My Flagship Newsletter is Launching Native Cross Promotions

Promising Better conversions than 'Substack Recommendations.'

Photo by Cytonn Photography on Unsplash

Hey Everyone,

This is a post specifically to other Substack writers.

We all want to grow our Newsletters in the best way and get high quality referrals.

How can we share traffic on Substack in a more optimized and authentic way? How can we share high quality referrals in a cross promotion? What if we established our own Partner Network of similar peer publications? After two years of experimenting, this is what I’m setting out to do.

On February 19th, 2023 I’ll be doing my first launch of a Native Cross Promotion as pilot.

Hypothesis: Substack Recommendations Don’t Convert

I love the idea of Substack recommendations, but launched in April, 2022 they have been overdone.

Substack recommendations are too passive, too watered down and to readers that are too saturated with Newsletters coming to their inbox already. Even at scale, few of them are going to convert into lifetime readers or paid supporters.

The platform network effect of Substack works for some niches, more than others. The more your niche diverges from the average Substack reader (say of political or cultural Newsletters), the less valuable those recommendations become.

As a rule it’s great to get more readers but what if those readers are already subscribed to over 10 Newsletters. It turns out “secondary passive” recommendations don’t really convert to paid subscribers very often.

They might pad your list size but aren’t necessarily doing much for your growth or business.

“A single name drop, shout-out or single line CTA isn’t going to convert. “

A Better way: Native Cross Promotions

I’ve thought of a better way.

I believe more “direct recommendations” to readers of Newsletters that are aligned is a stronger and more trustworthy CTA to share traffic in a reciprocal manner, but it needs to follow a strong CTA format. A single name drop, shout-out or single line CTA isn’t going to convert.

At least not at rates that are useful or scalable.

This changes however if you try more of a Naive Sponsor design format with a more persuasive multi-pronged CTA.

Format

The format I recommend in early 2024 consists of the following:

1. A shout-out on Notes

2. A Native Sponsor Ad, but for a Partner instead of a Brand

• Two to three links to their articles

• A Logo

• Bullet points

• A CTA

• A sign-up form

For Example:

Links

Pre Native Setup + Bullet points

Embedded Signup Form & CTA Subscription Button!

Let me know what you think?

Jeremy Caplan

of Wonder Tools was my guinea pig for this experiment.

Direct Cross Promotion

While the LetterGrowth website has the right idea, it doesn’t have the correct format for it to work well enough.

Only Works if Both Partners

• Shout-out on Notes

• Super follow them on LinkedIn and like their posts

• Direct Native Cross Promotion Sponsor on a free Newsletter issue

• Using: links, logo, bullet points, embedded sign-up form and paid CTA.

How to Scale?

It’s only scalable if they follow those steps, have a decent sized list and you do enough of them each month to grow your list faster with higher quality readers.

• Both partners need to have significant and similar sized lists with significant reader interest overlap

• Both partners should ideally have similar CTRs or Open rates (less accurate)

• Both partners need to agree to reciprocate all of these steps.

• Doing multiple cross-promotions with aligned partners is what matters here, the frequency (not too often that it feels spammy, but often enough that that trickle of traffic amounts to high quality new reader acquisition in a cost effective way).

Step One - How-To

• Find peers in your nice who started about the same time as you or have a similar sized list

• Contact them

• Create Native Sponsor design templates like I have shown above

• Track results, evaluate

• Do more Cross Promotions with new partners

• Consider doing guest posts and establishing a larger partner network of similar sister publications

The cost of acquiring a new subscriber has gotten higher with the proliferation of Newsletters and the quality of said acquisitions has gotten lower, to beat the odds you really need to do more targeted campaigns.

Never rely on just vanilla organic reader growth. Since your list will go cold, your readers will churn naturally faster than you grow leading to failure.

Let me know what you think?

The Value of Native Cross Promotions?

In my opinion, Native Direct Cross Promotions, NDCPs, are a more authentic and high-quality way to share traffic with other publications and grow your audience in a semi-targeted way that’s low cost and highly collaborative.

See the Live Pilot

You can see how the NDCP looks for Wonder Tools Newsletter - see how it looks in today’s Newsletter here: