Growing from 0-50k subscribers in six months

Learn how Nicholas Platt used a SparkLoop referral program to increase sales and grow a newsletter list of 50k subscribers for a non-fiction book.

SparkLoop is my newsletter secret weapon. It took 10min to install and my email list has added thousands of referred subscribers since. Absolutely a no-brainer.

Nicholas Platt

Lifespan Book

The Newsletter

LIFESPAN BOOK

Around the world, people are coming to recognize the potential for living much longer, much healthier lives than ever before. Lifespan is a book by Harvard professor David Sinclair that explores the potential for, and implications of, this revolutionary change.

Nicholas Platt and his team at Navigo lead branding, community and marketing for Lifespan. As part of this effort, they set up a newsletter for Lifespan insiders.

Our challenge was communicating the complicated science of aging to the public while maintaining David's credibility as a world-class scientist.

The Challenge

GETTING MORE, ENGAGED SUBSCRIBERS IN A NICHE AUDIENCE

A significant driver of sales for the Lifespan book come from the newsletter. So increasing the size of that newsletter audience is a top priority. But - in a niche audience - growing the newsletter subscriber size isn't easy.

The Navigo team turned to SparkLoop in search of a way to...

✅ ... reach more of the target audience
✅ ... who are engaged and likely to want to buy the book
✅ ... at a competitive cost per acquisition (CPA)

The Solution

REWARDING THE EXISTING AUDIENCE FOR REFERRING NEW SUBSCRIBERS

The Navigo team realised that the best way to reach more, engaged subscribers in a niche was by incentivising existing subscribers to share with friends and colleagues.

Inside of 10 minutes, SparkLoop was connected to the Lifespan Mailchimp account and homepage.

Nicholas and the Navigo team created a set of rewards that would incentivise the Lifespan audience to share and refer.

The rewards needed to be valuable to act as an incentive, but without costing a lot of time or money to deliver.

Finally, the Navigo team used SparkLoop’s Mailchimp templates to introduce Lifespan's new referral campaign to subscribers in welcome emails and the weekly newsletter.

The best media brands and newsletter publishers use a SparkLoop referral program to grow 20-200% faster.

You can too.

Learn how to come up with a reward strategy that's perfect for your audience in our free Referral University course...

The Result

CREATING AN NYT BESTSELLER

Did the referral program work? Well - on average - the Lifespan audience is growing 5-10% faster thanks to SparkLoop. And thousands of new subscribers have been referred.

In Nicholas' own words, "we grew our newsletter following to almost 50k subscribers in 5 months and SparkLoop was key for that growth."

You can read more about how Nicholas and the Navigo team made LifeSpan’s launch a success in their detailed case study.

We're very happy with our results. Growth has been exponential. It's easy to set up and use. If you have any type of email marketing strategy, I say use SparkLoop.

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