Latest / The Newsletter Podcast with Fexingo: Substack, Beehiiv, and Email Newsletter Business / How One Newsletter Uses the 80-20 Rule to Find Its Best Content
Transcript
- Lucas: So Luna, I've been digging into something that feels almost too simple to be true, but the numbers are pretty striking. There's a B2B newsletter called The Operations Desk, focused on supply chain managers, and the founder recently shared a teardown of his own content performance. He applied the 80-20 rule to six months of data and found that just twenty percent of his articles drove eighty percent of his paid conversions. Luna: That's a classic Pareto pattern, but I'm curious — what exactly counted as the twenty percent? Was it a specific format, a topic, or something else entirely? Lucas: It was format, clear as day. He was publishing two posts a week — one was a quick news roundup, the other was a deep-dive teardown of a real supply chain failure, like the Ever Given getting stuck in the Suez Canal, or the semiconductor backlog of 2021. The teardowns were only about a quarter of his output, but they pulled in triple the open rates and roughly five times the click-throughs of the roundups. Luna: So the roundups were essentially filler. Did he cut them entirely, or did he just rebalance the calendar? Lucas: He did something smarter than just cutting them — he moved the roundup to a free, weekly digest and made the teardown the flagship paid piece. He also reduced his total output from two posts to one a week, because the teardowns took longer to research. Within two months, his paid subscriber count went up twenty-seven percent, and his churn rate actually dropped by a third, because the people who stuck around were the ones who wanted the analysis, not the news. Luna: The churn drop is the part that really stands out to me. It's not just about getting more people to pay — it's about getting the right people to pay. If the roundup was attracting a bunch of free readers who never converted, that's a lot of wasted effort. Lucas: Exactly. And he said it took him six months to even notice the pattern because he was so focused on his total open rate, which stayed steady at around forty percent. It wasn't until he segmented the data by format that the divergence jumped out at him. That's the thing about the 80-20 rule — it's not magic, it's just a reminder to look at the underlying distribution instead of the average. Luna: Right, averages can really hide the outliers. I remember you've talked about that on the show before with other topics, but it's so easy to fall into the trap of just checking your overall open rate and calling it a day. Lucas: So how do you actually do this without getting lost in a spreadsheet? The founder's approach was surprisingly low-tech. He exported his email provider's data into a simple table, listed every post he'd sent in the last six months, and then ranked them by paid conversion events — not opens, not clicks, but actual upgrades from free to paid. He found that ten out of fifty posts accounted for forty-two of his fifty-three total conversions. Luna: Ten posts, forty-two conversions. That's a pretty clean line. But I mean, with a sample that small, could some of that just be random noise? A couple of those conversions could have come from people who'd been on the fence for months and happened to pull the trigger on a random Tuesday. Lucas: That's a fair challenge, and he actually addressed that by looking at the timing. He mapped each conversion to the last post someone read before upgrading, and the pattern held. The ten posts weren't sporadic — they were the same types of deep dives, published every couple of weeks. So it wasn't just a one-off spike; it was a consistent pattern tied to a specific format. Luna: Okay, that makes it a lot more convincing. I also love that he used conversion events rather than just engagement metrics, because clicks and opens can be misleading. I've seen blogs with tons of clicks but zero trust-building. Lucas: Trust is exactly the word. He told me that the teardown format worked because it showed he'd done the homework — he'd read the incident reports, interviewed a couple of logistics managers, and spelled out the chain of decisions that led to the failure. That kind of depth signals to a supply chain professional that he actually understands their world, so when the upgrade prompt came, it felt like a no-brainer. Luna: So for anyone listening who wants to try this on their own newsletter, what's the first step? Is it just pulling the data, or is there something more nuanced? Lucas: The first step is to define what 'value' means for your newsletter. For him it was paid conversions, but for a free newsletter it might be replies from a specific type of reader, or clicks on a job board, or even forward to a friend rates. Pick one metric that actually moves the needle for your goal, then rank every post you've sent in the last three to six months by that metric. You don't need fancy analytics — a simple spreadsheet works. Luna: And then you look for the top twenty percent and see what they have in common. I bet for most people it's not just one thing — it might be a topic cluster or a specific voice or even a certain length. Lucas: Exactly, and that's where the judgment comes in. In his case it was the format, but I've seen other newsletters where the pattern was topic-based — say, anything about pricing psychology outperformed everything else. The key is to resist the urge to over-index on one post. You want to see at least three or four posts that share a common thread before you call it a trend. Luna: That's a really practical guardrail. I remember a few episodes back you mentioned the danger of reacting to a single viral post and suddenly turning your whole newsletter into that one thing. The 80-20 rule is really about finding the sustainable pattern, not the freak accident. Lucas: And there's a second layer to this — once you find your top twenty percent, you should also look at the bottom twenty percent. The bottom performers are often the most expensive because they eat up time and attention without giving anything back. In his case, the news roundups were taking him about an hour each, and they were barely moving the needle. Cutting them freed up four or five hours a week that he put into more teardowns. Luna: That's a great trade-off. Time is the real currency for newsletter writers, not just money. And I'm guessing that extra time also made the teardowns better, which probably led to even more conversions. Lucas: Yeah, he said the quality jump was noticeable within a month. He could spend more time interviewing sources, fact-checking details, and even going back to past teardowns to update them with new developments. That created an interesting secondary effect — some of his paid subscribers started referencing his old teardowns in their own work, which brought in a new wave of readers via search and social shares. Luna: So the 80-20 rule isn't just about cutting; it's about doubling down on what works and letting that compound. That's a much more exciting way to think about it. Lucas: Exactly. And the founder's story is a good reminder that you don't need a data science team to pull this off. He's a solo operator with a few hundred subscribers, and he did everything in a spreadsheet. The biggest barrier is usually just the willingness to look at your own work with a critical eye and say, 'Hey, I've been spending a lot of time on this thing that isn't working.' Luna: That's the hard part, honestly. It's easy to get attached to a format you enjoy writing, even when the data says it's not landing. I've been there with my own side projects. Lucas: Yeah, I think that's why the 80-20 rule is such a useful mental model — it gives you permission to let go of things that aren't serving your readers. It's not about being lazy; it's about being focused. And on a podcast like this, we're always trying to focus on the most useful stuff for you, the listener. If these marketing conversations have sparked something you've actually used in your own work, a couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you've gotten something out of them. Luna: Yeah, that's right. It's a small thing that adds up, and it keeps the podcast free and ad-free for everyone. So back to the teardown — did he ever go back and re-evaluate after a few months, or was it a one-time analysis? Lucas: He actually said he plans to do this review every quarter from now on. He set a reminder to re-rank his posts by conversions every three months, because as his audience grows, the winning pattern might shift. When he hit a thousand subscribers, the teardowns were still dominant, but he noticed that a new format — a 'lessons learned' post that summarized the teardown into five bullet points — started to gain traction. Those posts were shorter and easier to produce, so he's now testing them as a way to win back lapsed readers. Luna: So the 80-20 rule isn't a one-and-done, it's an ongoing loop. You find your top performers, double down, but you also keep an eye out for new patterns as your audience evolves. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the real lesson here — the 80-20 rule is a starting point for a conversation with your data, not the final answer. The best newsletter writers I've seen treat this as a regular practice, like a quarterly health check. They're always asking, 'What's the twenty percent that's doing the heavy lifting right now, and how can I do more of that?' Luna: It's a great framework. I think anyone listening can start with just their last ten posts and see if a pattern jumps out. It doesn't have to be a huge statistical analysis — just a simple ranking by the metric that matters most to them. Lucas: And that metric should be tied directly to their goal, whether that's revenue, engagement, or something else. For a paid newsletter, it's conversions. For a lead-gen newsletter, it might be demo requests. For a community newsletter, it might be replies or comments. The 80-20 rule works at any scale, as long as you're measuring the right thing. Luna: I'm also thinking about the flip side — the bottom twenty percent. Do you have any advice for what to do with those underperformers? Is it always best to cut them, or can they sometimes serve a purpose? Lucas: That's a good question. Sometimes the bottom performers are necessary for reader retention — like a weekly roundup that keeps lapsed readers coming back even if it doesn't convert. But the key is to make sure they're not eating up time that could go to your top performers. In his case, the roundup was still useful as a free teaser that drove new sign-ups, so he didn't kill it entirely — he just moved it to a separate free feed and stopped spending as much time on it. Luna: So it's not always about cutting, but about rebalancing effort. That's a much more nuanced take than just 'kill your darlings.' Lucas: Exactly. The 80-20 rule gives you a lens, but you still have to make strategic decisions about how to allocate your time and attention. And that's what makes it a useful tool for any newsletter writer, whether you're just starting out or you've been at it for years. Luna: I love that this episode gives a concrete example of how to apply a classic business principle to a creative practice. It's one thing to hear about the Pareto principle in a textbook, but seeing how a real newsletter founder used it to improve his business is something you can actually apply this week. Lucas: Yeah, and if you do try it, let us know how it goes. We'd love to hear about your own 80-20 revelations. Until next time, keep finding the twenty percent that matters.