RFC: Growing HogMail subscriber list

[andyvan-ph]

One of our Q3 2022 marketing goals is to "Increase HogMail subscribers to 1,000".

This RFC is to discuss and decide on strategies to achieve this goal.

Rationale

1. Growing subscriber list improves distribution, awareness and success of our content

2. A high-quality newsletter supports word of mouth growth

3. Satisfaction for current newsletter is high: ~42% open rate is way above industry average of ~34%

Context

We currently have 741 subscribers. Organic list growth is around 0.5 to 1 net subscribers per day.

If we were to do nothing, we'd reach around 787 to 833 subscribers.

Assuming churn remains constant, we need to add 2.8 subscribers per day to reach 1,000 subs in Q3.

We recently had a surge of around 30 subs due to James' viral blog post. This shows the value in 'going viral', but we can't rely solely on this to boost numbers.

How we acquire subscribers currently

• Signup box on blog index page (Impact: Medium)

• Signup boxes on blog posts (Impact: Medium)

• Promotion in Array email (Impact: High)

• Newsletter signup page (Impact: Low)

• Twitter signup box via Revue (Impact: Very low)

Possible strategies for growing subs

Improve visibility on owned properties

• Signup box on the homepage
• Signup box in blog sidebar
• Signup box in website footer
• Signup box on /questions
• Signup boxes within proposed new navigation drop-downs
• Add link on PostHog repo README

I think we should do all of these.

Acquire through product signup process

• Opt-in option on the signup page
• Promotion in new user follow-up / engagement emails

Promote content in product

• Occasional promotion of relevant content inside the product to increase awareness of our content

This would have to be used carefully, but would be impactful given the size of our user base. Could also be used for product updates / Array etc.

Emailing featured authors

• Where possible, we will email authors who work we feature to let them know

Improve signup box messaging / CTA

• Current one is very much a placeholder
• Add preview of email issue on /newsletter
• Improve messaging to emphasize value

Rebrand newsletter

• Place greater emphasis on content for early stage startups / founders
• Rename to something that evokes that emphasis (e.g. StartupHog, FounderHog, GrowthHog)

Increase paid promotion of blog content

• More traffic = more potential subscribers

Improve news subscriber experience

• We should send new subscribers a welcome email with a 'greatest hits' of PostHog blogs and things we like straightaway

[jamesefhawkins]

a tiny thing but posthog.com/blog should show only brand oriented content versus SEO based, since these things are more engaging to a casual reader. This page has relatively low trafffic so not a huge priority.

[charlescook-ph]

Thanks for this! Thoughts below on each of these things (sorry it's long, but you suggested a lot of things 😅 ). I agree for the most part, though I think you have gone on a bit of a signup box rampage that is a bit over the top:

• Signup box on the homepage - I think this is overkill - yes footer, but not also in the home page itself
• Signup box in blog sidebar - sorry, not sure where this would be? But yes, the blog is a place we should clearly make it easy to sign up
• Signup box in website footer - seems sensible
• Signup box on /questions - disagree, I wouldn't expect to see a newsletter signup prompt in a help centre, I go there for help with a specific question
• Signup boxes within proposed new navigation drop-downs - seems weird to have a signup box in a menu dropdown?
• Add link on PostHog repo README - yep agreed
• Opt-in option on the signup page - definitely
• Promotion in new user follow-up / engagement emails - I don't think so - if they didn't want to opt in at signing up, I don't think reminding them afterwards is a good experience
• Occasional promotion of relevant content inside the product to increase awareness of our content - unless this is a section showing 'what's new' in the product, which is typical, I would be annoyed if I saw content promo popping up in my Slack or Brex for example
• Where possible, we will email authors who work we feature to let them know - definitely
• Current one is very much a placeholder - yep
• Add preview of email issue on /newsletter - yep
• Improve messaging to emphasize value - what does this mean?
• Place greater emphasis on content for early stage startups / founders - probably makes sense as our shareable content like James' article tends to resonate most with this audience
• Rename to something that evokes that emphasis (e.g. StartupHog, FounderHog, GrowthHog) - not sure this will make a difference
• More traffic = more potential subscribers - we can easily do this, and I don't think we spend much currently
• We should send new subscribers a welcome email with a 'greatest hits' of PostHog blogs and things we like straightaway - agreed

[joethreepwood]

So, we currently already have a Slackbot (via Greetbot) which I set up and which encourages users to introduce themselves (hence the spike in introductions over the last few months), tells them how the Slack works and informs them about the newsletter. This could probably be tweaked to better emphasise the newsletter?

Worth saying that Greetbot is shutting down on Aug 22nd, so even if we want to continue it as it is then we still need to invest some time here.

Other ideas:

• Add a link into descriptions for our existing YouTube videos. They're not mega-traffic, but it's a step.
• Distribute out blog content across external platforms for regularly. Not just HN, but also Dev.to and similar communities. Work newsletter CTAs in there.
• On the more marketing-y side, we could consider using the newsletter subscription as an entry to a contest, or as a way to unlock some gated content/event. We should be careful not to make this too sales-y. One possibility: Invite users to join us for an online event which is exclusive to newsletter subscribers.

[joethreepwood]

Also, I've been speaking to one of our contributors recently who runs this popular daily newsletter. They accept guest submissions and are active in the Slack -- could be worth you having a chat with them @andyvan-ph? Maybe we contribute an article in return for a link.

[andyvan-ph]

• Distribute out blog content across external platforms for regularly. Not just HN, but also Dev.to and similar communities. Work newsletter CTAs in there.

Yeah, this has been on my "when I have time" list for a while now. Seems a good time to ressurect it.

On the more marketing-y side, we could consider using the newsletter subscription as an entry to a contest, or as a way to unlock some gated content/event. We should be careful not to make this too sales-y. One possibility: Invite users to join us for an online event which is exclusive to newsletter subscribers.

I'd probably say no to this on the grounds the effort to benefit ratio isn't great.

[andyvan-ph]

Thanks for this! Thoughts below on each of these things (sorry it's long, but you suggested a lot of things 😅 ). I agree for the most part, though I think you have gone on a bit of a signup box rampage that is a bit over the top

Yes, that was deliberate! 😁

I pretty much agree with your takes too. Some clarifications:

Signup box in blog sidebar - sorry, not sure where this would be? But yes, the blog is a place we should clearly make it easy to sign up

This would mean putting a more visibile signup box to the right of blog content, see below. Currently it's only in the footer of articles, or sometimes halfway through as in longer articles. This would just make easier to subscribe and more visible generally.

Promotion in new user follow-up / engagement emails - I don't think so - if they didn't want to opt in at signing up, I don't think reminding them afterwards is a good experience

Yeah, I figured these two were more of an either / or situation. I don't have a strong feeling about which would be preferable, but I suspect others might object.

Improve messaging to emphasize value - what does this mean?

The current signup box just says "Email updates from PostHog? Where do I sign up?!" which doesn't really convey what we're sending them. Is it daily, weekly, ad hoc etc.

[andyvan-ph]

a tiny thing but posthog.com/blog should show only brand oriented content versus SEO based, since these things are more engaging to a casual reader. This page has relatively low trafffic so not a huge priority.

There's probably a whole separate issue on "improvements to the blog" such as this.

[andyvan-ph]

Actions from this:

• [x] Request newsletter signup box in the blog sidebar
• [x] Newsletter signup in website footer (or at least a link, which I might be able to add)
• [ ] Request opt-in on signup page
• [ ] Create welcome email
• [ ] Add preview to /newsletter if we can