👋🏻 Welcome to Newsletter Examples, where I highlight cool sh*t I’m seeing in newsletters that you can steal for your newsletter.

This week, I’m handing things over to the talented Dan Oshinsky, a newsletter consultant and owner of Inbox Collective, who shows us how Semafor is optimizing its owned channels and partnering with outside newsletters to drive subscriber growth. Reading time: 4 minutes.

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📈 How I think about growth

When I look at a news organization’s growth strategy, I’m looking closely at four things:

• Are they optimizing owned channels, like their website or podcasts, to convert readers to newsletters?

• Are they partnering with outside newsletters to drive earned growth?

• Are they leaning into social media or search to grow through algorithmic channels?

• Are they leveraging paid growth — spending money to advertise to grow?

You’ll find examples of newsrooms doing an excellent job in one of these four growth quadrants, but it’s rare to find an org investing in all four categories.

But that’s what’s impressed me so much with Semafor: They’re making an effort with owned, earned, algorithmic, and paid growth. (If you want a breakdown of their actual newsletters, Brad’s done that already in this piece.)

For this week’s issue, I looked closely at some novel things Semafor is doing in the owned and earned categories, which other orgs can learn from.

Lesson #1: Maximize owned channels

Let’s start with owned growth—in particular, their landing page for newsletters. There’s a lot I like about this page, but I especially like how they’ve clearly prioritized two main newsletters:

• Flagship, which covers world news

• Principals, which covers news through the lens of Washington, D.C.

Those newsletters don’t just appear bigger on the page and at the top of the page—they’re already pre-selected for readers when they land on the page.

As a new reader to Semafor, you might not be sure which newsletters are most popular or valuable, so Semafor’s taken steps to make sure you know which you should prioritize. (If you’re looking for more landing page best practices, I’ve got suggestions here.)

Let’s keep going through their site. I love how Semafor has lots of little CTAs for their newsletters. They run house ads driving readers back to their landing page, which gives them the chance to A/B test different messages and see what works. (Winning messages could later be used as copy on paid ads.)

They have sign-up boxes on the homepage and at the top of relevant stories. They’ve got links back to the newsletter sign-up page in both the header and footer. Newsletter promotions are basically everywhere—but with newsletters being their core driver of reader engagement, that makes sense.

I usually advise clients to have at least 5-10 different sign-up methods on their website. This should come as no surprise: The more you promote your newsletters, the better your conversion rates will be.

They’ll also do some promotion within their actual newsletters, adding links back to their sign-up page in the header or footer in case a reader forwards a Semafor email to a friend or colleague. I’ve seen those be effective drivers of growth, particularly when you’ve got original reporting in your newsletter, like Semafor does.

But what I really like about their owned growth strategy is how they run pop-ups on their website. Semafor used to run a lot of these types of toaster units—little bars at the bottom of the page that pop up, like toast from a toaster, as you scroll down the page.

Those sorts of units convert OK, but they’re so small that readers might just ignore them as they scroll, even with the bright yellow background.

What can’t they ignore? These types of pop-ups, which take over the entire screen:

These pop-ups mimic what you’d see with a registration wall on many websites. The content of the article you’re reading blurs out as you scroll down the page, and the newsletter sign-up appears at the bottom instead.

If you’re not looking carefully, you might think that this is a hard wall—one where you can only get back to the article if you hand over an email address first. (That’s not the case. There’s both an “X” to close the module and a “Take me back to the article” link at the bottom of the module. The illusion of the hard wall will drive more conversions, though.)

But the important thing is that it’s impossible to ignore—you have to spend a few seconds reading the pop-up. I haven’t seen Semafor’s conversion numbers on these pop-ups, but the fact that they’ve mostly phased out the toaster unit for these more aggressive pop-ups suggests that these are working better as a conversion tool.

One more earned thing that Semafor is doing that I love: When they launch a new newsletter, they’ll promote it to their audience. They’ll tell readers about the new product and include a one-click sign-up link to maximize conversions. (Other orgs, like the Toronto Star, have had tremendous success with these one-click types of emails.) That’s a great way to deepen engagement with existing readers while also quickly building a list.

Lesson #2: Test partnerships

There’s one more growth quadrant that Semafor operates in, and it’s one that hardly any other major newsroom uses: earned growth.

Semafor actively seeks out partnerships with other newsletters—and not just ones from traditional news organizations. Here’s a great example with Tangle, a newsletter that offers independent coverage of U.S. political news (Brad wrote more about them here):

A lot of newsrooms might avoid a partnership with an indie newsletter like Tangle, but Semafor’s leaned into these partnerships.

I first started seeing this partnership with Tangle back in 2022, when Tangle’s list was just under 60,000 subscribers. They’re clearly identifying newsletters with the “right” audience, even if they don’t have the biggest list.

With these cross-promotions, Semafor promotes Tangle in their newsletter, and Tangle promotes Semafor in return. Both teams see growth without having to pay to advertise in another newsletter. I’ve found that these sorts of cross-promotions can often drive thousands—and in some cases, tens of thousands—of new sign-ups.

If you can find the right partners, you’re getting thousands of dollars in free advertising for absolutely nothing. It’s a smart strategy—and one more newsrooms would be wise to try.

Dan Oshinsky, a former head of newsletters at The New Yorker and BuzzFeed, runs Inbox Collective, a consultancy that helps newsrooms, non-profits, and indie newsletters grow audiences and get results via email.

Hope you enjoyed this week’s examples. I’m taking the week of Thanksgiving off (heading to London with the fam!). I’ll be back in two weeks—happy holidays, everyone!

☮️ -Brad

P.S. Did you hear? I’m a free agent!

ICYMI: Links to recent issues

🧠 Why 700k people (including me) love Contrarian Thinking
✨ How to make long emails engaging
👩‍💼 How Napkin Notes builds buzz for startups
💰️ The path to making money with your newsletter
📧 Why less is more in newsletters