Case Study: How Fantasy Life Increased Click-through Rates by 200%

Imagine you’re a sailor. Cruising across the ocean, you’re searching for your destination.

What’s the one tool you would never leave behind?

Your compass.

If you did, you would end up off course–and in some cases, lost at sea.

Email newsletter publishers deal with the same problem: they need a tool to stay on course with their marketing goals.

That tool is email analytics. Without accurate and robust email analytics, newsletter publishers lose their marketing vision, just as a sailor loses their sense of direction without a compass.

In this beehiiv case study, we interviewed Eliot Crist, CEO of Fantasy Life, to explore the reasons behind why they switched to beehiiv–and how the switch has impacted The Fantasy Life Newsletter.

As their newsletter grew, the team behind The Fantasy Life Newsletter realized that their existing email tool, Klaviyo, was no longer meeting their needs. They needed a platform that could provide more robust analytics and tracking, as well as better audience segmentation and template-building capabilities.

In Crist’s views, “beehiiv, to me, is the ultimate newsletter tool—the ultimate email tool—where it’s not just sending… It’s tracking, it’s the ease of use, it’s a platform that allows me to segment my audience to get analytics, to understand how each individual thing is performing, to set up templates, to build everything so that it’s as easy a process as possible for me as the creator and business owner to add value to the business and spend less time worrying about the email itself.”

Case Study Highlights

The Fantasy Life Newsletter: An Overview

Matthew Berry’s Fantasy Life Newsletter is a popular fantasy football newsletter focused on providing valuable content and updates to its audience of over 300,000 subscribers. The newsletter covers a wide range of topics, including football rankings, waiver wire, trades, and more. In just five minutes, every morning, fantasy managers can dominate their leagues by consuming real-time fantasy football information through Fantasy Life’s curated newsletter.

According to CEO Eliot Crist, “Fantasy Life is all about delivering fantasy and betting information to users that’s both entertaining and informative. It’s all about creating and connecting with the community.”

How The Fantasy Life Newsletter Monetizes Its Newsletter

• Title sponsors and integrated segments

• Affiliate models & content partnerships

“The way we monetize the newsletter is twofold right now. One is we sell a title sponsor or integrate segments and that is going very well right now. In terms of the second aspect is an affiliate model whether it’s through content partnerships where they’re able to promote their content and create unique content in the newsletter that we then can generate revenue on when users go to their sites.

“Whether it’s sports books or DFS platforms or anything like that. So we’re able to both have performance-based marketing that’s ingrained and integrated into the content that’s not really spammy or advertise-y it’s much more just a user experience we’re trying to provide value and let them know about different opportunities and have it fully integrated into the content as well as selling title sponsors.”

The Challenge That Crist Overcame to Skyrocket The Fantasy Life Newsletter’s Engagement

For Crist and the team at The Fantasy Life Newsletter, their main challenge to overcome was finding a platform with robust analytics so they could make data-driven decisions to improve their newsletter performance.

Challenge: Subscriber Analytics and Post Insights

The driving force for The Fantasy Life Newsletter’s switch to beehiiv was the platform’s ability to provide detailed analytics and tracking. beehiiv’s 3D analytics allows them to see how each individual email is performing, and then make data-driven decisions about their newsletter strategy based on that performance. Crist also noted that beehiiv's backend is top-notch, with a high level of deliverability and re-engagement capabilities.

beehiiv’s subscriber and post analytics tools give publishers robust insights into their readers. The Fantasy Life Newsletter uses beehiiv’s advanced segmentation to understand which types of content their subscribers are most interested in, and the 1-click polls have been a great way for them to interact with their readers to gather feedback on what they'd like to see more of.

Advanced Segmentation

With beehiiv’s segmentation, you can create subscriber segments based on metrics, attributes, and events. Then, based on your different segments, you can view aggregate engagement data about your subscribers. As you narrow in on different subscriber cohorts, you can begin performing bulk actions like sending email blasts directly to a particular segment.

Accurate Tracking

beehiiv's subscriber and post analytics provide accurate and up-to-date tracking of your email newsletter's performance. This includes metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates. There’s also subject line A/B testing, which can help you understand how well your newsletter is resonating with your audience and the types of content that resonate most effectively.

Detailed Insights

beehiiv's analytics provide detailed insights into the behavior of your subscribers, including which links they are clicking on and which emails are the most popular. This information can help you tailor your newsletters to better meet the needs and interests of your audience. You can also surface granular insights into each action taken by a subscriber.

3D Charts and Graphs

beehiiv's analytics are user-friendly and easy to understand, making it simple to track and analyze the performance of your newsletters.

Results With beehiiv

Since switching to beehiiv, The Fantasy Life Newsletter has seen impressive results. Open rates are up 100%, with a 200% increase in click-through rates. Plus, unsubscribe rates have decreased, and deliverability is through the roof.

Subscribers are more engaged than ever before, and the team has been able to grow from having no full-time staff to a team of five. Eliot notes that while beehiiv has been instrumental to their newsletter’s growth, The Fantasy Life Newsletter team has been equally pivotal in creating the right content for the right audience, which has been a huge proponent of their growth over the last year.

Favorite beehiiv Features

beehiiv Is Innovative

beehiiv regularly releases new products and features, and Crist notes that the team behind the platform "gets it" in a way that other competitors do not.

For Eliot, a key standout feature of beehiiv is the speed at which new products are released. The team at The Fantasy Life Newsletter appreciates the regular updates and rarely experiences any bugs with the platform.

In Crist’s view, “When you work with other companies, you’re just another client to them and you’re not necessarily getting that attention.”

Crist’s experience with beehiiv has been one of constant innovation. When asked what improved moving to beehiiv, Crist responded, “Being able to give that feedback about what your growth goals are and how beehiiv can help you get there. beehiiv comes out with new products as fast as any company in the space.”

beehiv Is Easy To Use

One of the standout features of beehiiv, according to Crist, is its ease of use. The platform is built specifically for newsletter publications and creators, with a focus on making the process of sending newsletters as easy and efficient as possible. This was a major pain point for the Fantasy Life Newsletter team before beehiiv. They were spending too much time worrying about the email design itself, rather than focusing on creating valuable content for their audience.

According to Crist, “I think the best part about beehiiv for me in terms of going from one platform to another is that it’s really for creators. It’s built so that it’s easy to use… It’s built by people who understand the newsletter business. It just took a lot of the complications, a lot of the mess, a lot of the clunkiness out of the process and made everything more efficient. Going from other platforms to beehiiv just feels intuitive. It feels like everything makes sense.”

beehiiv Is Personal

From Crist’s point of view, the personal touch of the founder, Tyler Denk, sets beehiiv apart from other newsletter tools on the market.

“One of the biggest things that stood out to me about beehiiv was Tyler Denk, the CEO. We actually met in person in New York. While the product and platform are phenomenal, he’s equally as good of a human being. When I partner with anybody, that’s incredibly important to me. Working with people who “get it” makes lives easier, and Tyler’s one of those people that gets it. He blew me away as a human being, and it became a no-brainer decision once I dove into the platform.”

Enjoying this case study?

Learn how Matt Gray from Soulful Entrepreneur has grown his newsletter 61% every month after switching to beehiiv. Read the full case study here.

beehiiv’s Newest Features (Released Q4 2022)

In just the last 3 months of 2022, beehiiv released all these features and more:

Automations

Released in late 2022, the new beehiiv feature, called Automations, allows users to create multi-step email journeys based on specific triggers. Triggers are actions taken by subscribers, such as signing up for a newsletter or upgrading to a premium offering.

The Automations feature includes a grid builder that allows users to select a trigger, add a step, choose a time delay, create an email, and repeat the process as needed.

Automations also includes tracking capabilities so users can see the progress of subscribers moving through the automation and the performance of each individual email. Leaning on beehiiv’s automation allows users to engage subscribers on autopilot so they can focus on building their business.

Referral Program

After much demand, beehiiv now offers a referral program to help users grow their newsletter lists. The referral program is designed to turn readers into an organic growth engine and increase the number of engaged subscribers. The same people who built Morning Brew's successful referral program are now building beehiiv, including a similar referral program it offers.

The referral program has increased monthly growth by an average of 17% for hundreds of top newsletters on beehiiv. It allows users to create custom incentives and milestones, integrate the referral program into their newsletters with no code required, and track referral progress and insights.

The referral program is fully automated, and all data is housed in one place for convenience and consistency. The best part? Users can start using the referral program on beehiiv's platform in minutes.

Recommendations

One of the most unique list growth features beehiiv recently added is called Recommendations. This new feature allow users to leverage the beehiiv’s network of publishers to scale their audience for free. Recommendations can be added by copying and pasting a publication's URL or by searching and filtering publications on beehiiv.

When active, new subscribers will be redirected to view Recommendations after signing up or to upgrade to a premium offering before being shown Recommendations. Recommendations can also be tracked in the beehiiv dashboard, where users can see all publications that have recommended their publication and how many subscribers other publications have sent their way.

A/B Testing

It’s time to get scientific. With beehiiv’s brand new A/B testing feature, you can now improve the performance of your emails and enhance customization options.

These features include an A/B testing suite, which allows users to test multiple subject line variations and optimize the performance of emails. It lets you send newsletters from guest authors, which allows publications to seamlessly give credit and add bylines to freelance writing talent or cross-promoted content.

Plus, the suite includes custom field segmentation, which allows users to derive insights and send email blasts based on custom attributes and bulk update subscribers based on custom fields.

Ad Network

The beehiiv Ad Network is a new platform that allows creators and publishers to monetize their newsletters at scale. In 2019, the company’s cofounders built a platform to automate and streamline the advertising process for Morning Brew, a newsletter company that brought in $46 million in revenue in 2021.

The beehiiv Ad Network presents sponsored ad opportunities to newsletter creators and publishers, who can choose to accept or decline placements. Brands can also advertise on the beehiiv platform, which has over 75 million monthly impressions and an ecosystem of thousands of newsletters.

The beehiiv Ad Network provides trusted and transparent first-party data and reporting. Early access to the beehiiv Ad Network is available by applying on the company's website.

Summary

Looking forward, Crist’s plans for The Fantasy Life Newsletter remain the same: continue to drive growth using beehiiv’s platform.

“The biggest goal that we have as a company is to grow. It’s to continue to provide more value, add more users, and scale appropriately,” said CEO Eliot Crist.

“We want to continue to have open rates above 50%, to have our click-through rate (CTR) climb north of 9%—where it is now—to 15-20%... To constantly grow our audience. Our goal this time next year is to have 1 million subscribers, up from the 300,000 we have now.”

To grow a newsletter of that size, it’s crucial to leverage tools like beehiiv that are built with scaling in mind.

Regarding the growth potential with beehiiv, Crist mentioned, “I think beehiiv is all about scalability. It feels like a platform for content creators. We have 300,000 newsletter subscribers, and we don’t have to pay any more money till we cross the 500,000 mark. That gives us a lot of time to put our resources into growing the business and not necessarily just worrying about maintaining it. So beehiiv is a user-friendly pricing model, which really helps us grow.”

A year ago, Eliot Crist switched to beehiiv with a mission to optimize The Fantasy Life Newsletter’s analytics, improve engagement, and grow the newsletter. With a 100% increase in open rates, a 200% increase in click-through rates, and a growing list of 300,000 subscribers, he’s on the right track.

If you have a newsletter and you’re looking for a user-friendly platform to scale your brand—beehiiv can help you reach your goals. Get started on beehiiv for free today.