Latest / The Newsletter Podcast with Fexingo: Substack, Beehiiv, and Email Newsletter Business / Why Newsletter Creators Ignore Their Own Distribution Networks
Transcript
- Lucas: Look, if you spend any time watching the creator economy space right now, especially on October eighteenth twenty twenty six, you see a lot of talk about distribution. And usually, when people say distribution, they mean Twitter threads, TikTok hooks, or cross-promotions with other newsletters. Luna: Right, it’s all about the new audience. The hunt for the next ten thousand subscribers feels like the only metric that matters to most founders. Lucas: Exactly. But here is the thing I keep coming back to: most newsletter creators are sitting on a goldmine of underutilized assets and completely ignoring them. I am talking about their own existing subscriber lists. Not just the active ones, but the dormant ones, the lapsed ones, the people who signed up two years ago and never opened another email after the welcome sequence. Luna: That sounds like a lot of dead weight. Why would anyone care about people who haven't opened an email in months? Lucas: Because those people already gave you permission. They already trusted you enough to hand over their email address. The cost to acquire them was zero once that initial exchange happened. Yet, we see creators treating their list like a broadcast megaphone rather than a segmented database. They send the same generic weekly update to everyone, regardless of when they last engaged. Luna: So you are saying the problem isn't lack of content, but lack of relevance to the individual reader's history? Lucas: Precisely. Let me give you a concrete example. There is a mid-sized finance newsletter, let us call it 'The Daily Ledger,' which hit fifty thousand subscribers around early twenty twenty four. For the first year, they grew organically. Then, growth stalled. So, what did they do? They spent thirty percent of their budget on paid ads and influencer partnerships to get more people to sign up. Luna: Which makes sense on paper. If the tap is dry, you turn on the hose. But clearly, there was a better way. Lucas: It was a mistake. Because while they were spending money on new acquisitions, their churn rate was quietly eating alive about twelve percent of their list every quarter. People weren't unsubscribing; they were just going silent. And silent subscribers depress your sender reputation. Email providers like Gmail and Outlook start putting those emails into the promotions tab or even the spam folder because engagement signals are weak. Luna: Oh, that is a technical nuance a lot of creators miss. They think as long as the email sends, it arrives. But the algorithm decides where it lands based on past behavior. Lucas: Correct. So, The Daily Ledger eventually hired a consultant who didn't suggest buying more ads. Instead, she suggested a ninety-day win-back campaign. They took the bottom twenty percent of their list—the ones who hadn't opened an email in over ninety days—and they sent them a very different kind of message. Luna: What did the message say? Did they just ask 'Are you still there?' Lucas: No, that is too passive. They sent a personalized video from the creator, thanking them for being part of the community early on, and asking a simple question: 'What topic would you actually want us to cover next?' It wasn't a pitch. It wasn't a sales letter. It was a conversation starter. Luna: That feels low friction. You aren't demanding they read your weekly digest; you are asking for their preference. That respects their autonomy. Lucas: It does. And the results were startling. About fifteen percent of those dormant subscribers replied. Fifteen percent! In email marketing, a reply rate of one percent is considered excellent. These people were engaging directly. And for those who didn't reply, the creator set up an automated tag that moved them into a monthly digest-only stream instead of the daily deep-dive. Luna: So you reduced the noise for them, which likely improved your overall deliverability scores because the remaining active users saw less competition in their inbox. Lucas: Exactly. By segmenting out the low-intent users, the sender reputation for the high-intent segment went up. The open rates for the core group jumped from eighteen percent to twenty-four percent within six weeks. And here is the kicker: the revenue per subscriber increased because the ads sold to higher engagement metrics. Luna: This is fascinating. It basically means that nurturing the existing relationship is cheaper and more profitable than constantly hunting for new blood. It flips the standard SaaS growth model on its head. Lucas: It does. Most businesses obsess over customer acquisition cost. But in newsletters, the lifetime value of an existing subscriber is often underestimated because we treat the list as static. It is dynamic. People change interests, they get busier, their attention spans shift. If you don't adapt your distribution to match their current state, you lose them. Luna: But doesn't this require a lot of manual work? Segmentation and personalized videos sound like a nightmare to scale for someone doing this solo. Lucas: It used to be. But platforms like Beehiiv and Substack have introduced more robust automation tools recently. You can set up triggers based on open events, click events, or even time since last activity. The technology is there. The barrier is strategic. Creators have to decide that their list is a distribution network they manage, not just a mailbox they fill. Luna: I guess I have been guilty of that myself. I feel like I owe my whole list a weekly update, so I keep sending everything to everyone, even though half of them probably delete it without reading. Lucas: That guilt is common. But think about it from the reader's perspective. If they receive an email they don't care about, three times in a row, what do they do? They archive it. Or worse, they mark it as spam. You are actively harming your own reach by forcing irrelevant content on uninterested parties. Luna: So the act of sending less, to the right people, is actually a pro-growth move. It cleans the slate. Lucas: Yes. And it builds trust. When a reader opens your email and finds exactly what they signed up for, they reinforce that habit. You are training their brain to look for your notification. That is a moat no algorithm can take away. Luna: Speaking of things that keep these independent voices going, I want to pause for a second. If these marketing conversations have sparked something you've actually used, or if you just find value in the deep dives we do here, a couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going. You can support us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It’s ad-free listening, pure insight, and no pressure at all. Lucas: Yeah, exactly. Just a small token if it helps. But let's get back to the mechanics of that win-back campaign. You mentioned the technical side earlier. What happens to the people who still don't engage after the ninety-day nudge? Luna: Do you keep them forever as 'dormant' tags, or is there a point where you just remove them from the count entirely? Lucas: Good question. Most smart creators will do a final 'hard clean' after about six months of total silence. They send one last email: 'We are cleaning our list and won't hear from you again unless you opt back in.' If they don't reply, they are removed. Luna: That sounds harsh, but financially necessary. Those contacts are costing you money in storage and potentially hurting your analytics. Lucas: They are dead weight. Removing them improves your average open rate percentage immediately. It makes your metrics look healthier to potential advertisers. And honestly, it frees up mental bandwidth for the creator. You stop worrying about a hundred thousand numbers and start focusing on the five thousand who actually care. Luna: It shifts the focus from vanity metrics to actual community health. Which, ultimately, is what sustains a business. Lucas: Right. And this brings us back to the original point. Distribution isn't just about getting in the door. It's about keeping the door open for the people who want to stay. The creators who ignore their own networks are leaving money on the table while chasing fleeting viral moments. Luna: So the lesson is: audit your list before you buy traffic. Treat your existing audience like a garden, not a mine. Lucas: I love that analogy. A garden requires tending, pruning, and knowing which plants thrive in which soil. A mine just extracts until it's empty. Luna: And unlike a mine, a garden can regenerate. If you water the right spots, the yield increases season after season. Lucas: Exactly. So, next time you launch a new product or a new subscription tier, don't just blast it to the whole list. Segment it. Test it. Ask the quiet ones what they need. You might be surprised by how much energy is waiting to be tapped. Luna: Or you might realize that the quiet ones are gone for good, and that is okay. Sometimes letting go is the best distribution strategy. Lucas: Sometimes letting go is the best distribution strategy. I think we will leave it there for today. Thanks for tuning in.