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👋 Hey!
Ghost just shipped a proper members-only podcast integration with Transistor.fm. Global email volume dropped for the first time in recorded history, and the newsletters that played by the rules are getting rewarded. Meanwhile, your sponsor ads might be silently killing your CPM. No worries, there's data to prove it.
Ready to level up? Let's dive in! 👇
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Spam. Promotions. Phishing links. A messy inbox is more than annoying. It’s risky.
Proton Mail shields your inbox from invasive tracking and junk clutter by default. No creepy ad sorting. No surveillance. Just clean, simple organization designed to protect your focus.
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😂 Meme of the Week
🔥 This Week's Hot Takes
Ghost launches official Transistor.fm integration for members-only podcasts. Full member sync, tier-based access controls, and automatic subscriber management between both platforms.
Global email sending volume dropped in 2025. Yahoo and Microsoft started enforcing new bulk sender rules, and senders who didn't comply pulled back.
Your subscribers trust your words but skip your ads. The personalization gap between editorial voice and sponsor copy is measurable. Readers build trust with your tone over months, then hit a paragraph that sounds like a different person wrote it.
Unspam's deliverability report says only 60% of emails reach a visible inbox. Technical delivery succeeds at much higher rates, but roughly 4 in 10 messages land in spam or disappear entirely.
💡 Growth Hack of the Week
Add a private podcast as your next paid subscriber perk
Ghost's Transistor.fm integration just made this dead simple, but the concept works on any platform. A members-only podcast is one of the highest-retention perks you can offer because it creates a daily habit loop that email alone can't match. People listen on walks, commutes, and in the shower. This way, your content lives in their ears.
Here's how to set it up this week:
Pick your format. Read-alouds of your existing newsletter take about 15 minutes to record and zero extra writing. Alternatively, record a 10-minute weekly briefing with commentary you don't include in the written version.
Create a private podcast on Transistor (or any host that supports private RSS feeds). Set it as unlisted so it won't appear in Apple Podcasts or Spotify search.
If you're on Ghost, enable the new Transistor integration. Choose which membership tier gets access. If you're on beehiiv or Kit, use other available options to sync paid subscriber lists with your podcast host.
Announce it to your paid subscribers as a new perk. Frame it as exclusive content they can consume on the go, not just a repeat of what they already read.
Track 30-day retention for paid subscribers who activate the podcast vs. those who don't. The listeners will almost certainly churn less.
Why it works: Audio creates a parasocial bond that text can't fully replicate. Hearing someone's voice regularly builds familiarity and loyalty. Heather Cox Richardson went from newsletter-only to one of the most listened-to podcasts on Apple Podcasts simply by reading her posts aloud. You don't need her audience to get the retention benefit.
Expected result: 10–25% lower paid churn within 60 days for subscribers who activate the private podcast. The key metric is activation rate, so make the onboarding friction as low as possible.
Spotlight: Milk Road
Shaan Puri and Ben Levy launched Milk Road in January 2022 with zero subscribers. Ten months later, they had 250,000 subscribers and sold the business for eight figures. The newsletter covered crypto, but the playbook is platform-agnostic.
What works:
The $1M public wallet was a growth engine. They put $1M into a crypto portfolio and let subscribers vote on trades. That turned passive readers into participants with a reason to open every single day. You don't need a million dollars; the principle is giving subscribers a stake in something that updates daily.
Franchise segments create recognition and habit. Recurring segments like "Milkbusters" (myth debunking) and "Bite-Sized Cookies" (quick links) gave the newsletter a TV-show structure. Readers knew what to expect, which made the email feel familiar within a few issues.
They wrote like friends, not journalists. Complex topics were explained through analogies and humor. The voice was approachable and opinionated. In a space full of jargon-heavy content, sounding human was the competitive advantage.
Your takeaway: Milk Road proves that audience size matters far less than how fast you can build daily engagement. They built a format that made people come back every day. If your newsletter doesn't have at least one recurring segment that readers look forward to, add one this week.
🤝 Deal of the Week
HeyNews: the AI-powered newsletter workspace that writes in your voice
What the deal is: 50% off for 12 months with code WELCOME50. HeyNews learns your writing style from past issues and drafts new ones that sound like you, not like a robot. You get AI Writers trained on your tone, a relevance-scored story feed, one-click browser saving, performance analytics, and platform integrations with beehiiv and Kit. We built this for our own newsletters first, and now it's open to early adopters. Offer ends June 30, 2026.
Who should take the deal: Newsletter creators spending hours every week researching, writing, and formatting issues. If you want to cut production time without losing your voice, this is the tool.
Use code WELCOME50 at checkout.
Start your 14-day free trial here.
🛠️ Tool of the Week
Why You'll Love It: If you recommend tools, products, or services in your newsletter and link to them with affiliate URLs, Lasso monitors those links, catches broken ones before they cost you money, and automatically optimizes them in the background. It works across WordPress, YouTube, Instagram, and custom websites, so your links earn whether someone clicks from your newsletter archive, a blog post, or a video description.
Best For: Newsletter creators who drive affiliate revenue through product recommendations, tool roundups, or "best of" lists and want to stop losing clicks to broken links and underpriced commissions.
🧪 A/B Test of the Week
Test: Plain-text reply prompt vs. no reply prompt in your newsletter footer
What it is: Version A ends your newsletter with your usual sign-off and nothing else. Version B adds a single line before the sign-off: a direct question inviting readers to reply. Something like "What's the one thing you'd change about your signup flow?" or "Hit reply and tell me what tool you can't live without." Keep it specific. Vague prompts like "let me know what you think" don't work as well.
Why it works: Replies are the highest-value engagement signal you can generate. Every reply tells inbox providers this is a wanted email from a real relationship. Gmail and Outlook both weigh reply behavior heavily when deciding whether to deliver future emails to Primary or Promotions.
Expected result: 2–5% of recipients will reply to a specific, easy-to-answer question. That sounds small, but even 50 replies on a 2,000-person list is enough to measurably improve sender reputation over 4–6 weeks.
Takeaway: This costs nothing and takes 30 seconds to add. Run it for four consecutive sends, then compare your inbox placement data against the prior month. The replies alone are worth it; you'll hear directly from your most engaged readers.
Don't keep us a secret: Share HeyNews with a fellow newsletter nerd.
🔗 Quick Links
Questions? Just write a comment below. I read all the comments and respond to them.
Thanks for reading,
Eren Daskesen