HubSpot - A $75 million college newsletter 💰

All I have to show from my college days is a questionably long Facebook album titled "For the Nights I'll Never Remember, and the People I'll Never Forget."

Meanwhile, when Alex Lieberman was in college, he launched a newsletter now valued at $75M.

It's okay… We all have our strengths.

On-deck:

The inner workings of Morning Brew's beginnings — and how you can use those lessons for your own B2B newsletter
Astronauts are requesting brands avoid sticking billboards in outer space. The nerve
The three channels that will win in 2025

| Meet the Master

Alex Lieberman
Co-founder and executive chairman, Morning Brew; co-founder, Storyarb

Claim to fame: Launching a newsletter now worth $75M — from his college dorm room.

Lesson 1:
When launching a biz, embrace the ol'

hub-and-spoke model.

Lieberman had no clue he was following what he now calls the hub-and-spoke model while getting Morning Brew off the ground at University of Michigan.

But he most certainly was: He and his co-founder, Austin Rief, would visit business classes and clubs across campus and ask professors if they could speak to students. They'd launch into a quick 30-second pitch about Morning Brew, collect emails, and voilà — a cumbersome, on-the-ground list-building strategy was born.

So why's it called hub and spoke? For Lieberman, the spokes are your ideal customers; the hubs are channels that give you access to lots of spokes at once. In his case, the spokes were business students, and the hubs were classrooms.

When they ran out of Michigan classrooms to bombard, they launched an ambassador program with 250 college students nationwide to collect emails at other schools.

"That was how we grew our first 50,000 subscribers. And then finally we're like, 'Okay, this ambassador program worked… Now how do we turn everyone into an ambassador?' That's why we created Morning Brew's referral program, and as of today, roughly 450,000 subscribers have gotten at least one referral using their email address."

Lieberman credits this hub-and-spoke approach for their early success. His advice: Start with the smallest, most localized hub, then expand one step outward while staying focused on the right channels for your audience.

Your business might not find its target consumer in college classrooms, but the point stands — Find unique, off-the-Instagram-path channels to grow your audience one spoke at a time.

Lesson 2:
Go extremely specific when crafting your voice.

When Lieberman realized Morning Brew needed a consistent voice, he didn't mess around with vague guidelines.

He literally picked an actual human being. "He's a family friend of mine. His name's Aaron Stoppelmann. He's 32 years old, lives in Connecticut, and reverse commutes to the city."

The Morning Brew team documented Aaron's go-to cocktail, his TED Talk-watching habits, and why people enjoyed talking business with him: "He's deeply passionate about it and he knows a lot, but he doesn't come off as a know-it-all or stuck up."

After creating a hyper-specific voice based on Stoppelmann, Lieberman created a three-person content assembly line that included a completely made-up role called "voice editor."

This position went to Grant, a business school student from Michigan's improv troupe whose comedy background was perfect for injecting personality into dry business content.

"That's how we would have a cohesive voice, even if four writers had written the story," Lieberman explains.

Don't settle for generic brand voice guidelines that collect digital dust. Create an actual persona with ridiculous specificity — down to their drink order — and consider splitting your editorial process to include a dedicated "voice" role.

Your content might be written by a committee, but it should sound like it came from one impossibly consistent, slightly caffeinated friend.

Lesson 3:
Three channels will win in 2025.

Lieberman's betting on "the trifecta of channels" for B2B brands in 2025: long-form blog content, executive social content, and a weekly email newsletter.

When asked if these are the marketing mediums all B2B leaders should lean into next year, Lieberman doesn't hesitate: "I think this is the trifecta of channels that serves the purposes you need in terms of building top of funnel, nurturing your top of funnel, and converting your audience."

He notes you could try YouTube, but most B2B brands "would just waste a lot of resources on it" without the right multimedia competencies.

The beauty of this three-channel approach is its simplicity and effectiveness. Long-form content — built from first-party data or expert interviews — drives traffic and captures emails. The newsletter then nurtures those relationships. Finally, executive social content leverages personalities to strengthen brand perception. (Or reveals your CTO can't spell "innovation.")

Focus your content efforts on these three high-impact channels before chasing shiny objects. They provide the perfect blend of rented and owned audiences — without requiring six months of planning meetings that could have been emails.

Oh, and one bonus tip I got from Lieberman? When creating content for these channels, Lieberman says business owners should avoid stressing too much about demand gen.

"I think [over-indexing on demand generation] has largely taken the soul out of content," he told me, adding that it's sad because "there's such great content that can be created in the world of B2B — and I think you see glimmers of that, and it's done by people who are willing to not have to track every last thing and actually create really good stuff for their audience."

| Make Yourself a Master

5 pro tips for nailing your newsletter

Few newsletters can match the splash and lasting impact made by the Morning Brew newsletter team.

Here are five morsels of wisdom straight from @businessbarista Alex Lieberman’s keyboard on making a must-read newsletter.

Take it from a dude who deeply knows how to scale a startup. The proof is in the pudding made from Morning Brew spinoffs.

Newsletter strategy gems

| Open Tabs

👩‍🚀 If you didn't think humans would find a way to exploit outer space, think again: Astronauts are requesting we create a law so brands can't stick billboards on the moon anytime soon. Check out the full story via the Hustle.

💡 Tired of hearing startup strategies from your college roommate, who tried to launch a sauna company once? Me too. Here's some real strategies that actually work.

💭 Inclusive marketing strategist Sonia Thompson walks us through how the best brands — like Mattel, Netflix, and Google — approach inclusivity, and how you should, too.

| Lingering Questions

THIS WEEK'S QUESTION

What’s the most memorable advertisement (commercial, print ad, OOH, anything!) you can remember seeing, and why do you think it has stuck with you?—Erin Quinn, Principal Marketing Strategist, The Original Pickle Shot

THIS WEEK'S ANSWER

Lieberman says: The OG Dollar Shave Club "Our Blades Are F*cking Great" commercial. That spot hits on everything I look for in a good ad:

It tells a story, which makes you FEEL before you THINK.
Its approach is novel, which creates intrigue & makes you lean forward (vs. lean back).
It doesn't sell a product. It sells an emotion. And once you feel that emotion, you become open to the product.
It's an ad disguised as entertainment. The best ads make you feel like you're eating ice cream, when you're really eating cauliflower.

The spot drove 27 million YouTube views on a budget of $4,500, and I believe is a big reason why DSC ultimately sold for $1 billion to Unilever.

NEXT WEEK'S QUESTION

Lieberman asks: What are your thoughts on the ongoing "attribution" hoopla? And what's the right amount of attribution without getting overly scientific/metrics-focused with your marketing strategy?

This week's email was brought to you by Caroline Forsey. Editing by Curt del Principe.

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HubSpot - A $75 million college newsletter 💰

5 pro tips for nailing your newsletter

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