Meet Gunnar Holm, a paid newsletter growth expert. His agency, Growjoy, helps newsletters like SMB Deal Hunter, Wealth Factory, and AI Tool Report grow their audience with effective, affordable paid ads.
In this interview, Gunnar shares his best tips for acquiring subscribers, from using Meta for ad campaigns to the surprising success of “boring” ads. Whether you’re new to newsletter marketing or looking to improve, his insights on social ads for list growth will help you crush your goals this year.
Gunnar's takeaways for paid subscriber acquisition:
- •Start with Facebook and IG for user-friendly and affordable paid ad campaigns.
- •Continuously experiment and A/B test to refine your strategy.
- •Focus on acquiring subscribers who fit your ideal customer profile, not just increasing numbers.
- •"Boring" ads with memes or a lo-fi aesthetic can be surprisingly effective in attracting signups.
Could you tell us a bit about what you do?
My name is Gunnar and I run a paid newsletter growth agency called Growjoy. We’ve worked with some of the biggest newsletters in the world, helping them grow their newsletters with paid ads on Meta and Twitter. Most of our clients are in the financial space.
What ad are you most proud of and why? Can we see it? 👀
We started launching this ad for clients 1-2 months ago, and the CPAs have been insane. It’s the top performer in almost every campaign we’ve launched since. It’s a printed piece of paper and a pen highlighting every word as a voice-over says the copy out loud.
The magic is all in the copy here:
After tweeting about it a month ago, I’ve seen countless newsletters copy this style, which is very flattering.
What’s your favorite ad channel for list growth in 2024?
I’ll have to go with Meta. No channel can beat the UX (for the marketer), the scalability, and the pixel. Everything an ad channel does, Meta does best.
But we’re also using Twitter/X ads again, after a long period of not doing any paid traffic there. Twitter ads can be frustrating, but when they work, they WORK, with super high quality and decent CPL/CPAs. We’re running Twitter ads for multiple clients and some are generating a 50% lower CPL compared to Meta.
How important is testing when it comes to ads?
A.B.T. – always be testing. Testing is everything. Test new copy, new creatives, new hooks, and new CTAs. Fail your way to success.
Which is better: video or static ads for newsletters?
Video ads are usually better, but both can work.
Lately, we've seen that user-generated content (UGC) videos are attracting a lower-quality audience than more ‘serious’ looking video ads. So we’re moving away from UGC and producing more ‘boring’ videos.
Creating a video ad that’s too scattered and TikTok-ish could simplify the message too much. This might result in drawing in people who are only somewhat interested in what’s being offered.
What’s a good cost per acquisition (CPA) for a typical list-growth ad?
It's all relative depending on your budget.
We have a client who has to be below $2 to make the economics work.
And then we have another client that is happy if the CPA is below $10 – it all depends on the backend (how many you can convert to your paid offer).
Anything else you’d like to share with newsletter creators who want to grow efficiently?
- Generate revenue immediately. Don’t wait until you hit X number of subscribers.
- If you try paid acquisition, track your ads meticulously. Two ads in the same ad set can produce wildly different results on the backend. So make sure you’re implementing healthy tracking efforts to make sure you’re acquiring the right subscribers.
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