How to Own Your Audience With an Email Newsletter

How big is your audience? 1,000 people? 10,000 people? 100,000 people?

Regardless of how big it is, you want to be in full control of it.

Growing an audience on social media with tools like Typefully is how most people start. However, once you get to a certain size and comfort, you should start diversifying where you post your content in order to avoid platform risk. If you truly want control over your audience (and your business), you need to own your audience.

One of the best ways to own an audience and diversify is to build an email newsletter off of your social media audience.

In this guide, we’ll break down how to leverage your social media audience to start an email newsletter and secure your audience.

Let’s dive in.

Diversify to increase your reach and decrease the risk

Platform risk is associated with the fact you don’t own your social media audience and that changes in the algorithms may affect your reach no matter the number of followers you have. Because you don’t control by whom your content is seen, diversifying is a must.

An email newsletter is a great way to diversify and, at the same time, start owning your audience since you have direct access to the email inboxes of your subscribers. It’s the only tool that makes sure your content is delivered directly to your audience without any algorithms in between.

Now, having your business or brand rely on social media for traffic and awareness doesn’t mean you’ll lose it overnight. However, the access to an audience on social media is less predictable and more indirect than the access to an email audience.

Social media is one of the greatest technological advancements known to man. It’s created a global community accessible to the majority of humans on earth to stay connected and informed, and to boost commerce. It’s a great place to make friends, meet new people, hire talent, meet investors, find customers, you name it.

Everyone agrees it’s one of the most effective channels you can leverage to attract, nurture, and convert an audience. But, it’s not enough.

Apart from the community value you get, the best way to fortify your business and leverage your social media audience is to ensure you build an email newsletter simultaneously. You can use the trust and reputation you’ve gained on your social media to promote your newsletter, funneling your followers into email newsletter subscribers.

Use social media for:

Making new connections and meet people.
Short-form, day-to-day content.
Build trust and reputation.

Use an email newsletter for:

Gain direct access to your audience.
Long-form, more structured content.
Nurture and sell to your audience.

The best part about an email newsletter is that you own your email list, and no one can take it from you. At its core, an email list is simply a CSV file with a list of email addresses on it. No email platform can take this list from you, so you truly own it.

You get a direct line to your audience forever.

If your goal is to grow and **monetize your audience, there’s one more reason why you don’t want your entire audience to only be on social media:

→ Purchase intent.

A follower is someone who signals interest in what you do and what you post online. They want to see more of it, learn from you and possibly connect with you. They don’t directly mean: “I want to buy your products and services.”

But, with an email newsletter, it’s different. When someone signs up to an email list, they have to directly opt-in to receive marketing messages from the brand. This means every time someone enters their email to get on your newsletter, they’re not just saying, “I kind of like your stuff.” They’re saying, “I like your stuff. And, yes, you can market to me. You can sell your products and services to me right in my email inbox.”

The purchase intent is different between a follower and an email subscriber. This means your social media followers are colder leads, while your email subscribers are warmer leads.

This is also one of the reasons the return on investment (ROI) of email marketing is the highest of any digital marketing channel at 36:1. Your email subscribers are much more ready to buy. So, you want to ensure you’re giving your social media audience the option to join your email list so you can continue growing and monetizing your audience.

Now that you see why building an email newsletter is a wise long-term business strategy, you’re probably wondering, “How do I get started?”

The reality is, there are dozens of email platforms you can use to get up and running.

What matters most is you pick one and start building today. But, if you’re looking for the easiest tool to get started, then beehiiv is one of the best options.

Built by the same founding team who started and grew The Morning Brew newsletter to over one million subscribers, beehiiv is the newsletter platform built for growth.

Drag-and-Drop Editor

With beehiiv, you get access to a simple, drag-and-drop editor.

This means you can create beautiful, professional emails quickly without needing any coding or design experience.

Analytics & Insights

The key to keeping your audience happy is to understand them better. That’s why beehiiv offers robust 3D analytics to give you insights into your audience’s behaviors, including where they’re coming from, and what content they’re engaging with the most so you understand why certain content performs better than others.

Plus, with beehiiv, you get access to surveys and one-click polls to help you dive deeper into audience preferences so you can create content (and products) they love.

Subscriber Growth Tools

One thing that makes beehiiv stand above other newsletter platforms is its suite of growth features. They offer a mix of free and paid growth tools to help you scale your owned audience fast:

Recommendations to help you grow organically with strategic partnerships
Boosts to help you grow fast from day one through paid recommendations
Integrated referral program to fuel your word-of-mouth marketing
Ad Network to supercharge your list growth within beehiiv’s ad marketplace
Simple landing pages, signup forms, and in-content forms to grow passively

Monetization Features

While beehiiv is best known for its growth features, it’s second to none when it comes to monetizing your audience.

WIth beehiiv, you get access to:

Boosts to monetize by recommending other newsletters to your subscribers
Inbound sponsored ad opportunities you can insert into your newsletter in just a few clicks
Premium (paid) newsletters your subscribers can pay monthly for to build passive income

Ready to own your audience?

Get a free 30-day trial on beehiiv to start your newsletter today.