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👋 Hey!
OpenAI just paid low hundreds of millions for a live talk show, beehiiv is adding podcast hosting and email marketing is still here to stay. Plus, there's a 10-minute beehiiv trick in this issue that converts 2x–5x better than blasting your whole list.
Ready to level up? Let's dive in! 👇
😂 Meme of the Week
🔥 This Week's Hot Takes
OpenAI acquires TBPN talk show for low hundreds of millions. Big Tech's latest media company buy: a daily live show averaging 70,000 viewers per episode. Live formats, niche audiences, and influential guest lists just became M&A targets.
beehiiv adds podcast hosting and takes aim at Substack and Patreon. Beehiiv now lets you host, distribute, and monetize podcasts without leaving the platform, positioning itself as the all-in-one creator hub rather than just an email tool
Email marketing spend hits 7.4% of digital budgets. Gartner's 2025 CMO survey found email was the only owned channel to grow its budget share YoY. Your subscriber list is more valuable than you think.
Gmail glitch pushed promo emails to Primary. Forced placement feels like a win until your list health takes the hit. Engagement-first delivery is still the safer long game.
💡 Growth Hack of the Week
The beehiiv "money button": 10 minutes to set up, 2x–5x better conversion than blasting your whole list
Most newsletter operators blast their entire list when they have something to sell. That's also the fastest way to burn goodwill and hurt deliverability. The smarter move: target only your most engaged subscribers and let everyone else skip this round.
Here's how to run it:
In beehiiv, open Segments and create a new segment. Filter for subscribers who opened or clicked at least once in the last 30–90 days, or who opened 2 of your last 5 emails.
Draft a short marketing email: one clear CTA, one offer, under 300 words.
Send only to that segment. Skip the rest of your list entirely.
If it converts, follow up with 1–2 reminder emails over the next 3–5 days. Then stop.
Repeat weekly or monthly with rotating offers.
Why it works: You're reaching people when they're already in the habit of opening your emails, so your offer lands at the right moment. You're also protecting your sender score by not pinging cold or disengaged addresses, which pays off every time you hit send.
Expected result: About 10 minutes to set up. Expect 2x–5x higher conversion versus a full-list send, with better deliverability metrics. You should see measurable results on your first send.
Spotlight: Words of Mouth
Words of Mouth is a weekly links-only job roundup for interdisciplinary creatives. The format is almost embarrassingly simple: a list of links, sent once a week, with near-zero production overhead. It runs at around a 72% open rate. About 22% of openers click a listing. Every issue drives real action.
What works:
The format does the work. A links-only roundup means no writing to agonize over, no editorial calendar to manage, and no burnout spiral. The consistency that kills most newsletters isn't a problem here.
Scarcity drives monetization. Classifieds are priced at $65–$200 with a months-long waitlist, plus employer donations, a Patreon tier, and occasional sponsors. Multiple revenue streams, all built on a small but highly engaged audience.
The audience curates the content. Readers submit listings. The creator stays out of the content-generation loop, which makes each issue feel community-owned and keeps production time minimal.
Creator quote: "I'm so bad at running a business in this way, but it hasn't hurt me yet because it's just kind of doing its own work."
Your takeaway: Launch a weekly links roundup in the tightest niche you know. Use a simple submission form to crowdsource content from day one. Test classifieds at $50–$150 to see if your audience will pay for placement before you build anything more complicated. Words of Mouth proves a simpler format often outlasts an ambitious one.
🤝 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: Most newsletter creators treat their list like an audience. ClickFunnels pushes you to treat it like a business. You get landing pages, opt-in forms, one-click upsells, order bumps, a built-in store, courses, a community hub, email automations, a CRM, countdown timers, and an Affiliate Center, all under one roof. The funnel logic is simple: attract a reader, sell them something, upsell them something better, then keep them coming back through a course or membership.
Best For: Newsletter creators ready to monetize beyond sponsorships. Think paid courses, digital products, coaching offers, or community memberships.
🧪 A/B Test of the Week
Test: story email vs. direct offer email: which drives more revenue?
A creator surveyed 200 subscribers who had never bought anything and found a consistent pattern: readers didn't buy because the offers felt disconnected from the content they'd signed up for. Adding personal stories, clarifying CTAs, and changing send cadence took open rates from 19% to 37% and produced a 4x increase in email revenue over 90 days.
How to run it this week:
Version A: Direct offer email: product name, one or two benefit bullets, one CTA button. Clean, transactional, fast to read.
Version B: Story-first email: open with a 2–3 sentence personal situation or reader scenario, bridge directly to the offer, then the CTA. Same product, different entry point.
Send each version to 20% of your list. Wait 48 hours. Send the winner to the remaining 60%.
What to watch: Click-to-purchase rate, not just opens. Story emails usually lift opens, but the real win (or the real surprise) shows up in actual conversions. Don't assume the winner before you run it.
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