This is Bye, Social Media!, a newsletter about marketing that doesn’t suck. If you’re new to it, you can subscribe to it here:

Happy Wednesday!

This week, I’ve been thinking about referral programs for the newsletter. Should I do one again, should I not…?

In this edition, I explore referral programs and my reservations around them.

How can you grow a newsletter?

There are several ways to expand the audience of your newsletter:

This list isn’t exhaustive, of course. You can get creative outside of that.

However, since the Morning Brew newsletter grew from 100,000 to 4.5 million subscribers via a referral program, they’re a thing.

Morning Brew uses a tiered/milestone-based referral program where for every so many people sent their way, you get a mug, keychain, t-shirt, flight to Mars. I made one of these up, guess which!

How to reward a referral?

To run a referral program, you need good referral rewards.

You could offer something like:

(My) challenges with choosing a referral reward

The above is where it gets murky for me. What do you choose? What works?

From a conceptual point of view, I’m just not sure any of the standard referral reward ideas do it anymore - except for the Maldives, those will probably always be cool ;)

Here’s a breakdown of my thoughts on standard referral rewards:

As I’m trying to figure out whether and how to run a referral program for the newsletter, I’ve been chewing on the standard referral ideas for a while. They don’t really do it for me.

What’s the verdict on referral programs?

None of the options above sound truly satisfying to me.

I do wonder, whether we’ve surpassed the heyday of the newsletter referral program frenzy. Right now, the market feels saturated and a little uninspiring. There are other effective ways to grow, for example through cross-posts and paid ads.

On the other hand, if you have a good idea for a reward, you can probably always break through the noise. There’s no harm ever in going for it and learning what works and doesn’t.

One thing I’d love to hear about from you

From the perspective of a reader, have you ever shared anything with anyone online to get a sticker or some other form of reward?

You now know my POV, I’d love to hear how you think about this, whether you’ve ever referred anyone, etc.

Happy Marketing,

Johanna 📣

One more thing: It’s time to market like an adult ;)

Marketing your business like the adult that you are means making an actual marketing plan. If you’ve been throwing spaghetti at the wall to grow your business, it’s time to change that.

I made a guide that walks you through all aspects of your customers’ journey and helps you figure out how you’ll talk to them when and how. My favorite part is that the guide helps you find weekly action steps that help you break down the big concept of a marketing plan into things you can do on the regular.

I do that with this newsletter. You can do that with any other form of marketing you choose.