In partnership with: Outpost for Ghost publishers
It’s exhausting to go out and find every new reader yourself.
It’s a whole lot easier for someone else to shout you out and send a flood of new people your way.
What if you could partner with other publishers to make this new subscriber fun train happen more often?
Your options for cross-promotions are wide open. Truly there’s no “right way” to do it. I get that that can sometimes be overwhelming. Where do you start? Who should you promote with? How do you make it easy on yourself?
We’re going to dig into 4 ways you can cross promote during our Cross Promo Challenge month. I invite you to try them, be part of the Challenge and put this strategy to work growing your audience.
In this post
- Cross Promo Method 1: Swap Newsletter Ads
- Cross Promo Method 2: Social Takeovers
- Cross Promo Method 3: Welcome Email Spotlights
- Cross Promo Method 4: Community Namedrops
Cross Promo Method 1: Swap Newsletter Ads
Do you do a links roundup in your newsletter? Have a classifieds section? Want to use your ad space for something when you don’t have ads to run? Then, you have a perfect spot to include newsletter partners.
Your readers are much more likely to pay attention when reading your email than to some widget that gets shoved into their face on sign up. Try a newsletter ad swap.
See it in action:
Tracey Raftery who writes Interview Hub and I traded a promo spot in January. Tracey’s been running promos with a variety of different writers and carved out a clear spot in her newsletter for them. You can do this with or without an image. It can be as simple as one sentence and a link.
This one placement drove about 10 subscribers for us each. It can certainly be more effective than that if your lists are bigger or if there’s more audience interest overlap. The most I’ve ever gotten from one issue spot like this is probably 50 new subscribers.
Pros:
- You’re not putting your reputation on the line because this is an ad placement style.
- It’s easy to create templated space for partners and you can either work with the same partners for a month or two or do swaps with a bunch of people.
- You can rotate this space for partners, advertisers and other things you’re promoting.
Cons:
- One placement won’t drive that much on it’s own. It may require several placements to be effective at driving hundreds of new subscribers for each of you.
Tips:
- Create the space where you want these spots to go and know the requirements you need from partners (an image or not, how much copy, etc). Write a template email you can send your partners with what you need.
- Keep it short (1-2 lines).
- Consider using a “magic link” if your platform allows for that, which does a one click subscribe for readers. This is semi-controversial and you ideally disclose this like “Join Jenny’s list (one click subscribe)” but it’s super effective.
- Encourage your partner to send you a dedicated newsletter subscribe page so your readers aren’t digging to subscribe.
- Run the same spot a few times, especially if you’re small. I’d try to book one partner a month for this so you can really drive a good amount of readers their way and vice versa.
Cross Promo Method 2: Social Takeovers
Maybe you have a promo partner that’s not right for your newsletter audience but could be great for one of your social channels. Try a social takeover!
I haven’t seen many journalists use this method but I’ve seen nonprofits and politicians use it to expand their audience for fundraisers. The idea is that you takeover each other’s social media channels for an hour or for the whole day. Choose one channel and a timeline and have your partner share about their work or do an AMA.
See it in action:
Comedian Tig Notaro used to give her Twitter account over to different charities. Tig’s assistant would change the password and DM it to the new charity for a daylong takeover. A rep from that charity would log in and tweet as much as they wanted to about what they were up to and what they were raising money for.
Pros:
- Fresh content for your social channel
- More airtime for your partnership because you can post as much as you want
- Expands your social audience and your newsletter audience
Cons:
- You have to change your social media password 😛
- You need to trust them enough to share your account with them (you could also use a scheduler)
- Harder to build the email list because it’s a channel away on social (you’ll have to be intentional about sharing the newsletter links)
Tips:
- This works best on fast moving feed platforms like Twitter, Bluesky, Threads and Instagram stories.
- If you trade social takeovers, schedule them on different days.
- Make sure to have your promo partner introduce themselves and link to their work. They can pin this post too.
- Change your password before and after and/or use a scheduling tool.
Cross Promo Method 3: Welcome Email Spotlights
Let’s say you’re bailing on a certain platform that became famous for juicing growth numbers and you’re worried about losing those sweet sweet reader referrals. This is your closest replacement (aside from jumping to another platform with a similar set up.)
A welcome email spotlight is when you suggest 1 or 2 other publications your new reader might also want to subscribe to in your welcome email. They don’t even have to be writers. It could be a podcast, a video network or anyone else you want to promote.
Your new reader is highly engaged at this moment when they join your list, so if you don’t need to plug many actions in your first welcome email OR if you want to lean into a longer partnership, promoting someone else here could make sense.
See it in action:
Daisy, the CEO of Dirt plugs a podcast in their welcome email, but it’s not her podcast. It’s a podcast she was featured on.
What works really well is that she’s only linking to two things in this email. The first link goes to a Baffler article and the second link goes to this podcast.
I would probably rewrite the rest of her welcome email if I was going to really make a run at this for Dirt. For example, why mention the paid subscription and not link to it? Also, why does nothing here link to Dirt?
But I digress because what is effective here for our cross promo purposes is that Daisy drew my attention to these two links. And on that note, I would only plug a maximum of 2 things that are not your things.
Pros:
- Fairly passive. You plug it in and forget about it for a while.
- High engagement rate at this moment (and more likely to get clicks than your weekly emails because your reader is checking you out when they sign up)
Cons:
- Takes up valuable real estate where you might want to promote something you’re doing
- Requires that you and your partner are growing at a similar pace (or else this trade could get uneven)
Tips:
- Aim to use 1 click magic links if that’s possible with their platform (it’s possible with a lot of them and it passes through your subscriber’s email to their list in one click)
- If you don’t use magic links, add a UTM or referral link (or make sure your platform does it) so you can track how many readers you signed up.
- Only choose 1 or 2 publications to feature here.
- Check with those publications to see if they will give you the same placement or a similar amount of traffic elsewhere.
- Set a time limit to check back in on this. I’d do one month to start and then that could increase if it works for both parties.
- If you plug your own links in this email, aim for a maximum total of 4 links where 2-3 of them are your and 1-2 of them are other people’s. More than that makes it less likely your reader’s gonna hit everything and there’s no need to overwhelm them at the start. Turn your welcome email into a sequence if you need more space.
Cross Promo Method 4: Community Namedrops
Community namedrops are when you plug someone’s project in a small, trusted community. It could be a group chat, a Slack channel, a Facebook Group or any place where people gather around common interests. Because the trust level is so high in these groups, it’s usually just as effective, maybe even more so, at earning you subscribers as a newsletter swap or a social shout out. A ton of my paid subscribers come from mentions like these.
Ryan Broderick called this out on the Creator Spotlight podcast as the “Slack room bump” because it was so noticeable in his analytics, based on similar company email addresses signing up at the same time.
See it in action:
Kevin Blasko gave Rowan Cheung a shout out in the beehiiv Slack when he published an interview with Mark Zuckerberg about their LLM. This wasn’t a cross promo. It was just a shout out. But it could have been a cross promo.
Even though this was a notable interview, it’s way more eye-catching that Kevin posted it on behalf of Rowan vs Rowan posting it himself.
Pros:
- Doesn’t take up any space on your channels.
- Can be great for writers you like but who don’t make sense for your audience.
- Can be very effective at driving high quality subscribers.
- Is fast and easy to execute (takes just a couple minutes!)
Cons:
- You need to find the right community to plug your partner in (and you need to be active there).
- Tracking success is hard, unless you build your own tracking link.
Tips:
- This cross promo method is best suited to an ongoing partnership where you plan to give each other a few mentions.
- Match the right group to the right story and make sure it’s something they’d be interested in.
- Tee it up with a good hook that explains why they should pay attention, click and subscribe.
