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Mmmmarketing
August marks a year since we launched the free version of Newsletter Glue on WordPress.org. A lot has happened since then and Ahmed and I are so proud of everything we’ve done so far.
And yet, this is just the beginning for us. The first year taught me you can launch and gain support by building in public (here’s a talk I gave on this topic at WordFest Live). It also showed me that customers love our product and approach. Most importantly, it’s given us the confidence to double down.
And that brings me to today’s newsletter topic: Marketing.
My marketing strategy in the last 12 months has been: Spend time on Twitter making friends with people with larger audiences than me, then opportunistically get on their livestreams, podcasts, and more to promote the plugin.
So far, this has worked really well. But now it’s time to commit and scale.
My goal is to get to 10k monthly visitors by the end of the year. For context, we’re at ~1k right now.
Here’s how I plan to do it:
4k from the blog: To start, I’ve hired a freelance writer to help with our blog posts. The goal there is to post search engine optimised content weekly. This includes guest posting (reply to this email if you have a popular blog and would like me to guest post on it about newsletters and/or building in public).
1k from directory listings: I’m actively working to get on more directories. Here are our listings on Campaign Monitor and WPMayor. I’d love to get on more directories. If you know of any good ones, please let me know!
1k from livestreams and podcasts: I’ve done a lot of these in the past year and am planning to do more. I have a few already in the works, but you know what I’m gonna say: If you have a livestream or know of a good and related one, please let me know!
1k from Twitter and YouTube: I’ve done this opportunistically in the past, but by publishing more regularly and focusing on value, I think I can grow this to be much larger.
1k from this newsletter: I haven’t historically been great at publishing this newsletter regularly. That’s about to change. I’ll be publishing this twice a week. And you’ll get my thoughts on growing the plugin and real time learnings.
1k from new integrations: We’re focusing on building new integrations in 4Q2021. With this comes new audiences and new potential customers. I can’t reveal too much yet!
1k from affiliates: Our affiliate program is fairly new. I’ve been trialing it over the past couple months with people who’ve explicitly asked about it. But I’m finally opening it up for anyone to join! You’ll get 20% from any referrals you make. Register here. Historically, plugin reviews and demos have converted well.
Bonus other ideas: If we have the time, I’d love to do newsletter sponsorships, a 6-week newsletter writing course, our own livestreams, office hours, drip emails and more.
Final thoughts
I have no idea if we’ll succeed in getting to 10k. Someone already told me I’m crazy. In any case, all of these marketing initiatives will set us in good stead going forward and the plugin will benefit regardless of whether we hit this admittedly arbitrary goal.
Having said that, we won’t succeed if we don’t try. So you can bet I’ll be giving it my best shot! 🔥💪
Product updates 🧰
Key things we’ve launched this month:
- Post embed block: Added Read more link option to the end of each post excerpt. (see this in action in the next section)
- Post embed block: Added domain name as the default label for each post. (see this in action in the next section)
- Email preview: Improved the email preview feature by introducing desktop/mobile preview.
- Reduced plugin file size by using core components.
- You can now use hooks to customise email content. (Learn more)
- We’ve added a new Newsroom pricing tier. This comes with a new Klaviyo integration.
📋 Check our changelog for a comprehensive look at everything we’ve shipped this month
NG in the News 📰
That’s it for this product update. Thanks for reading.
Best,
Lesley
