beehiiv’s Newsletter Navigator: 4 Free Tools to Track Your Growth

Have you ever heard the phrase, “What gets measured, gets managed?”

This saying can be applied to almost anything in life—including your newsletter.

If you aren’t tracking your key newsletter growth metrics, you’re navigating blindly on the open sea. How can you know what to improve if you can’t see what’s wrong? And, just as importantly, how can you stay motivated when you can’t see how far you’ve come?

If you plan on flipping the growth switch on in your newsletter, you need to start tracking a few key metrics. With beehiiv, you can now calculate your crucial newsletter growth metrics with ease. In March 2023, we introduced the “Newsletter Navigator,” a free resource of simple growth calculators for anyone looking to grow their newsletter (whether you’re a beehiiv customer or not).

In this article, we’ll break down what the Newsletter Navigator is, how this resource works, and why you need to take advantage of it so your newsletter can reach its full potential.

Let’s dive in.

What Is the Newsletter Navigator?

Two challenges plague newsletter publishers every day: engagement and monetization.

With beehiiv’s 3D analytics, you can see exactly how engaged your newsletter audience is. But, how do you figure out the other challenge—monetization?

For instance, here are some of the most common questions newsletter creators have about monetization:

• How do I get profitable?

• How do I stay profitable?

• How much should I invest to acquire new subscribers?

• How much should I charge for paid subscriptions?

• What’s the lifetime value of my subscribers?

• How do I know how much revenue each subscriber generates on average?

• How much should I invest in Referral Program rewards?

For most newsletter creators, these questions go unanswered simply because most people aren’t sure how to calculate them (or leave frustrated because math isn’t their forté).

That’s where the Newsletter Navigator comes in.

At beehiiv, we heard the concerns and frustrations of newsletter creators all around the world, so we decided to create a free resource anyone can use (whether you’re a beehiiv customer or not), so you can better understand your numbers and grow your newsletter.

Our free resource features four unique newsletter growth calculators:

1. Lifetime Value (LTV) Calculator

2. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) Calculator

3. Newsletter Ad Revenue Calculator

4. Referral Milestones

Each of these tools is designed to take the guesswork out of your newsletter’s numbers so you can better understand where you’re at and where you’ve come from, enabling you to focus on where you’re going to reach your goals.

How The Newsletter Navigator Calculators Work

When you head over to Newsletter Navigator, you’ll find a suite of four calculators that simplify four fundamental growth metrics so you can make better decisions to optimize your newsletter’s growth and monetization.

Here’s how each calculator works:

1. Lifetime Value (LTV) Calculator

Lifetime value, or LTV, is an essential metric that newsletter publishers need to understand. It’s crucial because it shows you the total revenue of your subscribers over their lifespan as a subscriber.

To calculate your newsletter LTV, plug in these numbers:

• Total subscribers

• Open rate

• Unsubscribe rate

• Average revenue per month

• Monthly sends

If you offer paid subscriptions, you can also include that data by toggling the “Advanced” button and filling in these numbers:

• Monthly membership price

• Total paid subscriptions

• Upgrades per month

• Downgrades per month

For the numbers you input, if you’re unsure what they mean or how to find them, simply hover your mouse over the little “i” button to learn more.

Once you plug in your numbers, you’ll see your results, giving you an estimated lifetime value of your subscribers. Once you understand your LTV, you can optimize your marketing strategy. Our LTV calculator will give you valuable insights when it comes to investing in subscriber acquisition to maximize profitability and growth.

2. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) Calculator

Customer acquisition cost, or CAC, is another valuable metric you need to know so you can scale your newsletter and reach new people. CAC simply tells you how much it costs you to acquire a new subscriber.

To determine your customer acquisition costs, plug these two numbers into the beehiiv calculator:

• Subscribers acquired from paid campaigns

• Total cost of paid campaigns

Keep in mind: To see an accurate payback period, you must first fill out the LTV calculator above, since the CAC calculator will pull the number you submit in average revenue/month to determine the payback period result.

Once you type in your numbers, you’ll see two results: customer acquisition cost (CAC) and payback period.

Your customer acquisition cost will tell you how much you’re spending to acquire a single subscriber. The payback period is how long it will take you to recover from the investment into new subscribers (which is impacted by the revenue you submitted in the LTV calculator).

3. Newsletter Ad Revenue Calculator

Our third newsletter growth tool is the newsletter ad revenue calculator. This calculator will help you estimate how much revenue you can earn with beehiiv’s Ad Network by running sponsored ads in your newsletters.

Leveraging sponsorships through beehiiv’s Ad Network can help you generate a steady stream of income to further your newsletter growth.

To determine your ad revenue estimate, plug these numbers into the beehiiv calculator:

• Subscribers

• Sends per month

Then, depending on whether you’ll be using cost-per-mille (CPM) or cost-per-click (CPC) ads, you’ll enter these numbers:

• CPM: open rate, CPM target

• CPC: click rate, CPC target

Once you’ve entered your numbers, our calculator will pop out your projected ad revenue.

Just remember, these estimates are based on data from the beehiiv Ad Network. If you want to start running sponsored ads, sign up for beehiiv to access the ad network.

4. Referral Milestones

Our final newsletter growth tool is the referral milestones calculator. This calculator will help you calculate how much you should invest in your rewards through your referral program.

A referral program can be a powerful tool to expedite your list growth. But, you need to be careful to understand how much you should spend on your referral rewards; otherwise, you could be losing money. On the flip side, you may not be investing enough and stunting your growth.

To better understand the numbers behind your referral milestones, start by entering in your lifetime value (LTV) at the top. Then, add these numbers to the grid-style calculator on each line (depending on what rewards you offer):

• Total referrals needed to access the reward

• Description

• Type (Promo, Digital, Physical)

• Unit Cost

• Shipping

• Total Cost

Once you’ve entered your numbers in, our calculator will pop out a few different numbers on the grid:

• LTV: of each subscriber based on how many people they’ve referred (second column)

• Under Budget?: This will be checked off if the calculator determined that this reward is costing you too much money or is priced accordingly so your referral program is profitable

• LTV:CAC: This is your lifetime value (LTV) divided by your customer acquisition cost (CAC). This is essentially your return on investment (ROI) for each reward. For rewards that don’t cost you anything (i.e. promo), you won’t see a number here, since the ROI will essentially be infinite.

Keep in mind, you can adjust the total number of rewards on the grid depending on how many rewards you have. You can remove a reward line on the right side of the grid or add a reward line on the bottom of the grid.

If you’re looking to accelerate your newsletter’s growth, get started with beehiiv’s Referral Program today.

Time To Crunch Your Numbers

The most successful newsletter publishers are those who treat theirs as a business.

Chances are, you’d rather work on the creative side of your newsletter. But, if you want to transform it into a real, profitable business, then you need to start treating it like one.

Our Newsletter Navigator is a resource you can come back to whenever you need. We recommend revisiting this calculator to analyze your metrics at least once a quarter. That way, you can gain insights into your newsletter’s monetization metrics so you can optimize your strategy and reach your goals.

Now, it’s your turn. Want to plug your numbers into the Newsletter Navigator to see how you’re doing? Try our free growth metric calculator resource today!