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👋 Hey!
The reader who matters most to you is probably not the one who unsubscribed. On the contrary, the reader who matters the most is the one who quietly stopped opening, stayed on your list, and never told you why. This week, we dug into why that happens, what it costs you, and the hour every week you have been spending in the wrong column. Along the way: Gmail is relentlessly reducing your engagement (sigh), a subject-line tweak that lifted opens by 32%, a clever link one creator used to save 514 people from leaving, and a tech journalist who walked away from the best job in media to build his own shop.
Ready to level up? Let's dive in! 👇
😂 Meme of the Week
🔥 This Week's Hot Takes
Gmail's new AI features now sit between your email and the reader. With AI Inbox and Daily Brief summarizing what lands, clear and well-structured emails surface first. Think SEO, but for the inbox.
Your readers feel mediocre AI writing before they can name it. They rarely complain. They just open a little later each week, then not at all.
Your production hours carry a second price tag nobody ever calculates. Every Sunday lost to formatting is a sponsor you did not pitch and a referral loop you never got around to building.
Ghost adds native gift subscriptions for paid memberships. Your most engaged readers can now hand a friend a full subscription, turning word of mouth into a low-friction path to recurring revenue.
Prof G Media founder Scott Galloway explains why he came to subscriptions. Recurring revenue carries a four to six times exit multiple, against two to three for ad and transactional income.
💡 Growth Hack of the Week
How: Add a "skip a month" line to the bottom of your broadcasts. Point it at a simple opt-in page, tag everyone who signs up, then build an automation that waits 30 days and removes the tag. On every send, add a filter that excludes anyone still carrying it.
Why: Most people who hit unsubscribe are not unhappy with your writing. They are buried in their inbox and reaching for the only lever in sight. A pause gives overwhelmed readers a softer exit than leaving for good, and they roll back into your sends automatically once the break is over.
Expected Result: Chenell Basilio of Growth in Reverse says this single link has already saved 514 subscribers from unsubscribing.
Spotlight: Growth Levers
What works:
A sharp, underserved niche. Most newsletters about newsletters stay high level, while Growth Levers goes deep on the paid side: Meta ads, CPA math, and the landing-page fixes that quietly decide whether your ad spend works at all.
Borrowed credibility, used well. Manny Reyes writes it as a Morning Brew growth veteran, so readers trust the paid-acquisition advice before they reach the first tactic.
Subject lines that sell the click with a real number and a clear stake, like a six-figure ad you can copy in seconds, or the fastest way to torch five figures of ad spend overnight.
A dependable rhythm. Each issue pairs the week's newsletter-industry updates with one tactical teardown that the reader can lift and run, giving people a reason to open every single week.
Your takeaway: Find the one expensive problem your readers are quietly losing money on, then own it with the specific numbers most operators are too cautious to publish.
Deal of the Week
HeyNews: an editorial AI that learns your newsletter voice from your archive
What the deal is: Use code WELCOME50 for 50% off any monthly plan during the launch window (open until June 30). HeyNews connects to beehiiv, Kit, Substack, Ghost, Mailchimp, or any archive URL, reads your past issues, and builds a voice profile that drives every draft. We ran 600 internal issues through it before opening the trial. The 14-day free trial gives you 5 generated drafts before any subscription decision.
Who should take the deal: Solo operators, newsletter professionals and teams who keep losing Sunday afternoons to source monitoring, formatting, and second-guessing whether the gray is right.
🛠️ Tool of the Week
DojoMojo: grow your email and SMS list through partnership giveaways
Why You'll Love It: DojoMojo lets you co-host sweepstakes with aligned brands and share the new subscribers, drawing growth from its Network of more than 5,000 partners. You can build a branded entry page in minutes, auto-generate the Official Rules, offer bonus entries for social follows, and pipe new signups straight into your ESP. The analytics dashboards show which partners and themes actually convert, so you can double down on the winners.
Best For: Operators who want a list-growth channel beyond paid ads and one-to-one swaps, and who have a prize or an audience worth partnering on. Access is by application.
🧪 A/B Test of the Week
Test: Jay Schwedelson's GURU Media Hub compared subject lines built around a specific personalization detail against generic lines, drawing on its aggregate send data.
Result: Adding the recipient's company name to the subject line lifted open rates by 32% (Worldata Research Aggregate Study 2026).
Takeaway: For newsletters, the transferable move is personalization beyond a plain first-name merge. Pull a detail the subscriber actually handed you, like the topic they picked at signup or their city, into the subject line, then split-test it against your usual one.
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