Latest / The Newsletter Podcast with Fexingo: Substack, Beehiiv, and Email Newsletter Business / How Newsletters Are Using Retargeting Ads to Recover Lost Subscribers
Transcript
- Lucas: If you've run a newsletter for more than six months, you've seen the pattern: someone lands on your sign-up page, maybe even types their email, and then... nothing. Or they subscribe, open two issues, and vanish. That's not a lost cause. That's a retargeting opportunity. Luna: You're talking about running ads to get those people back? I feel like most newsletter writers think of ads only for new audience acquisition, not re-engagement. Lucas: Exactly. And that's a blind spot. Because the data is pretty striking. I was looking at a case from a mid-sized marketing newsletter — call it 'The Ad Report' — they had about 45,000 free subscribers and a paid tier at $15 a month. They ran a retargeting experiment on Facebook and Instagram for 30 days with a five-hundred-dollar budget. Luna: Five hundred bucks over a month — that's barely sixteen dollars a day. What did they get for it? Lucas: They recovered 12 percent of their lapsed subscribers. That's people who had either abandoned the sign-up form or hadn't opened an email in over 90 days. They got 1,800 people to re-subscribe or re-engage. At that cost per acquisition, it's about 28 cents per regained subscriber. Luna: Twenty-eight cents is cheap. But what's the actual mechanism? Are they just showing a generic 'come back' ad? Lucas: No, that's the key — generic retargeting flops. What worked was specificity. They created three ad sets. One targeted people who visited the sign-up page but didn't complete it. Another targeted subscribers who hadn't opened an email in 90 days. A third targeted people who clicked a link from a past issue but didn't subscribe. Each ad spoke directly to that behavior. Luna: So the ad creative was different for each segment? What did the 'abandoned sign-up' ad say? Lucas: It said something like: 'You were one click away from smarter marketing. Here's the issue you missed.' And then it showed a screenshot of a recent newsletter edition with a compelling headline. For the lapsed subscribers, the ad was: 'We noticed you haven't opened lately. Here's a free guide on email deliverability we just published.' It was a lead magnet tied to a pain point they knew their audience had. Luna: That's smart — offering something new, not just begging for attention. But how do you even track someone who visited your sign-up page? That requires a pixel, right? Lucas: Right. They installed the Facebook pixel on their Substack and Beehiiv pages — the sign-up page, the thank-you page, and the archive pages. That pixel fires when someone lands, when they submit the form, and when they confirm. So you can build audiences based on 'visited page but didn't reach thank-you page.' It's a standard e-commerce funnel, but almost no newsletter writers use it. Luna: I wonder if that's because newsletter platforms don't make it easy. Substack doesn't exactly hand you a pixel setup guide. Lucas: That's true. But you can inject custom code into the header or via a plugin if you're on Beehiiv. And if you're self-hosting with something like Mailchimp or ConvertKit, it's straightforward. The barrier is knowledge, not technology. Luna: So let's talk about the 12 percent recovery number. Is that typical? Or was this an unusually good result? Lucas: It's on the high end, but not an outlier. I've seen other tests — a finance newsletter with 80,000 subscribers ran a similar campaign and got a 7 percent re-engagement rate. The difference was ad creative quality and how well the landing page matched the ad. The marketing newsletter had a dedicated landing page for each ad set, not just a generic 'subscribe now' page. Luna: Dedicated landing pages for each segment — that takes effort. Most solopreneur newsletter writers are already stretched thin. Is the ROI worth the time? Lucas: Depends on the value of a subscriber. If you're running a free newsletter that monetizes through sponsorships, each subscriber might be worth a few dollars a year in ad revenue. At 28 cents per regained subscriber, you break even quickly. But if you have a paid tier, the math gets even better. The Ad Report's paid tier was $15 a month. If even 5 percent of the re-engaged subscribers converted to paid — which they did, about 90 people — that's $1,350 a month in recurring revenue from a $500 ad spend. Luna: That's a 2.7x monthly return on ad spend, not counting the free subscribers who now see sponsors again. But you're also assuming those re-engaged subscribers stick around. What's the retention rate after the retargeting? Lucas: That's the critical question. In this case, they tracked the cohort for 60 days after the retargeting. About 60 percent of the re-engaged subscribers were still opening emails after two months. That's not amazing, but it's better than the zero percent you get from someone who's completely gone. And the paid subscribers? 80 percent retention after 60 days, because they had actually paid again. Luna: So the act of paying re-locks them in, at least for a bit. That makes sense. But I want to push back on something: isn't retargeting ads just papering over a deeper problem? If someone stopped opening, maybe the content isn't good enough. Lucas: Fair point. Retargeting isn't a substitute for improving your content. But churn happens even to great newsletters — people get busy, inboxes overflow, life changes. Retargeting is a way to bring them back long enough to show them you've gotten better. And you can A/B test the content itself within the retargeting campaign. If the 'here's a new guide' ad works better than the 'we miss you' ad, that tells you something about what your audience wants. Luna: You just mentioned A/B testing the ad creative. What actually performed best in their campaign? Lucas: The best-performing ad was a carousel — three slides showing actual newsletter excerpts with a headline like 'Three marketing mistakes you're making.' The second-best was a single image with a testimonial quote from a subscriber. The worst was a simple text ad saying 'Come back to The Ad Report.' No visual, no value prop. That one had a click-through rate of 0.3 percent, versus 2.1 percent for the carousel. Luna: So show, don't tell. Show them what they're missing. That's a lesson that applies beyond retargeting. Lucas: Absolutely. And the other thing they tested was the landing page. For the 'abandoned sign-up' segment, they sent people to a page that auto-filled the email field if the pixel had captured it. Conversion rate jumped from 12 percent to 34 percent. That's a huge lift from a tiny technical tweak. Luna: Auto-fill based on pixel data — that's clever. But also a bit creepy. Did they get any pushback on privacy? Lucas: A few people complained, but it was less than 1 percent of the traffic. And they had a privacy notice on the page. I think most people appreciate not having to retype their email. It's the same logic as 'one-click subscribe' on Substack. Luna: True. So what's the minimum viable setup for a newsletter writer who wants to try retargeting? Say they have a Substack with 5,000 subscribers and zero ad experience. Lucas: Start with the Facebook pixel. Install it on your sign-up page and your thank-you page. Run a small test — $100 over a week — targeting people who visited the sign-up page in the last 30 days but didn't subscribe. Use a carousel ad featuring your three best recent posts. Send them to your sign-up page, not a generic homepage. Measure cost per sign-up and compare it to your organic cost per sign-up. If it's lower, scale up. Luna: What about Instagram? They tested both, right? Lucas: Yeah. Facebook had better cost per click, but Instagram had better conversion rate — likely because the audience was more visual and the carousel performed well in the feed. In the end, they split the budget 60-40 Facebook-Instagram and got similar overall ROI. But I'd say start with Facebook because the targeting options are more granular. Luna: One thing I'm wondering: does this work for newsletters that are purely free and ad-supported? Because the lifetime value of a free subscriber is lower. Lucas: It can still work if your CPM sponsorship rates are decent. Let's say you earn $10 per thousand subscribers per month from sponsors. Recovering 1,000 lapsed subscribers at $280 cost gives you an extra $10,000 a year in ad revenue — assuming they stay. That's a 35x annual return. The math works as long as your cost per regained subscriber is under $1. Luna: That's compelling. But I think the bigger takeaway is that retargeting forces you to understand your own funnel. You have to map out where people drop off and why. That alone is valuable. Lucas: Totally. And once you have that map, retargeting becomes just one tool in a broader re-engagement system. You can pair it with email win-back sequences, SMS, even direct mail for high-value subscribers. But ads are often the fastest way to test the concept. Luna: Before we wrap up, I want to ask about the dark side: ad fatigue. If you're retargeting the same people over and over, won't they get annoyed and block you? Lucas: That's a real risk. The best practice is frequency caps — limit to three impressions per person per week. And rotate creative every two weeks. The Ad Report used five different creatives over the 30 days. They also excluded people who re-subscribed or opened an email during the campaign, so they weren't hitting active subscribers. Luna: Good. So it's not just 'set it and forget it.' It requires monitoring. But for a five-hundred-dollar experiment, the upside seems worth the effort. Lucas: Exactly. And the data you get — which segments respond, which offers resonate, which landing pages convert — that's useful even if you never run another ad. It's research you can apply to your email content itself. Luna: Alright, I'm convinced. I might even try it for my own side project. One last question: what's the biggest mistake you see newsletter writers make when they try retargeting? Lucas: They target everyone who ever visited their site, including current subscribers. They burn budget showing ads to people who already open every issue. The key is to exclude your active audience and focus narrowly on the drop-offs. Also, they often use the same ad for all segments. That's like sending the same email to your entire list without segmentation — it's lazy and it underperforms. Luna: Segmentation, dedicated landing pages, pixel tracking, and iterative creative. That's the blueprint. Let's put it in the show notes. Lucas: We'll do that. And if you try this, I'd love to hear your numbers. Drop us a note. We might feature your case in a future episode.