in the right direction.”

How The B-Side Monetizes Its Newsletter

The B-Side publishes its newsletter in three places:

• Via email

• On its beehiiv-hosted website

• On Boston.com

Andrew shared, “We're monetizing The B-Side via native newsletter ads right now which is a huge gift for Boston Globe Media.”

Andrew’s ad strategy is intentional. He believes that there’s an art to creating a premium newsletter that’s focused on the user and also brings in revenue.

He shared, “B-Side is only focused on native within its newsletter. Through B-Side's defined voice and dedicated audience, we've created a premium native position that is the highest-performing newsletter ad unit in the company.”

“A lot of companies will promise things, like Netflix, ‘You won't see ads.’ But I can really promise that you won't see a traditional banner ad in a B-Side newsletter. It’s that super-premium native newsletter ad in our voice—which we think our editorial product does a great job of teeing up from what we've run today for advertising partners.”

“We're able to extend brand messages through amplification on boston.com and do high-impact display ads in its webform on boston.com.”

“Our clickthrough rate within our newsletter is 10 times what you see in the display ads, so we're really excited about what we're seeing there. You'll see more branded vertical video content as well, you know, outside of beehiiv. But within beehiiv, each week we put out a TikTok feature and a corresponding newsletter story.”

“That in-depth feature is great just to create a multimedia story experience for our readers. You'll see more branded reels and whatnot taking place on social.”

In the future, Andrew plans on testing out the beehiiv ad network.

“I'm definitely interested in the beehiiv Ad Network. Right now as we grow and scale, we want to be able to see a meaningful return just based on cost per thousand (CPM). We're at a list size of 10,000—we're seeing 6,000 opens a day. It might not be a huge check, but any additional revenue is definitely welcome.”

“The healthiest media companies have diversified revenue streams. So advertising in our newsletter will be our bread and butter.”

Andrew also shared the idea for The B-Side to expand into local events.

“I'm really keen on B-Side growing to be an events business in Boston for 20-30-year-olds. There isn't a way to experience the unique culture or things outside of the standard bar. I think B-Side has the opportunity to grow as a brand in real life.”

Membership also wasn’t off the table for a future monetization option, as Andrew explored more ideas around the growth of The B-Side brand.

“I think ultimately, there is a world where membership becomes a meaningful revenue component for us. I don't know if the Monday through Friday newsletter will ever go behind membership (I won't make that promise). But I do see a world where membership could include exclusive guides from The B-Side as well as VIP access to events, Q&As, and things like that. I think there will be a membership component in 2024.”

Challenge: Newsception—Create a Self-Sufficient Media Entity Within a Media Empire

Before launching on beehiiv, one of Andrew’s primary challenges with The B-Side newsletter was finding the right platform to build a self-sufficient newsletter. As an intrapreneur, he had to ensure that the platform he went with would be sustainable so he could start from scratch and scale with ease.

Andrew shared, “Very much in the spirit of B-Side has been this idea of starting from zero. Everything from how our editorial team works, to having a GM oversee this, to write in a casual, conversational, tone, to having story selection that is a bit more aggregated and curated than original reporting.”

He commented how beehiiv wasn’t the first newsletter platform he had heard of. He spent a few months cycling in South America a few years back where he launched his own newsletter.

“I put out a newsletter on Substack when I was in Ecuador. But with beehiiv, it's really well-positioned to grow a business and create revenue.”

Analytics: beehiiv > Mailchimp

Andrew shared how Boston Globe Media uses Mailchimp for the majority of its email operations. When initiating The B-Side, he gave it a shot but ultimately felt he needed something that offered more robust analytics while being easy to use.

“The organization today largely uses Mailchimp to publish—which we played around with. It was a perfectly fine tool, but as we looked deeper into beehiiv and saw the analytics it provided and the creative UI it allowed, we thought it was a differentiated-enough experience and easy enough to learn that we could take a leap out and invest our time in it.”

“I think that notion of really trying everything differently and being innovative with everything from how we're writing stories to producing it, to getting it out to readers was the right call because now we're with beehiiv and we're completely self-sufficient.”

“[beehiiv] is driving us as a creative-first media company and allowing us as a nimble team, to be very lean. We don't need an analytics team to go into Mailchimp for us. We don't need to expand the licensing. Within beehiiv, B-Side is self-contained and allows us to operate like a tight, well-informed team.”

“It allows us to be nimble and try things. We're definitely building the plane as we fly a bit, but we're seeing super strong engagement and refining it as we go.”

Kickstarting the Engine the Right Way

One of the biggest challenges of launching a newsletter is growth. Most newsletters run into problems when they’re trying to build their list. Understanding your subscribers, how they’re engaging, and where they’re coming from is crucial to tapping into growth initiatives.

Andrew shared, “Being the general manager of the project, I'm really exclusively focused on growth. In the creative project, I'm not in it directly and writing daily but, I know for our writers, it’s where they live and breathe and where they get and ship their content out. For me, it's my learning dashboard: understanding where marketing dollars are going, and where readership is engaging and not engaging.”

When it comes to growing the newsletter, he wasn’t interested in growing it as big and as fast as possible. Instead, he wanted to make sure he was focusing on the right crowd.

He shared, “We have taken a pretty gradual approach with [growth]. We could have very easily combined a bunch of lists of existing [Boston Globe Media] readers, put The B-Side newsletter in front of every reader, and asked for signup. But as [Boston Globe Media] is a traditional publisher, the audience skews a bit older, so we didn't want to move eyeballs from one product to the next.”

“We targeted relevant areas like food and culture on our website, Boston.com. We've done a few different collaborations with Boston University and Northeastern to get this in front of their students. We've also put together some ski pass giveaways that we gave to those schools as well to collect student emails. That’s how we've approached the student population.”

“With the local businesses, we've just done giveaways and whatnot. Through both social and email communication we’ve encouraged our audience to sign up in order to enter giveaways for concerts and things of that nature.”

“We've partnered with Big Night Live, which is a big entertainment group in Boston, as well as Sofar Sounds, which would do pop-up concerts. We co-brand pop-up concerts in the community with them. We'll promote Sofar to our readership and then we go on-site and promote ourselves. We've also done some giveaways with establishments like REV’d Cycling and some other local restaurants that were really focused on getting a real audience that's in our target demographic.”

Establishing a New Gen-Z Brand

Establishing a new company arm has its challenges, especially when it comes to branding. For Andrew and The B-Side team, they had to figure out how to differentiate themselves enough from Boston Globe Media to attract Gen Zs while maintaining the trust, expertise, and branding of the media empire.

Andrew shared, “I think a huge win from beehiiv is creating a great-looking product—a product in a brand. We focused early on in solidifying what B-Side was and who it was serving. beehiiv allowed us to take that thoughtful brand identity and create a really stellar brand off of it.”

“The look and feel of both the email and the website, our embedded forms—beehiiv has definitely been a tool that has allowed us to build and expand our brand and our brand awareness through a consistent look and feel.”

He continued, “I also just love that beehiiv is super brand-focused. The aesthetics of your website and the consistency in your content. I feel we're creating a modern brand on top of a modern brand.”

Results With beehiiv

Since launching on beehiiv, The B-Side has had impressive results. We’ve already touched on how the newsletter is already generating revenue right from the start.

10,000 Subscribers in 5 Months

But, the newsletter is also crushing it when it comes to other newsletter metrics like growth and engagement. Andrew was able to grow the newsletter to over 10,000 subscribers in only just a few months thanks in part due to beehiiv’s easy-to-understand analytics.

He shared, “[In about 5 months] we went from zero to 10,000 subscribers in a very trackable, digestible way.”

60% Open Rates

The newsletter is also seeing remarkable engagement, especially as a daily newsletter. The reality for most newsletters is that engagement tends to drop off a bit the more you hit send due to coming across as too spammy. But, that’s not the case for The B-Side, which is a testament to the value they provide with the content and how they’ve adjusted their strategy based on how readers engage.

Andrew comments, “We really value the quality of our audience. Our open rates are at 60%. Our click-through rate is somewhere between 8-10%. We're seeing a hyper-engaged audience, which we're really excited about.”

Great Deliverability

One not-so-sexy topic—yet crucial to running a successful newsletter—is deliverability. If your emails aren’t getting through to people’s inboxes, or you’re triggering spam filters, it doesn’t matter how good your content is since your readers aren’t seeing it.

Andrew shared, “With a lot of email service providers (ESPs), you'll run into trouble: things won't send and things won't be received.”

“The deliverability of beehiiv has been super solid, which has resulted in this great open rate and click-through rate. I think that's always a risk as you go off into the wild unknown and select a new vendor—and it flops—that's inherent risk.”

“I've been really happy with the reliability of [beehiiv]. I made a bet and the bet was right. I’ve been really surprised as a GM, to spend so much time in the beehiiv dashboard, looking at the analytics. I didn't know how often I'd be in there, but it's such a useful tool. Honestly, it's pretty addicting to see your audience grow each day. So, I've been really impressed with that.”

Enjoying this case study? Learn how Jack Raines of Young Money used beehiiv to skyrocket his newsletter from 2,000 to 35,000 subscribers in one year. Read the full case study here.

Favorite beehiiv Features

beehiiv’s 3D Analytics

The primary reason Andrew launched his newsletter on beehiiv was the tool’s ability to provide in-depth analytics and data on the newsletter and his audience. beehiiv’s 3D analytics lets users analyze how each newsletter performs, so users can make data-driven decisions to improve their strategy.

Andrew shared, “I love the dashboard. I can get into it, my team can get into it. It's a completely transparent way (in this small organization) to access my data and feel super informed on the business and the decisions I'm making from it.”

beehiiv also offers simple list segmentation, allowing you to create new subscriber segments based on attributes, metrics, and events.

Andrew commented, “I love the segmentation feature—being able to understand what subsets of audiences are engaging with you and the medium they came in from. To have a view of ‘How are students enjoying our newsletter?’, ‘How are the folks I met at Sofar Sounds?’, ‘How are they engaging with the product?’ ‘What sort of success are we having with the food section from Boston.com that we're promoting this to?’”

He continued, “To drill down even further, understanding how that traffic is performing allows me to feel really prepared to speak to senior management, or anyone, about how we're growing this thing and why.”

beehiiv’s Growth-Friendly Pricing

One of the pinnacle beehiiv features that has given Andrew the confidence to scale with beehiiv is the pricing. beehiiv charges users a flat monthly fee so they can invest their resources fully into growth.

Andrew shared, “I think it’s a super competitive model that [beehiiv] brings to the table, right? For a thousand bucks a year (Scale plan at $84/month), we can launch on a trusted platform that we own our audience through.”

“With traditional publishers, before you can even get to the return-on-investment (ROI) stage, it’s like ‘What's our initial investment gonna be?’”

“During the modeling, I wasn't fully sure what [the cost of a newsletter platform] would be. So, I put down like $10,000 as a placeholder only to be able to go to management and say, ‘This is $1,000 and is going to allow me to market our content more effectively [and allow]for our editorial team to be able to collaborate through.”

When it comes to Andrew’s return on investment, he shared, “The ROI—is really a no-brainer. From an independent, creator perspective, it’s a bet that you can make a thousand dollars a year.”

“With beehiiv, we don't need to worry about scaling up. If we hit 50,000 subscribers [with a beehiiv competitor] then we're gonna get dinged at another price point. It's nice to feel like we know what the cost will be next year.”

beehiiv’s Ad Integration

As mentioned earlier, Andrew is hyper-focused on making The B-Side newsletter a wonderful experience for his Gen-Z readers. Integrating ads has to be done right and the design has to be there for him, otherwise, it will flop among his target audience.

Andrew shared, “As we're now up to 10,000 subscribers, we're bringing [the newsletter] to market a bit more and beehiiv offers some custom templates that will allow us to get some quality ad messages in there as well.”

“We're creating a great ad product by having the flexibility to neatly insert advertiser content and their logos, and have them speak in our voice. Creating a tight editorial product with [beehiiv] has allowed us to insert brands in a first-in-class way.”

Summary

Five months ago, Andrew Grillo was looking to launch his own project at Boston Globe Media—daily news for Gen Zs. So, he decided to create a newsletter using beehiiv’s intuitive platform.

With over 10,000 subscribers, 60% open rates, and upwards of 10% click-through rates, Andrew’s newsletter is one of the most engaging local newsletters today.

Looking forward, Andrew plans to keep driving growth and has a few things up his sleeve for 2023.

He shared, “We just kicked off our goal-setting for the year and by the end of next quarter should have a pretty final product. We're definitely past the minimum viable product (MVP) stage, which is pretty exciting.”

“As we grow readership, we’re looking to continue to grow influence in the space. We want to see this being a media product that is driving significant event revenue and driving people to events.”

“I'm really excited for what we have ahead of us in the next couple quarters—where we're going to be a lot more focused on our referral program, an ambassador program with creators, and being more active with some giveaways, and ways to engage our audience and get some referrals out of them as well.”

Rather than have a single voice, Andrew plans on bringing in more young talent from the Boston area to diversify The B-Side experience.

“Using B-Side as a platform to elevate the voices of creators as well, we're taking a creator-first approach with our head of content, Emily. But, in the next quarter or two, we'll be bringing other creators on the platform—to get Boston's best talents a platform to create and expose their work.”

Right now, The B-Side is on track to double its subscriber count and will be leaning into more beehiiv tools to fuel growth.

“Ideally, we’re going to get to 25,000 [subscribers] next quarter but we’re going to really start stepping on the gas to use more marketing tools from beehiiv. Now that we are really confident in the product, we’re going to bring it to market in an even stronger way.”

When asked what Andrew would say to a friend considering beehiiv, he shared, “I’d tell them ‘Definitely do it. You're going to be able to put together a really clean newsletter pretty quickly. You'll get to know your audience really well and know what's performing. Go for it.”

Are you thinking about switching over to beehiiv? Or, maybe you’re looking to start your first newsletter and you’re not sure what platform to use.

beehiiv is the newsletter platform built by creators, for creators. Built by the same team who built and scaled the Morning Brew to millions of subscribers, we’ll help you get your newsletter off the ground, build a full-time income, and scale.

If you’re looking to launch your own successful newsletter that’s focused on growth, then get started on beehiiv for free today.