---
aliases: ["Reach 70k Subscribers"]
Is A: Project
Belongs to: "[[25q2]]"
Advances: "[[responsibility-grow-newsletter]]"
Status: Done
Owner: "[[person-luca-rossi]]"
---
# Reach 70k Subscribers

## Overview

This project was a focused growth sprint to push [[measure-subscribers]] from approximately 60K to 70K during [[25q2]]. The strategy combined two approaches: amplifying the referral program launched in [[25q1-referral-program]] with targeted campaigns, and establishing cross-promotion partnerships with 3 complementary newsletters in adjacent spaces (startup operations, product management, and design leadership).

The 70K milestone was significant both psychologically (a round number that signals scale) and commercially (larger audience commands higher sponsorship rates and opens doors to enterprise-tier sponsors). The sprint ran from April through June and involved weekly tracking against a linear growth trajectory to catch underperformance early.

## Goals

- Grow from ~60K to 70K subscribers by end of June 2025
- Drive 4,000+ subscribers through the referral program (with targeted campaigns and incentive boosts)
- Establish 3 newsletter cross-promotion partnerships with reciprocal recommendation swaps
- Maintain subscriber quality: 30-day retention rate above 75% for new subscribers
- Achieve the milestone while keeping cost-per-acquisition below $1.00

## Key decisions

- **Cross-promotion over paid acquisition.** Considered investing in paid newsletter ads (Sparkloop's partner network, Twitter ads), but the economics favored cross-promotion. A reciprocal recommendation swap with a complementary newsletter costs nothing and generates high-quality subscribers who are already newsletter readers. Paid acquisition was kept as a backup if organic channels underperformed.
- **Three partners, carefully selected.** Rather than doing many low-quality cross-promotions, invested time in selecting three newsletters where the audience overlap is genuine but not complete. The partners were a startup operations newsletter (~40K subscribers), a product management newsletter (~55K subscribers), and a design leadership newsletter (~30K subscribers). Each introduces Refactoring to a slightly different but adjacent audience.
- **Weekly tracking cadence.** Set up a weekly check against a linear growth trajectory (~2,500 new subscribers/month needed). This allowed early detection of underperformance and mid-course corrections. In week 3, growth was tracking below target, which led to an additional referral incentive push that course-corrected by week 5.

## Notes

- Final subscriber count at end of June: 71,200 — slightly above the 70K target. The growth distribution was approximately: cross-promotions (3,800), referral program (3,500), organic search (2,200), social media (800), other (900).
- Cross-promotion partnerships were the highest-quality growth channel. Subscribers from cross-promotions had a 30-day retention rate of 82%, the highest of any acquisition channel. This makes sense — they were already engaged newsletter readers, just not yet aware of Refactoring.
- The referral program saw a significant boost from a "Spring Referral Challenge" campaign run in May, where the rewards were temporarily enhanced (extra rewards at the 5-referral tier). This generated a spike of ~1,200 new subscribers in a single week.
- [[person-elena-rossi]] helped design the cross-promotion creative (email copy and graphics) for the partner newsletters. Her marketing background was valuable for crafting the recommendation copy that appeared in partner newsletters.
- Cost-per-acquisition across all channels was $0.62, well below the $1.00 target. The primary costs were SparkLoop subscription, referral rewards, and the time spent on partnership management.
- The 70K milestone was used in the updated media kit and referenced in sponsorship conversations, directly supporting the rate increases and new sponsor acquisition feeding into [[2025-reach-22k-mrr]].
