- beehiiv Blog
- Posts
- LA Magazine Is Saving $32,000 per Year After Switching to beehiiv
LA Magazine Is Saving $32,000 per Year After Switching to beehiiv
How Andrew Curry of LAmag Moved 8 Publications to beehiiv
Kanishka & Brandon Storey
January 15th, 2025
50 years ago, if you wanted to get the news, you’d go to newspapers, television, or radio.
Fast forward to 2025, and the news isn’t hidden in your car radio, TV, or front porch.
It’s in your email inbox.
Recently, Andrew Curry, Vice President of Digital Strategy and Development at Los Angeles Magazine, switched over to beehiiv to save time and money, and streamline his newsletter creation process.
Curry, shared, “The price made it a no-brainer for my executives. From our sales to our onboarding specialists, we've had no hiccups —the team at beehiiv has made it such an easy switch.”
Los Angeles Magazine, or LAmag, is a media company with a physical publication and several newsletters serving LA residents and surrounding regions with the latest news and happenings in the area:
Next, let’s dive into how beehiiv helped Curry and the LAmag team switch over to beehiiv to streamline operations and save over $32,000 per year in operation costs.
Table of Contents
Los Angeles Magazine is over 50 years old.
And about 10 years ago, they took their offline publication online by launching a newsletter. However, in recent years, traditional media organizations have faced declining ad revenue and layoffs which has put pressure on them to make changes.
We spoke with the VP of Digital Strategy and Development at LAmag, Andrew Curry, to ask about these changes in the industry and why he switched over to beehiiv.
He shared, “Media organizations and legacy media brands are trying to figure out where they're going and we would be considered a legacy media brand. So, we're switching as fast as possible to lean into what works and a newsletter is just such a valuable entity.”
He shared, “We were on HubSpot, which was bad. It wasn't created for daily newsletters and is just a different platform.”
“I was familiar with Morning Brew and the founding team, which included beehiiv’s founders.. So beehiiv’s founder, Tyler Denk, was tweeting about stuff and I just decided, ‘Let’s give it a run.’”
So, Curry migrated over his main publication, which is LAmag’s daily newsletter.
He shared, “We initially migrated our audience of 40,000 for The Daily Brief. Now, our click-through rate is much higher than ever before.”
Initial Hesitations About Migrating
Many newsletter operators are nervous about migrating large audiences like LAmag’s to a new platform. So, for someone like Curry who had 8 publications to switch over, he had some concerns.
Curry shared, “It was mainly just because it's a new platform.”
But, his early fears were relieved once he switched.
He shared, “The price made it a no-brainer for my executives. From our sales to our onboarding specialists, we've had no hiccups —the team at beehiiv has made it such an easy switch.”
Besides the lower price, one of the main reasons he switched to beehiiv was the functionality of the platform.
He explained, “To be honest, there were too many errors with the old platform where I would save something, it didn’t work, and the newsletter went out with mistakes. It's unacceptable for me and it's embarrassing for me. I was like, ‘I can't do this. I can't do something correctly and have it fail to save.”
Migrating to beehiiv in 2024
So, what did it look like migrating eight different publications over to beehiiv?
He continued, “We have multiple magazines, so I'm not just talking about Los Angeles magazine. We also have Pasadena and Orange Coast. They are also on the platform. So we saved a ton of money by moving over.”
We asked Curry to break down the differences between his newsletters.
He shared, “We have The Daily Brief, which is our daily newsletter; we have our Weekend Guide, which is our weekly newsletter; and then we have Food News which is once a month. We also use beehiiv for some of our more advertising e-blasts that people have opted in to receive as part of our offers or partner offers.”
When Curry switched over, beehiiv was able to help him not just in bringing his subscribers over, but also with his newsletter design.
He shared, “We wanted to redesign the newsletters as we came over as well. So they helped us with that. We didn't do the design services but we did get the basic help with that, so it was really easy to move over because we have an in-house designer.”
Favorite beehiiv Features
We asked Curry to share what his favorite beehiiv features are. For him, it’s been the beehiiv polls, A/B testing, and 3D Analytics.
beehiiv Polls
He shared, “My favorite feature is probably beehiiv polls. I can put a poll in there that will get me more information about something we're having a conversation with as a brand. We want to make decisions based on our audience and what might make them happy.”
Curry is directly involved with the newsletter creation process on a daily basis, so he’s gotten a chance to spend plenty of time in the inner workings of the platform.
He shared, “I personally work on The Daily Brief every day. It's been so easy. The templates are there. I literally copy-paste what I need to put in.”
A/B Testing
Moving to beehiiv has made it easy for him to A/B test his subject lines.
He shared, “Then headline testing — where we get to prove what certain things are and if I have a gut feeling that something will perform better — I like being able to try that out and see how it works.”
With his previous platform, Curry was experiencing lower open and clickthrough rates which impacted the engagement and revenue he was able to generate.
Since switching to beehiiv, Curry also began testing send times to optimize open rates and engagement.
He shared, “We found that sending it in the morning didn't perform as well as 2 to 4 p.m. So, it was really nice being able to say, ‘Hey, this is why I'm going to do a 2 p.m. newsletter rather than a 6 a.m. newsletter.’ At 6 a.m. we were competing with CNN and the Los Angeles Times and these big organizations that have a 20-person team producing a newsletter.”
He explained, “It’s interesting having different data to be able to know when to send the newsletter. Having that information, we've been able to grow the newsletter, and increase the open rate and clickthrough rate which is important for advertisers to see.”
3D Analytics
With beehiiv’s 3D Analytics, Curry has been able to better understand what’s moving the needle for his newsletters so he can serve his audience better and attract advertisers.
He explained, “Having those insights has allowed us to further increase those metrics and the KPIs we need to to be able to sell these newsletters as a media organization and to be able to say we have a distribution list of ‘XYZ.’”
Segmentation
Curry’s been tapping into beehiiv’s Segmentation to provide his readers with a custom-tailored experience.
He shared, “Overall, the tools have been just so much easier for us to make decisions on the fly. We don't have to sit here and test stuff forever. We can go, ‘Let's try it with the audience. We've segmented our audience and said, ‘Hey we want to give this audience access to this information.’”
Curry has also leveraged segmented embeds so he’s able to place invites to events inside his newsletter that only specific segments can see when they open it.
He shared, “It’s been really great. For people who go to some of our events, we've been able to embed something into our newsletter only that segment is able to see (which is like an early invite to our next event).”
Recommendations
With multiple publications, Curry’s able to grow as an ecosystem with beehiiv, rather than creating media silos, thanks, in part, to beehiiv Recommendations.
Curry shared, “There are certain things we haven't quite got to which we want to like the referral program.”
Enjoying this beehiiv case study? Here’s how Christian Collard of Sunday Money grew from zero to 25,000 subscribers in one year with beehiiv.
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!
Why beehiiv?
So, why did Curry choose beehiiv over the dozen-plus other email platforms?
Curry shared, “I was seeing some of the use cases that were shared on Twitter by the founders and other users that have used it, especially its ease of use.”
He continued, “beehiiv was made for newsletters rather than just a marketing tool that happened to do newsletters. We're a media organization. Our newsletter is so important and before what we were using was essentially a marketing platform or CRM that also sent newsletters. That just isn't the way it needed to work.”
Curry needed to ensure the platform he was switching to was a newsletter-first platform.
He shared, “Substack was just not quite what we wanted. I think it was limiting and less of an open-ended tool. But the big thing with beehiiv was it ties into our existing ecosystem really well and it's been very flexible to work with.”
Once he saw that beehiiv made more sense from a feature standpoint, the next consideration was price.
Curry shared, “The price point is better than a lot of competitors. It was far better than HubSpot, by the thousands. So it was a huge savings. And its reliability.”
“We were like ‘Let's make the switch and go with it’ and we did and it's been great. Once we moved LAmag over we were able to move our other brands over as well pretty quickly because we just saw such great results.”
How Curry Monetizes LAmag
So, how exactly does Curry monetize LAmag and the eight publications?
Like many other media companies, he relies heavily on advertising revenue.
Curry shared, “Since we’re a media organization, we have our own in-house sales team. They use it as an added bonus or they sell it directly to luxury brands that want to tie into our readership that's digital-first.”
He continued, “We’ve tried some advertising tools on beehiiv. The tools have evolved so that we can choose and customize what ads we put in. Ads have been used as an upsell when people do a web buy as a media brand on our website. We have cross-brand purchases where they buy something in LAmag but it goes to Pasadena.”
Curry ensures the advertising makes sense for the specific platform and the publication to keep revenue strong.
He shared, “In our Weekend Guide, we tend to put events that are weekend-related — advertisers buy an ad there. We do a sponsored story in the newsletter and banners at the top and bottom. We found that those work well with the platform and it's easy for our sales team to sell.”
One major consideration advertisers care about when analyzing a potential newsletter to advertise in is deliverability. Since switching to beehiiv, Curry has seen all his numbers climb.
ROI of beehiiv
So, what’s LAmag’s return on investment since making the switch to beehiiv?
Curry explained that he finally got his time back.
He shared, “Probably the biggest thing will be time saved. For me, those mistakes that were occurring with the old platform — where my work wasn’t saving — you can't put a monetary value on that. beehiiv is a reliable platform for us so far.”
Another key factor that’s saved him time when running his newsletter has been beehiiv’s customer support.
Curry shared, “When there's been any issue, being able to reach out to the team — I had someone respond to me within a few minutes. As someone who's an executive, emailing my rep and her looping in who needs to be looped in has such great value. To have someone that's a point person and they handle it and they also follow up has been massive for me.”
The other key area where he feels he’s gotten a great ROI has been the performance and reliability of the platform itself.
Curry explained, “I think that the ROI has also been on the performance increase. I personally work on a lot of these newsletters and I don't have a lot of time. So, my time is priceless for me. So, that being said, having that reliability has been another game changer and has shown such a return on every penny we put into the platform.”
Los Angeles Magazine has been running for several decades. Now, the media organization has several physical and digital publications (that Curry helps lead).
He shared, “In terms of a newsletter, it's been something that's been integral since LAmag launched the web version of the magazine.”
Curry explained the inner workings of the ecosystem, “We have the magazine which is the print product, and we have the website, and the newsletter goes hand in hand with it. We don't have a paywall. But we did institute a growth process where if somebody from print goes to the web, we’ll ask for an opt-in to join the newsletter to unlock the article.”
Curry explained how a large percentage of his audience reads the physical version of the magazine still as a subscription.
He shared, “We have people who have had the magazine for 50 years and they get it every month. Most of our readers get their news from the email inbox and then they go to the website. We try to give them a little more context in the newsletter so they don't have to go to the website, but most of the time they do because they find what we're talking about interesting.”
Curry shared how the newsletter is the key piece of their digital strategy that brings everything together.
He explained, “Our demographic tends to get their news from their email. A lot of our readers have loved the digital version of the magazine for 10-15 years. So it's almost like we couldn't exist as a media brand in 2024 without a newsletter or an email marketing tool.”
Curry splits up his publications by editorial and promotional content, yet they all work together cohesively in one system.
“It's been a great experience. We can have as many publications as we want.”
We asked Curry to share his goals for 2025.
His three main goals?
Growth
Monetization
Engagement
He shared, “I want to get our referral program set up. We try to refer people to the newsletter from social — X (formerly known as Twitter) specifically. I also oversee our social media, so being able to integrate social media into every email newsletter has been helpful because there's stuff that's social-only for our brand. So to be able to tie that into our overall newsletter has been a great feature.”
In terms of monetization, he plans on tapping into the beehiiv Ad Network more.
He shared, “We've played around with the Ad Network. There are more options to advertise, which is important. I have to be careful with what I use in terms of platform advertisement versus when one of our luxury brands buys a series of newsletters. We've got options that work by being able to choose what ad we use.”
The third goal for 2025 is to ramp up engagement.
He shared, “We’re going to see how we can make it more of an interactive newsletter and get people engaged. beehiiv polls have been great. Also, subscribers don't just get to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ They get to give input which we've used to make decisions as well.”
Advice for Anyone Thinking of Starting a Newsletter
We wrapped up the interview by asking Curry what advice he has for anyone thinking about starting a newsletter in 2025.
He shared, “I think the big thing is to remember you're writing to people. Write something that makes sense for your audience. Write something from your voice and make it personal.”
Curry also shared how publishing consistently is a crucial factor in succeeding.
He shared, “If I don't send a newsletter one day or there's some reason we don't do it, the response from our readership has been, ‘Hey I'm missing it,’ That is the best compliment you can get. I put a lot of my personal time into this every day, so for me, it's like, ‘Okay there's value to what I'm doing beyond what I can see.’”
He continued, “If people like what you're doing and you find the right people, they'll keep reading, they'll engage, and they'll share it. And if you're going to do it, just jump into it, and play around. Do the free trial.”
Curry closed by stating, “If anyone’s thinking, ‘Why would I switch to beehiiv?’ Just try it out.”
Ready to launch your newsletter?
Reply