---
aliases: ["Black Friday Newsletter Campaign"]
Is A: Project
Belongs to: "[[24q4]]"
Advances: "[[responsibility-grow-newsletter]]"
Status: Done
Owner: "[[person-luca-rossi]]"
---
# Black Friday Newsletter Campaign

## Overview

Black Friday represents a unique opportunity for a technical newsletter: readers are actively looking for tool and resource recommendations, and companies are offering significant discounts. This project designed and executed a curated Black Friday campaign — a special edition newsletter with hand-picked tool recommendations for engineering leaders and developers, paired with a subscriber acquisition push through social media and cross-promotions.

The campaign ran from November 25-29, 2024, and generated +1,200 new subscribers in 3 days — the single largest acquisition spike of the year. The key insight was that curation is the value: readers do not want to sift through hundreds of generic deals. They want a trusted voice telling them which 10-15 tools are actually worth buying. This directly supported [[2024-reach-50k-subscribers]] and pushed the subscriber count past the 48K mark.

## Goals

- Curate a list of 15-20 Black Friday deals on developer tools, SaaS products, and learning resources
- Negotiate exclusive or enhanced discount codes with at least 5 companies
- Publish a special-edition newsletter issue on Black Friday week
- Run a social media campaign (Twitter, LinkedIn) driving traffic to the newsletter signup with the deal list as the lead magnet
- Acquire 1,000+ new subscribers during the campaign window

## Key decisions

- **Curated recommendations, not affiliate links.** While affiliate revenue was tempting, prioritized trust over short-term monetization. Every recommendation was a tool that [[person-luca-rossi]] personally uses or has thoroughly evaluated. Included honest caveats alongside recommendations. This authenticity drove shares and word-of-mouth signups.
- **Gated the full list behind email signup.** Shared 5 deals publicly on social media with a CTA to "get the full list of 20 deals" via newsletter signup. This was the primary acquisition mechanism and converted at approximately 35% of landing page visitors.
- **Separate from regular sponsor placements.** Black Friday sponsors paid a premium rate for a dedicated section, clearly labeled as "sponsored picks." This maintained editorial integrity while monetizing the high-attention window. Three sponsors participated at $3,000 each.

## Notes

- The +1,200 subscribers in 3 days was remarkable, but retention was the real test. At the 30-day mark, 78% of Black Friday subscribers were still active (industry benchmark is ~60% for acquisition spikes). This suggests the deal-seekers were genuinely interested in the newsletter's regular content, not just the deals.
- Negotiating exclusive discount codes with tool companies was easier than expected. Most developer tool companies are eager for newsletter placement during Black Friday and will create custom codes quickly. Started these conversations in early November — next year, will start in October.
- [[person-matteo-cellini]] handled sponsor coordination for the campaign, managing the three premium placements. His work on the CRM ([[24q2-sponsor-crm]]) made tracking these deals seamless.
- The social media push was amplified significantly by retweets/reshares from the tools featured in the list. This organic amplification was not planned but accounted for an estimated 30-40% of the total reach. Will be more intentional about asking for shares in future campaigns.
- [[measure-subscribers]] jumped from ~46,800 to ~48,000 during the campaign. Combined with organic growth, this put the year-end total within striking distance of the 50K target set in [[2024-reach-50k-subscribers]].
