---
aliases: ["Newsletter Subscribers"]
Is A: Measure
Belongs to: "[[responsibility-grow-newsletter]]"
Unit: "subscribers"
---
# Newsletter Subscribers

Total newsletter subscribers is the foundational audience metric for the business. It measures the size of the addressable audience for content distribution, sponsorship inventory, and future product launches. Subscriber count is the number that sponsors evaluate first when considering a partnership, and it directly underpins the pricing power that drives [[measure-sponsorship-mrr]].

Growth in subscribers is the result of all [[responsibility-grow-newsletter]] activities: content quality, SEO, social distribution, referral programs, and cross-promotion. It is simultaneously a vanity metric (raw count without engagement is meaningless) and the most important metric (without scale, the business model does not work).

## How it's tracked

Reported by the email platform as total active subscribers at month-end. "Active" means the subscriber has not unsubscribed and has not been removed via list hygiene. Unconfirmed signups (double opt-in pending) are excluded. Logged in the monthly tracking spreadsheet. Net growth (new subscribers minus unsubscribes and removals) is tracked alongside the total to monitor churn.

## Targets

- **2024 target**: 50,000 subscribers by December 2024 ([[2024-reach-50k-subscribers]]). Achieved 53,000.
- **2025 target**: 85,000 subscribers by December 2025 ([[2025-reach-85k-subscribers]]). Currently at ~75,000.
- **Monthly net growth target**: 2,500+ new subscribers per month to stay on pace for year-end goals.

## Notes

- Subscriber count is a necessary but insufficient metric. Always review alongside [[measure-open-rate]] to ensure list quality. A list of 100,000 with 20% open rate is less valuable than 60,000 with 50% open rate.
- Growth channels as of 2025: Twitter/X (~35%), SEO/organic search (~25%), referral program ([[25q1-referral-program]], ~20%), direct/word-of-mouth (~15%), other (~5%).
- Quarterly list hygiene (removing 90-day inactive subscribers) temporarily reduces the total count but improves all engagement metrics. This trade-off is always worth making.
- The [[25q1-newsletter-seo-sprint]] is a long-term investment in organic subscriber acquisition. SEO-sourced subscribers tend to have higher retention than social-sourced ones.
- Milestone moments (crossing 50k, 75k, 100k) are content opportunities. The "behind the scenes" posts about growth milestones consistently perform well in engagement.
