Hey, Manny here 👋
Welcome to the very first edition of Growth Levers, where you get:
3 things happening in the newsletter world
2 winning newsletter ads and breakdowns of why they worked
1 pro tip to improve your ads and thus improve your CPA
Let’s get into today’s edition and see if you can find a lever to pull:
3 Things You Should Know
🎙 beehiiv launches podcasts: beehiiv is not joking about becoming an all-in-one place to grow and monetize an audience online. This is another step in that direction.
💰 OpenAI buys TBPN, and people don’t know how to feel about it: This wasn’t a media business acquisition that everyone agreed was “good”. But, regardless, OpenAI now “owns” the daily livestream, social channels, AND newsletter.
🤖 Meta’s AI push is continuing to change ad creation: Zuck says that one day, advertising will be as simple as entering a credit card and letting AI do the rest.
My take, as someone who runs an agency and sees Meta's AI outputs every single day. That “one day” is years away because the current sentiment among many Meta ad pros about Meta's AI functions is pretty poor, given the sub-par outputs and the inability to take in more context about what’s appropriate for the creative and the offer. TLDR: I still see a more involved human + AI element to the creative production process.
2 Winning Ads
Ad 1: Tweet Ad.
Newsletter: The Simple Path To Wealth.
What Makes It Great:
Cross-platform ad format: Using a creative format from one social channel on another has proven, time and time again, to be a winning strategy for an efficient CPA.
Most commonly, this shows up as a fake X post running on Instagram, as it did here.
It works because there’s a familiarity with the format that ensures it isn’t too intrusive, yet makes people stop to read because they weren’t expecting to see it on this platform.
Copywriting Masterclass: Every sentence in this ad plays an important part in encouraging the sign-up and plays a part in ensuring you are attracting your target audience.
Hook: You can't outearn poor money habits. Even surgeons go broke.
This starts with a bold statement + reinforces it with the example about surgeons (who, notably, earn healthy incomes).
Social Proof: I wrote "The Simple Path to Wealth" and sold over 1M copies.
This gives an absolutely cold reader a reason to trust JL when he talks about money, which they would not have had before. The “1M copies” does most of the heavy lifting in terms of building his authority with the reader.
Value Promise: You deserve peace of mind – not panic every time you check your bank account
After building his authority, he gets to the value prop of his newsletter, promising the benefits without the drawbacks.
Benefit Reinforcement: Then… I created a free newsletter that shows you how to build wealth with less stress and more clarity.
This is simply a line to make the reader nod along and say, "Yeah, I want that."
CTA with Social Proof: 20,000+ have already subscribed. Click below to join them for FREE.
This CTA is the chef’s kiss portion of the ad. We add more social proof by citing the 20,000-subscriber number, and promise the newsletter for 100% free.
Ad 2: AI Zuck Ad
Newsletter: Tangle
What Makes It Great:
Visual Hook That Stops The Scroll: The AI-rendered Mark Zuckerberg face serves as the perfect thumb-stopper element.
This creative approach works because it leverages a recognizable public figure without crossing legal lines - it's clearly AI-generated art, not an actual photo.
The key is being smart about who you use. You can't just slap any celebrity's face on an ad and call it a day. Zuck works for Tangle because their newsletter is all about unbiased political news, and he represents the exact opposite of that - a tech billionaire supposedly in control of the algorithm.
Contrarian Copy That Reinforces The Value Prop: The headline "Break free of Zuck's algorithm" immediately positions Tangle as the solution to a problem their target audience actually faces.
This Copy Does Double Duty. First, it calls out the enemy (algorithmic bias) that newsletter readers are tired of dealing with. Second, it makes Tangle's core value proposition crystal clear - they give you news without the spin.
The tagline "Don't be told what to think" hammers home the independence angle, while "No spin or bias. Each side of the story" tells you exactly what you're getting when you subscribe.
1 Meta Ads Pro Tip
Today's copywriting tip will help you write a higher-converting copy with no additional effort, even if you aren't an expert copywriter (I know because this is a part of our workflow for every piece of copy we write).
Lucky for you, Claude has been trained on the methodologies of the world’s best copywriters, and all you have to do is ask for its help.
So, today’s pro tip is that for any piece of copy you write for your newsletter (whether it's a UGC script or a piece of primary text copy that sits above or below the Instagram ad), feed it to Claude with the following prompt:
"I need you to take on the role of one of the world's top performing conversion-focused ad copywriters.
Your role here is to write copy that convinces users to sign up to the newsletter mentioned in the copy I provide.
I need you to improve the copy with all your best practices and provide me with 3 variants that are at least a 9/10."
Note that I am NOT saying you should start from scratch and write your ad copy with Claude. You know your audience better than an LLM ever could. With that said, you lose absolutely nothing by having Claude upgrade your copy.
No-brainer use case here.
One Last Thing
That's all for today, but here is one lever to pull when you’re ready:
I've spent the last five years of my life driving 5M+ newsletter subscribers with Meta ads.
If you want to skip the hours of work in Canva and the dreadful UI of Meta Ads manager, my agency can grow your newsletter without you lifting a finger - join our waitlist here.
That's all for today. I'll see you back here next week!