Grow Your Newsletter With Pre-Newsletter CTAs

One of the most powerful ways to get highly engaged subscribers on your list is by using your newsletter as the lead magnet.

There are a handful of ways to do this, but my favorite is a Pre-Newsletter CTA.

We have talked about this in past deep dives like, most recently, The Best CTAs To Grow Your Newsletter Organically, but in this one we're going to be diving even deeper and focusing on the pre-newsletter CTA specifically.

What is a Pre-Newsletter CTA?

• CTA: Call To Action.
• Pre-Newsletter CTA: Pre-Newsletter Call To Action.
• How It Works: A day before your newsletter goes out you post a teaser for it (24 hours is usually the best timing) with a direct call to action to sign up.

This creates both FOMO and urgency for your audience. 

They don't want to miss out on the value all your other subs are going to be getting, and they need to sign up ASAP or it won't land in their inbox!

Note: While this CTA is my FAVORITE call to action, and lands the most engaged subscribers of my entire week, it should really only be used 1X per week; so if you have a daily newsletter or one that sends more than once a week I would recommend limiting it to just one of the newsletter sends each week.

Let's take a look at how some of the top creators use this:

📬 Justin Welsh

Credit where credit is due: this is something I learned from Justin Welsh.

So, clearly the best place to start is breaking down the master.

We have taken a look at how he uses his newsletter as the "Hub" in his "Hub And Spoke Model" content system, and his Pre-Newsletter CTA is something that is part of his weekly system, going out the Friday before each Saturday Solopreneur email.

In the image above I'm using the same newsletter example for two different platforms (in this case Twitter and LinkedIn; Justin's two main platforms) to show you that this can easily be repurposed and should be utilized wherever you're building an audience.

Justin's hook draws curiosity, making us think "What is the $1,000 weekend challenge...I want to make $1,000 in a weekend!", and then proceeds to promise value before eventually plugging his newsletter CTA.

Your pre-newsletter CTA should be a piece of content that you have planned 1X every single week.

Mark your calendars and content systems and have it ready to go out.

In the next few examples I'll be showing you some more ways you can level up your own Pre-Newsletter CTA.

📬 Chenell Basilio

Can there be two GOATS?

Justin Welsh is the one who first led me to using a pre-newsletter CTAs (I'm not 100% sure that's how Chenell found it, but I know she discussed it in her deep dive on Justin), but Chenell is the one who helped me continue to master it.

I attached three images above that are quite small to show just how often she is using this (weekly), but I'll add another for us to just look at one specifically for the breakdown.

That said, you can really go scroll through Chenell's Twitter feed and have a mini masterclass just going through the tons of pre-newsletter CTAs she has used to explode her newsletter growth.

Here's one that we'll use for our breakdown:

As you can see Chenell is still using a lot of the same tactics we discussed in our deep dive on the anatomy of a perfect text based post.

She is hooking us, building curiosity gap, evoking emotion, and even leveraging the labor illusion effect by saying "I spend 26+ hrs reverse engineering how this creator grew so fast...".

Your pre-newsletter CTA should function the same way a regular post would, with all of these elements still needing to be considered, but then drive them to FOMO in the follow up.

You want to make them feel like they NEED the answer so badly that they're eager and waiting for it to land in their inbox.

THIS is how you get highly engaged subscribers.

📬 Mike Romaine (Me)

With the new addition of our SuperThreads Of The Week newsletter going out on Tuesday I have found myself in a great position to take advantage of Pre-Newsletter CTAs easier than ever before.

I will iterate on this ever so slightly each time to get it perfect, but every Monday I'm able to share virtually the same hook and CTA while still hitting all the markers:

• Scroll Stopping Hook
• Evoke Audience Emotion
• Build A Curiosity Gap
• Create FOMO and Urgency

You DO NOT need to overcomplicate this process.

And to show you just how simple you can start with this, the next creator I'm featuring is one who is fairly new to her creator journey, but is already CRUSHING IT.

📬 Jennifer Green

Jennifer is in the 2-Hour Newsletter System cohort and will be joining us for The Summit 30 Day Challenge as well, and has already even been featured in our SuperThreads Of The Week.

(If you want to see her specific feature you can go to this breakdown.)

In the image you see above she tried out one of her first Pre-Newsletter CTAs.

As you can see: she got 8.6K views with just 2,000-2,500 followers, WHILE adding a direct link (algorithms don't like that, but we do it knowing this specific CTA has a specific focus on driving newsletter subs, so we're okay taking a hit on reach), and...

Guess how many subscribers this ONE post got her?

Over 100 subscribers were added with a simple 2 liner.

Jenni was able to create curiosity gap WHILE immediately telling her audience that it was going to be restricted to her newsletter subs.

Normally you want to format it as though it's a regular post, build curiosity/evoke emotion, and THEN tack on the urgency/FOMO addition of it being restricted to newsletter subs and only being send out tomorrow.

BUT, this shows you just how effective this post can be on a weekly basis.

Bonus Note: It's important to also make mention to the fact that Jenni is putting out incredible content and making a great connection with her audience, which is another reason why this style worked so well for her.

📬 Get Started With Your Pre-Newsletter CTA

By now you have a few creators who you can emulate, and some great examples right here in this deep dive to pull from as well.

But, to get you started I want to give you a little bit of a recap for best practices.

Pre-Newsletter CTA Best Practices:

1. One Time Per Week Max: Even if you send your newsletter 2-5X+ per week, this CTA should really only be used 1X per week or you won't be able to drive as much urgency and your audience will get tired of it.
2. Format Like A Regular Post: Even though you're going to be specifically making a call to action to get newsletter subscribers, you still want to add all the elements of a great post (hook, curiosity gap, evoke emotion, etc.).
3. Add A Link Immediately: We know that adding direct links to posts will cause us to lose out on some reach being that algorithms don't want us sending people off the platform, but with this specific post we're willing to take the hit knowing that the trade off is well worth it!
4. Don't Overcomplicate It: Just like writing hooks is an art, so is a pre-newsletter CTA. You have many layers of a good post happening at once, on top of needing to drive some form of urgency and FOMO. Start out simple, and then test, test, test!

Test. Test. Test.

And don't forget that the massive benefit of these subscribers will be the fact that they're opting in specifically to read your email(s).

Not for a lead magnet. No freebie. The newsletter IS the value.