Case Study: Payload by Ryan Duffy

When Ryan Duffy joined the Payload team, he brought solid editorial and audience-growth experience but knew nothing about space aka the final frontier. He gave himself a month to catch up, reading anything and everything and talking to whom ever would give him time.

For founder Mo Islam, he had amassed a deep set of knowledge during his time on working on Wall St. financing deals for space companies. And it was through his market research that Mo saw that there was room for a product at the nexus of business, finance, and space. He brought his rolodex and a very specific set of skills and knowledge in this arena and did a soft rollout of Payload before bringing on Ari Lewis as a partner in what was then a weekly newsletter. Ryan was later brought in to help the transition to daily newsletter.

The team at Payload are bringing valuable insights and news that can help readers better understand the ecosystem of public and private players involved in the space economy. Their readers include employees at space agencies, government and military personnel, VIPs at tech companies, and employees at space start-ups and space companies that have been around for decades. Those who would call themselves “space curious” are also counted in their subscriber base, but they may need to some research on their own-

Payload assumes a baseline level of knowledge and familiarity (i.e., common acronyms like ISS, or international space station, won’t be clarified). Payload is conveying dense and important information to people in the industry, all the more reason why the writers work to infuse the newsletter with levity and humor. We talked with Ryan about the addition of original reporting to the Payload, beehiiv’s new social media buttons, and what other media outlets get wrong about space.

The Newsletter: The Payload

Co-Founders: Mo Islam and Ari Lewis

Top posts to check out

Payload 6/15/22 Newsletter

Payload 7/20/22 Newsletter

2022 Goals:

We want to hit 25,000 subscribers and $500k in revenue (includes revenue generated from non-newsletter products too)

Advice for other writers

Consistency is key, but don’t sacrifice on substance just to get something sent. Always assume that your writing sucks, and ask yourself why anybody should be reading your words. Complacency is the enemy. It’s tough love but you and your readers will be better off with this self-discipline, in this humble lowly emailer's opinion.

Favorite beehiiv feature

What’s not to like? Intuitive UX, smooth text editing, feature set already first-rate, more functionality layered in for power users, and a responsive team that is shipping seemingly weekly!

Previous newsletter platform and why you switched

Mailchimp- I am fortunately not balding but I swear I was losing hair from the stress of using our last tech stack. Since we send a bunch of emails, that stack revolved around our ESP. On said ESP, formatted text never inputted properly, the native rich text editor left plenty to be desired, the block configurability just wasn’t cutting it for us. All in all, importing our content each day was a painstaking process done by hand. I could go on but I won’t. Needless to say, there were plenty of opportunity costs and hairs lost.

Advice for anyone considering a switch to beehiiv

I truly haven’t looked back since we migrated in early March. We’re very happy with this platform and ain’t going anywhere soon. I’m really looking forward to more advanced analytics and segmentation tools, and can’t wait to start sending automated drip campaigns.

Tell me about ‘The Payload’

Payload is about Space! Our public-facing motto is to “cover the business and policy of space.” What does that mean, practically speaking? We aim to inform but also educate and entertain, and we write for a highly concentrated audience of decision-makers in the commercial, civil, and military space sectors. We publish ~1,200 words on Beehiiv daily, with the vast majority of our newsletters featuring original reporting.

Where in the media landscape of space coverage does Payload fit in?

Our Archimedes lever, I think, is non-commoditized news and original content/analysis. SpaceX, NASA, and aerospace’s prime contractors command 80% of mainstream headlines and mindshare, as a rule of thumb, leaving just 20% for the rest of the ecosystem. We want to invert that with Payload’s coverage and curation. We spend 80% of our efforts focused on the quote-unquote “rest,” ranging from seed-stage startups to SPACs to foreign space agencies. That said, the newsletter format still allows us to capture and convey the full scope of activity across the space ecosystem, along with what I’d call commodity news. That ranges from government contract awards to press releases to personnel changes to space startup funding rounds.

What is it about space that fascinates your team?

Space has captivated most people at some point in their lives. Even if it’s a passing interest, it is fascinating to many. NASA is one of the most iconic brands and symbols in the US and globally. You see it everywhere, NASA social media accounts are among the most followed accounts on each respective social media platform.

We love a good rocket launch, but we think that is just scratching the surface. Part of the goal of what we’re doing is to try and show people who are space curious or are maybe going down a career path in space that there is so much more to it. There have been a lot of massive changes in just the last ten years and the space industry is at an inflection point. The cost of launch has dropped and the price for going into space is now being commercialized. NASA is gearing up to return to the moon and head to Mars. They are pushing the envelope in deep space exploration.

It’s exciting stuff, technological advances are making space more accessible, we’re seeing a rise of compact satellites and advances in software and communications. We’re seeing it impact world events, the conflict in Ukraine has garnered lots of discussion about satellites. It’s becoming more relevant in our day to day lives. The 2020’s is a time of renaissance with greater exploration and commercialization around space and Payload is in on the ground floor.

Let’s talk about your goals, what revenue do you bring in?

The $500K, which we’re tracking to hit, includes revenue from non-newsletter products too. We just launched Pathfinder, our weekly podcast and we occasionally host sponsored events. We also have a job board and sometimes do webinars. More products are in the pipeline.

And you hope to grow to 25K subscribers- tell me about your growth strategy

On subscribers, I’m not allowed to say how many we have but let's just say the 25k list goal represents a stretch. We’re organically growing very quickly, double digits month over month, with very solid retention/engagement and low churn levels. But since we’re a mainly B2B/B2G publication, finding and converting each additional incremental reader within our target audience will get more and more difficult as we exhaust the easier levers and low-hanging fruit. And a daily newsletter requires a lot of buy-in.

We launched a referral program, which has meaningfully moved the needle on growth. This is the closest thing that Payload has ever done to paid acquisition, as we do create merch on demand and ship it to readers who pass certain referral tiers.

Another big growth driver for us is that we publish our articles on our website and plug them on social media, redistribute them when relevant in subsequent newsletters, and so on and so forth. Newsletters are inherently ephemeral and designed to be discarded, but by publishing our content on our website, we extend the half life and relevance of any given story and give them a permanent online home. Our website is filled with CTAs (Calls to action) to sign up for our newsletter, so if someone has happened on the site and isn't a subscriber, we're trying to convert them. If executed properly, ‘tis a virtuous cycle.

What has your experience been with beehiiv? How are they helping with your growth strategy?

We’re a Beehiiv power user, activating and using new features as soon as they’re shipped. Sometimes even before. To wit: We started embedding social share buttons in our newsletter 12 hours after the feature was added and tweaked our email footer as soon as it was possible. Those are just two examples from the last few weeks.

Our data strongly suggests our deliverability has improved since joining and the referral program has improved not only the quantity of subscribers but quality as well. We talked directly with Tyler about the social share buttons before they were created and even did some testing, it’s invaluable to know that our needs are prioritized. I give kudos to the Beehiiv team. I had requested both of these features. Given that I am but one small email fish in a big Beehiiv pond, I never realistically assumed these features would get pushed up in the product backlog. But they did. Happy customer, five stars.

Why newsletters? What do they offer that other formats lack?

I see newsletters as the ultimate simplified media bundle. You can layer in all manner of narrative styles with curation and aggregation. You can add more voice and tone vis-a-vis other media formats. You can embed a whole lot of tools, all in HTML, no fancy bells and whistles needed! You can give readers the optionality to go deeper on something by clicking out without sacrificing the precious real estate (and their time/attention). You reach audiences where they live, and if you embrace the two-way street dynamic (i.e. read and respond to readers), you can rapidly iterate user feedback on what’s working and what isn’t. I could continue but we’d be here all day. And we all have emails to send.

What do other media outlets get wrong about space?

I’m going to borrow the answer from a recent podcast guest of ours, Lauren Lyons, a space industry consultant. She spoke about the current discord around space, that it is about billionaires playing around. Her point was that those narratives put all the spotlight on billionaires and CEOs and obscure the work of so many hard working people. It also misses all the great ways space exploration is helping life on Earth, it’s improving us as a species.

Any last thoughts?

Payload will be the biggest space content company in the galaxy. Take it to the bank.