🔍 The Secret Sauce Behind Beehiiv's Growth

Good afternoon.

A thought…if you ever need to walk back on a decision facing customer outcry, other than blaming the intern, learn from Netflix's recent move on the password-sharing crackdown -  just say it's posted by mistake…

Rant aside, being avid newsletter readers, you must've heard of the hero of today's case study - Beehiiv. As a relatively young company, its growth story is as impressive as the platform's capability.

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Beehiiv is a newsletter platform that reached $100k MRR 14 months after launch. According to the founder Tyler, they barely spent on acquisition, 96% of the growth was organic.

Beehiiv’s fast growth comes from their focuses on building loops instead of funnels.

According to Reforge, "Funnels are leaky and need to be constantly fed at the top, e.g., with ad spends. Loops, however, have a self-reinforcing mechanism that compounds over time, output can be reinvested as input."

A little organic effort can snowball into monumental returns for the business over time.

Let’s dive into the loops Beehiiv uses to fuel its growth.

Loop: Build/engage with users in public > User feedback in product iteration > Customer social sharing > Attract new users

Beehiiv builds in public together with users.

Founders post company and product updates directly on Twitter, building a community of followers who are used to public interaction with the company.

The team (signified with a bee emoji) actively listens to and interacts with users on Twitter:

• Responds to feedback
• Engage with potential users
• Provide product support

More free exposure to potential customers seeing these interactions.

Beehiiv then turns user feedback into new product updates at a crazy speed, with 3–5 features and enhancements per week. Customers feel heard, see progress in real-time and become brand evangelists.

Customers' public praises lead to more word-of-mouth growth for Beehiiv.

Loop: Product update content > Educate current customers > Customer social sharing /Seo > Attract new users

Beehiiv treats each product launch as a content marketing opportunity. They create long-form blog posts and youtube videos, deep-diving the what, why, and how of each new feature.

The content helps Beehiiv to :

• Educate current customers on new product capabilities for retention.
• Acquire potential customers as they read content around specific product features.
• Create a content library that showcases Beehiiv's platform to help existing users onboard and demo to potential users.

Content loops are created in the process — more content drives more new users.

Loop: Users send newsletter > Recipients see “Published on Beehiiv” > Attract new users

Beehiiv embeds a simple “Publish on Beehiiv” banner in the footer of every newsletter. As more customers send newsletters, more people will read these emails and click through the CTA to become new users.

Viral Factor = Invited User/Active User

Beehiiv currently has a viral factor of 0.86, meaning through this mechanism, every active user invites 0.86 new users.

Loop: Promote creator > Creator growth + Case study content > More people expose to Beehiiv > Attract new users

Beehiiv’s growth loop strategy means the more successful its customers are, the more eyes will be on them. Their customers’ audiences are Beehiiv’s best resources for their own growth.

They launched creator spotlights to highlight a different newsletter each week with case studies and email blasts.

These not only help to promote their customers’ newsletters but also double as content for best practices —  both ultimately unlock more new users.

Beehiiv uses growth loops to stay scrappy and still achieve monumental growth.

With content loops, one piece of content users/company generates attracts a new group of users. With viral loops, one cohort of users leads to another cohort of users. Well…it’s true that “Compound interest is man’s greatest invention.”

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Appreciate you reading!

Alex & Chi