There are a LOT of great growth marketing newsletters that exist in the world, and to be completely honest that’s 100% necessary because there’s a lot to cover in the expansive world that is growth marketing.
As an experiment, we subscribed to all (and we mean all) of them so that:
A) You don’t have to
And
B) So we could be exhaustive in our efforts to stay on top of each and every single growth marketing news morsel that there was be consumed on the internet.
Our findings? As with any good thing, we discovered there is in fact such a thing as too many growth newsletters for one inbox — so we built a slack channel to funnel them all into!
Not ones to let a good experiment go to waste, and after sifting through the data we’ve determined that there aren’t 13, 31, or 56 stand-outs (as Google might lead you to believe) in the claustrophobic landscape of growth newsletter that we personally can’t live without — but 5.
As a favor to you, these are them (with links to subscribe of course):
With a bonus/honorable mention for chartr because we love graphs and aren’t entirely sure if it’s a “growth newsletter” per se — but we are sure that you should subscribe.
And because we’re good like that, here’s an exhaustive breakdown of each of these newsletters, the sections that they offer, and a rating because why not?
1. NoGood News
Focus: Growth Marketing
Frequency — Bi-weekly on Wednesdays
As growth marketers, we cover a variety of topics from every stage of the funnel — ranging from community-led growth, paid media, SEO, and content marketing.
NoGood News is easily snackable, with two separate editions that are received each month.
Edition 01: NoGood News
A curation of key pieces of content from across our blog, social media, and the internet at large — carefully crafted into serial segments such as:
In Case You Missed It:
Our top-performing story from the previous month is tastefully paired with a meme of our making.
Rating: NYT Bestseller
The Crypto Corner:
Honing in on one key piece of information that will matter in the ever-changing, rapidly iterating, landscape that is crypto.
Rating:
1 Dogecoin from January 7, 2018
Stat Snacks:
Telling the story of a single piece of data and exploring how it is, or could be, shaping our worlds.
Rating:
75% of Millennials agree it’s NoGood.
Edition 02: From the Source
The culmination of our monthly internal pulse check to see what is on our team’s radar, and just generally where their head is at.
The Meme We Made That Never Made It:
There exists a NoGood Figma file specifically dedicated to the creation of new memes. Unfortunately, not every meme that is made is meant for the public — though we’ve found an excuse to share them here because why not?
Rating: No one knows what it means, but it’s provocative.
What A Tool!:
There are always new tools that we’re discovering and building into our marketing stacks, we thought it’d be nice to share our discoveries with you all to help optimize your growth.
Rating: Right tool. Right job.
Campaigns in the Membrane:
Do you know that one campaign that you can’t escape? That your team finds themselves endlessly sharing and dissecting? Do you know that one? It goes here.
Rating: Always on our minds.
2. Morning Brew
Focus: Global Pulse (There is a Marketing Brew as well, which we also subscribe to)
Frequency: Daily
Formats: Email
While it may seem like an outrageous claim to “Become smarter in just 5 minutes” we’re here to tell you firsthand — it’s true. Our whole team are avid readers of the Morning Brew and we find it to be the best companion to our morning coffee.
With a healthy dose of news, reading lists, and discussions of topics spanning from agriculture, the metaverse, retail, and just good ol’ news — it’s a fantastic way to wake up with everything happening each day and is accessible to readers far beyond just seasoned marketers.
Here are a few snacks from our favorite segments.
Retail:
While we do live in a digital-first world, there’s something to be said about the signals that retail sends in indicating what’s to come for the future of commerce. Same as Waffle House being used to indicate the severity of a storm, anytime a retail giant deviates from its typical stasis there’s likely something rippling beneath the surface.
Rating: 10% off purchases of $100 or more.
Markets:
Line goes up. Line goes down. Some look at the markets as a metaphor for life, others look at them as an insight for future trickle-down trends for their next campaign. We look at this section to remind ourselves that a diverse portfolio is just as important as a multi-channel strategy.
Rating: The Content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
World:
What do Disney, The PGA, and Wells Fargo all have in common? They were all included in the same section of Morning Brew. The global climate (not that one) is a fantastic source for content ideation and just keeping a pulse on what’s going on and what’s worth paying attention to at any given moment.
Rating: The most magical place on earth.
3. Demand Curve
Focus: Marketing Strategy
Frequency — Weekly, Tuesdays
Format: Email
Quite possibly the best source on the internet for step-by-step guides and breakdowns of the strategies that have made the start-ups of today’s household names. No matter what stage your business is at, or what your goals are, their archive of helpful tutorials are as actionable as they are digestible — giving listicles a good name.
They’re a fantastic resource for the marketing curious or those who want to stay sharp and up-to-date on current practices across different channels with each edition providing an extensive breakdown of a particular concept that would make even the densest growth blog blush — which is followed by more content.
The Pillar Piece:
The section where the breakdown happens. This image is legit just the introduction to this section of the newsletter and, as you can tell, there’s SO MUCH here already. Loves it.
Rating: Don’t call it a blog.
News and Links:
While this type of section shows up in a lot of newsletters, we find that it’s our favorite for many of them as it provides a great deal of insight into what people are reading, what conversations are happening, and of course what we ourselves should be reading.
Rating: 9.6% CTR
Something Fun:
For all the discussion of metrics and various acronyms that often get thrown around in these newsletters, this is a nice little reprieve from the usual fare.
Rating: Liked + Subscribed
4. Community Manager Breakfast
Focus: Community
Frequency — Weekly, Mondays
Format: Email
Evan Hamilton is one of those names and faces that you may have never met, but feel as though is a good friend. As the current Director of Community for Reddit, Evan shares his insights each week into the process of community-building — always with a community-first approach.
As community builders, we cannot imagine a better way to kick off each and every week than glancing over the latest Community Manager Breakfast, and of course, picturing Evan’s illustrious headshot that greets all who visit his website, or the enticing foamy latte (we think) at the head of each edition.
Evan follows a bit of a different format in that they really take the ‘letter’ aspect of ‘newsletter’ seriously and it feels as though they are speaking directly to you — about whatever seems the most relevant on that particular week. #hereforit
The Top:
The letter part which, text heavy as it may be, is something we read cover to cover (top to bottom?) each and every time and find ourselves reading the entirety of anything linked within the text.
Rating: 10k characters or more.
The Links:
See what we mean about the links section? Again though, always a fresh perspective and offer from letter to letter. Big fans.
Rating: Trending in our inbox
5. A16z
Focus: Venture Capital + Startups
Frequency: Weekly, Tuesdays
Format: Email
If you’re just realizing that there are 16 letters between the A & Z of Andreessen Horowitz, congratulations you now understand their name!
Venture Capitalists are the influencers of the start-up world, which would make Andreessen Horowitz the Kardashians of seed capital. They’re well proven, well informed, and well worth subscribing to.
In Case You Missed It:
As far as we know, they don’t have a copyright on the section title and we honestly added ours as a section without realizing it. Real recognize real.
Rating: Ours has memes/10.
Around the Web:
If we’re ever looking for something to read, we look here. It’s a fantastic collection of links to stories that will expand your mind and would make Owen Wilson go, “Wow.”
Rating: Owenwilsonwow.gif
Honorable Mention: chartr
Focus: Data Visualization
Frequency: Weekly – Thursdays
Format: Email
If you read our blog, which you technically are right now, then you know we love charts — maybe not as much as chartr, but we do.
chartr provides not only the pretty visualizations that we all so desperately crave in our lives, but comprehensive insights into why they matter for those among us who may not be data scientists.
Here are samples, not sections (since they don’t really do that):
Interest In The News Is Falling:
Illustrative of their talent of not only providing the WHAT but the WHY this particular chart tells the story of the cause of dwindling interest in the news.
Rating: Peak Interest
The Humble Lego Brick Is The Foundation Of A Remarkable Business:
As fans of Lego, we couldn’t help but be delighted by this story breaking down the plastic brick’s 2021 Fiscal Year to visually tell the story of where the money was going from within the buildable toy empire.
Rating: Price floor, yes. Lego floor, ouch.
Did we miss anything?
While we do realize that these aren’t necessarily all growth newsletters, but as leaders in growth, we do believe in having a well-rounded inbox just as much as we believe in having a multi-channel strategy. We may not have done any scientific testing, or really anything aside from tracking our own CTR when it comes to our inboxes to find which newsletters we were reading, and which were going unread.
As with all things, we’ll keep this up-to-date as we add new favorites and solemnly remove old ones, so stay tuned and of course, be sure to subscribe!
Thanks, now my inbox is even more full!