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👋 Hey!
Before POLITICO launched London Playbook in 2017, the team wrote down 200 names. The Prime Minister was on the list, along with the policymakers and decision makers they most wanted reading.
Then Kate Day, POLITICO's Senior Executive Editor for Europe, had coffee with sixty of them. Before a single issue went out. Early signups came mostly by word of mouth, and London Playbook now has more than 95,000 subscribers.
This week: Substack lets brands pay for your free readers to try the paid tier, beehiiv's new prices reach existing customers in November, and Piers Morgan's Uncensored bets on four paid newsletters. Plus five emails that book discovery calls, a subject line test where the only change was the reader's name, and a list cleaner that checks 100,000 emails for $59.
Let's dive in! 👇
Meme of the Week
This Week's Hot Takes
Substack now lets brands pay for your free readers to try the paid tier. The Upgrade gifts free subscribers a month of paid access, The Unlock opens one paywalled post to everyone, and The Masthead builds a themed hub.
beehiiv's new prices reach existing customers at the first renewal on or after November 1. Lite, formerly Scale, costs $139 a month at 10,000 subscribers, up from $109, per The Verge. beehiiv's own tip: cleaning disengaged subscribers may drop you a tier.
Piers Morgan's Uncensored is launching four paid newsletters on beehiiv. The company hopes 2% to 4% of its 4.6 million YouTube subscribers will pay $4.99 a month. One newsletter per vertical starts October 19.
Gmail is bouncing more mail outright, so check your sending setup before Black Friday. Missing or mismatched reverse DNS gets mail rejected at Gmail, Microsoft and Yahoo alike. Ask your platform if you're unsure, and leave dormant segments buried.
Sinclair launched The National Press, a subscription news brand on Substack. The broadcaster will draw on about 1,200 local journalists in 60+ markets, with free and paid tiers. Partner New Media, founded by Free Press alumni, takes a fee plus revenue share.
Tool of the Week
MailVeri: verify the whole list before your sender reputation pays for it
Why You'll Love It: Drop in a CSV, Excel or TXT file up to 100MB and MailVeri finds the email column on its own, then runs SMTP, catch-all and spam trap checks on up to 1,000,000 addresses per list. Every contact comes back labeled Valid, Invalid, Disposable, Catch-All, Role Account, Full Inbox or Unknown, and a REST API can stop fake signups at the form. It's pay-as-you-go: 100,000 emails cost $59, credits never expire, and new accounts get 1,000 free.
Best For: Operators prepping a Black Friday send, anyone billed by subscriber tier, and creators whose signup form collects junk addresses.
Growth Hack of the Week
Let five emails book the discovery call for you
How: If you sell coaching, consulting or any other service, set up an automation that fires when someone downloads your lead magnet. Email 1 goes out right away with the resource and tells readers what's coming. Email 2, a day or two later, names the pattern that keeps them stuck. Email 3 offers one reframe that changes how they see the problem. Email 4 shows what support changes, through an honest client example or a look at your process. Email 5 is the pitch: who your coaching is for, what happens after they click, and how to book.
Why: Coach Noelle Daoire, writing on beehiiv's blog, argues the sequence works because you stop chasing the sale. Each email answers an objection before the reader reaches your calendar, so by Email 5 booking a call feels like their idea. After the sequence ends, she keeps the offer visible with short CTAs in regular issues and a three to four email pitch run (problem, process, proof, invitation) whenever spots open.
Expected Result: Daoire doesn't put a booking rate on the sequence itself, so treat it as a framework. What you get is a funnel that keeps working while you write, and prospects who show up to the call already knowing how you think. One rule she's firm on: use deadline language only when there's an actual deadline.
Spotlight: London Playbook by POLITICO
What works:
The launch plan was a list of 200 people. The team hand-picked 200 readers they needed, the Prime Minister included, then watched closely who was reading and how engaged they were. Kate Day had coffee with sixty of them before launch, and early growth came mostly from word of mouth.
The right readers pull everyone else in. Day's logic is that when the people being lobbied start their day with your newsletter, everyone trying to influence them follows. Since 2017, London Playbook has grown past 95,000 subscribers.
The model travels. Brussels Playbook has 135,000 subscribers, Paris 45,000 and Berlin 15,000, and a Madrid edition is due later this month. When the Spanish team asks about subscriber goals, Day steers the conversation back to who's reading.
One writer became a team without losing the voice. Playbook started with a single journalist, which got hard to sustain on a daily and then twice-daily schedule. A team compiles it now, and each writer has a house version of their own voice. PM Editor Emilio Casalicchio keeps his distinct style because readers connect with it, but the newsletter isn't allowed to swing wildly from one edition to the next.
Creator quote: "I always care much more about the who than I do about the number." Kate Day, Senior Executive Editor (Europe), POLITICO
Your takeaway: Before your next launch or relaunch, write down the 20, 50 or 200 people whose reading would matter most, and reach out to them one at a time. Then track who opens, not just how many. If the right few hundred start their day with you, the rest of your audience tends to follow them in.
A/B Test of the Week
Test: Stanford researchers Navdeep Sahni, S. Christian Wheeler and Pradeep Chintagunta ran randomized field experiments with three companies selling different products, emailing millions of people. The main test was about as small as a test gets: put the recipient's name in the subject line, or don't. The name told readers nothing new about the product or the company.
Result: Adding the name raised the chance of an open by 20%, lifted sales leads by 31% and cut unsubscribes from the campaign by 17%. The effect held across goals, from winning new customers to bringing back past buyers, and similar tests with other companies pointed the same way.
Takeaway: The researchers' explanation is attention. A personal touch makes people read more of what follows, even when it carries no information at all. Try the first-name merge tag on the issue with your biggest ask, and make sure the field is actually filled in. One caveat: this research predates Apple's Mail Privacy Protection, so judge your version on clicks and replies.
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Thanks for reading,
Eren & Cagri