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Ad Network Spotlight: How Intercom Reaches Their Audience With beehiiv
How Intercom Generated Over 2 Million Impressions With beehiiv’s Ad Network
Jake Schonberger & Brandon Storey
December 5th, 2024
Content creators aren’t the only ones leveraging beehiiv’s Ad Network.
The beehiiv Ad Network helps publishers earn.
On the flip side, it helps brands reach new audiences by placing ads.
One brand that’s tapping into the Ad Network as an acquisition channel is Intercom, the AI-driven customer service platform.
In this case study, we break down how John Roche launched the Intercom newsletter on beehiiv and is now reaching highly-targeted audiences with the beehiiv Ad Network.
The beehiiv Ad Network matches premium advertisers with highly targeted niche newsletters, allowing you to place ads in a few clicks so you can grow your audience and customer base on autopilot.
Ready to find out how Intercom is growing their business with beehiiv?
Let’s dive in!
Why Listen to Me? I’ve generated over $1 million with email and written over 1,000 blog posts. I run Storey Time, a newsletter where I teach people how to become full-time copywriters. Feel free to reach out to me on X anytime!
Table of Contents
Intercom Overview
So, what’s Intercom?
It’s the only complete AI-first customer service platform in the world.
We asked John Roche to give us the breakdown of his work at Intercom.
Roche shared, “Working on Intercom’s startup program, our ambition is to create a world-class experience for startups and become their go-to option for customer service. Thousands of startups use Intercom including Qonto, Coda and Pitch.”
So, why did Intercom decide to launch a newsletter on beehiiv?
John Roche explained, “We engaged with beehiiv in 2024 to create more awareness for our startup offerings. At Intercom, we focus on engaging startups that fit specific eligibility criteria: companies with 1 to 5 employees and less than $1 million in funding. We aim for precise targeting to maximize our marketing efforts.”
For Intercom, beehiiv was a great match to help them explore different channels to attract, nurture, and convert their ideal customer profile (ICP).
Key Learnings From Intercom’s Journey With beehiiv
We asked Roche to share some key insights into how beehiiv is helping them grow their user base.
Roche shared:
So, why do ad placements work well for brands?
Roche says there are two reasons: higher trust and direct access.
Roche shared, “Readers generally trust content delivered via newsletters more than social media ads, making it easier to engage them. And, with beehiiv, we connected with high-quality newsletters that had a direct line to the startup audience we wanted to reach.”
Not only does advertising in niche newsletters give you access to new audiences, but it also increases your overall brand awareness — one of Intercom’s key initiatives.
Roche shared, “Readers trust newsletter content and you can measure the amount of eyeballs your ad got. Converting users can be more difficult so I would recommend promoting educational content such as a lead magnet or event.”
Analyzing Intercom’s Marketing Channels
Intercom is deploying a multi-pronged marketing approach to spread brand awareness. While they’ve been reaching their audience in several areas for years, they’ve recently doubled down on new channels like niche newsletters.
Roche explained, “Depending on where our customer profiles exist online, we experiment with many channels such as paid social media, search engine marketing (SEM) and now most recently with beehiiv, newsletters.”
The reality is newsletter advertising is still a relatively new channel for most businesses, but Roche is happy with the experience so far.
Roche shared:
What John Roche Loves Most About Advertising in the Ad Network
We asked Roche to share his favorite thing about the beehiiv Ad Network. And, he explained that it simply gives you more control as an advertiser.
Roche said, “As an advertiser, you want to have control. Newsletters provide advertisers with control over their audience and to double down on the top performers. Across our top 5 ad performers, we noticed the audience was niche and our creative aligned with their pain points.”
Ad Click-Through Rates With beehiiv’s Ad Network
So, what kind of results has Intercom had with the beehiiv Ad Network so far?
Here are some insights from their campaigns:
Roche shared, “On average our top performers were getting between 1 - 2.4% Ad click-through rates (CTR)s.”
Enjoying this beehiiv Ad Network case study? Learn how Growth Daily decreased CAC by 30% with the beehiiv Ad Network.
With so many different marketing channels and strategies, it can be challenging to know how to establish robust and effective marketing.
Concerning their marketing strategy, Roche explained that newsletters are becoming a larger part of their overall marketing thanks to the great performance.
Roche shared, “Newsletters are still relatively new in our marketing strategy, but we’re already seeing their potential.”
Roche continued, “As an owned media source, newsletters generally have higher trust in their readers than on socials.”
But, that’s not all. Intercom was also able to select newsletters to advertise in based on their engagement like open rates and click rates.
Roche shared “We were able to prioritize newsletters with a higher ad CTR via the beehiiv reporting. In most cases, we sponsor newsletters with 10,000-50,000 subscribers with an average open rate of between 35-50%.”
Now that Intercom has begun deploying ads within the beehiiv ecosystem of newsletters, the question remains — How do newsletter ads compare to other types of marketing?
Roche stated, “We’ve been able to run multiple campaigns across several newsletters at once, broadening our reach without putting pressure on our team. Reaching over 2 million impressions within a niche can be difficult via Meta Ads or Google.”
He also pointed out how the newsletter ad process is streamlined, making it easy to launch campaigns without much effort on their part.
Roche shared, “On the other end, influencer marketing can be challenging as you have to balance many different creators.”
Impressions & Traffic Numbers With beehiiv
We’ve discussed click-through rates on Intercom’s ads, but what about traffic?
We asked Roche to give us insights into the kind of web traffic they’re receiving to Intercom’s site.
Roche shared, “The beehiiv Ad Network delivered over 2 million impressions and drove over 7,000 visits to our landing page. Niche startup newsletters continued to outperform generalist publications. Top publications included Confluence VC, Failory and Search Ventures – some of my favorite reads!”
Advice for Other Advertisers Considering the beehiiv Ad Network
We asked Roche if he had any advice for brands thinking about advertising within the beehiiv Ad Network.
Roche shared, “The team was the secret sauce behind the network, helping us identify high potential newsletters to sponsor and providing helpful analytics post campaigns. A key learning for us was to trust the beehiiv ad team. Run a wide experiment, find your winners and double down on those.”
He continued, “Lastly, try to add value in your ad. You need to educate rather than sell as newsletters are more of a mid-funnel activity. For example, share lead magnets like checklists, reports or databases.”
Generate Repeat Revenue With the beehiiv Ad Network
The beehiiv Ad Network is a highly targeted advertising channel that enables brands to sponsor thousands of premium newsletters.
Built by the founding team that built Morning Brew's internal ad tools, the Ad Network is the easiest way to acquire new customers by leveraging the power of thousands of highly engaged audiences.
Leveraged by top brands like BetterHelp, Babbel, Brooklinen, and more, the beehiiv Ad Network is a simple way to generate more revenue, drive conversions, and double down on your growth.
By using beehiiv’s Ad Network, you leverage:
Over 1 billion monthly impressions
Nearly 60 million unique readers
15,000+ top newsletters in the world
Average open rate of 39%
Average click-through rate of 4.3%
Average ad click-through rate of 1%+
Plus, you get access to transparent first-party data and reporting to ensure that you know you’re getting your money’s worth.
By leveraging the Ad Network, Roche was able to reach highly-targeted prospects, generate 2 million impressions, and 7,000 landing page visits without much effort on their part.
Roche shared, “The beehiiv Ad Network has given us an easy and scalable way to reach startup founders and key decision-makers. Instead of manually searching for newsletters and negotiating placements, beehiiv allows us to access startup communities quickly and efficiently.”
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