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

This month, I asked newsletter growth expert Manny Reyes to share his strategy for building successful landing pages. Reading time: 3 minutes.

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😱 Your No. 1 pain point

A few weeks ago, I asked you to share one pain point you’re dealing with as a newsletter operator.

The most common problem I heard? People need help growing their newsletters.

So I asked Manny Reyes, who has driven 5M+ newsletter sign-ups, if he would share a few tips on how to grow your list.

He sent me a couple of Looms, sharing:

• Examples of some of his favorite (and not-so-favorite) landing pages

• Suggestions on what you should include (and not include) to make people convert

Here’s what he said👇️…

✅ Keep it simple

Over the years, Reyes has audited dozens of clients’ landing pages, and he has a simple strategy for building great ones:

His favorite landing page? James Clears’ 3-2-1 Newsletter:

What he likes about it…

While many landing pages have unnecessary “distractions” (i.e., testimonials, links to past issues, upgrade buttons, etc.), Clear’s landing page has a few simple elements:

• A headline and text that clearly state the newsletter’s value

• A simple design, with no below-the-fold copy 

• A single CTA that asks for one thing—someone’s email

Every clickable element that isn’t the “Subscribe” button gives someone a chance to not subscribe, Reyes says.

The ‘stupidly simple’ approach has worked for Clear. According to Reyes—who runs Clear’s paid ads—the 3-2-1 newsletter’s landing page has a 50-60% conversion rate.

❌ Avoid corporate polish

What kind of landing pages don’t work? Ones that looks like ads.

“We’re flooded with so many ads every single day,” Reyes says. “Our brains are wired to skip anything that looks like a digital billboard.”

Last year, Reyes started working with a newsletter whose landing page was a “perfect example of a digital billboard,” he says👇️…

What’s wrong with that page?

“I don’t think it’s a bad-looking ad,” Reyes said. “It just had too much resemblance to every single ad that’s out there that is brand-safe.”

“It’s one of these things that, when I see it, it’s going to ruin my user experience when I’m scrolling on Instagram or Facebook,” he said. “And normally, that just doesn’t make me want to click or subscribe.”

✅ Make ads that don’t look like ads

That same newsletter created a Facebook ad that Reyes says would perform “much, much better” than the “digital billboard” ad👇️…

The reason Reyes likes it more? 

They “didn’t make me watch a corporate-heavy, fully graphic-designed, digital billboard,” he says.

Instead, they made an ad that felt more native.

“I’ve seen other Reels that look exactly like this,” he says. “So it’s one of those things where this ad didn’t ruin my user experience.”

❌ Skip the social proof

When he first started working with Dan Go’s fitness newsletter, its landing page looked like this:

That page is filled with testimonials with renowned people, which is supposed to make you think: “OK, social proof, all these people must like it, maybe I should subscribe too,” Reyes says.

But the page only had a 25-30% conversion rate.

So what did Reyes do?

✅ He suggested something simple…

…AKA the James Clear playbook👇️ 

And how did that go?

Reyes turned Dan Go’s 25-30% conversion rate into a 48-50% rate…

…proving that we should all be using stupidly simple landing pages.

Hope you enjoyed this month’s examples. I’ll be back next month with a new set!

☮️ -Brad 

P.P.S. I’m moving to a monthly publishing cadence for the foreseeable future. Starting next month, this email will land in your inbox on the 1st of every month. Your boy just landed a new job, and he’s gonna be heads down growing the business!

ICYMI: Links to recent issues

📩 4 memorable ways to end your email
📧 How to create habit-forming content
✍️ 7 things I learned at the Newsletter Marketing Summit