Hey, Manny here 👋

Welcome back to this week’s edition of Growth Levers, where you get: 

Let’s get into today’s edition and see if you can find a lever to pull:

💰 Matt Paulson (MarketBeat) publishes quarterly update: If you’re curious about the operator behind one of the most successful financial publishers ever, read this. He writes about business updates, AI use, his NMS recap, and more.

📰 The guy who sold his newsletter to Barstool and then bought it back launches another newsletter about newsletters. Okay, seriously, go check out Tyler Morin's new newsletter. He's an absolute must-follow if you want to grow yours.

❓ Is beehiiv…for sale? Rumors swirled about a potential acquisition by LinkedIn, coupled with Tyler Denk himself mentioning that they did, in fact, have conversations with potential suitors.

Ad 1: Doctored iMessage Convo

Newsletter: Offball Daily

What Makes It Great:

The format itself does the heavy lifting. When you're scrolling through Instagram and you come across what looks like a private iMessage conversation, you stop.

You feel like you're reading something you weren't supposed to see, and that voyeuristic pull keeps you on the ad long enough to actually absorb the message.

The first message in the conversation functions as the hook (this is where you have room to experiment with copy that creates shock, curiosity, or an emotional reaction).

The following messages are the natural place to introduce your newsletter's value prop, because by that point the reader is already engaged and reading the conversation like they would a real text thread.

This format isn’t niche-exclusive. I’ve seen it work for pretty much any newsletter space you could think of.

Ex:

The flexibility of the first message is what makes this format so repeatable and worth testing in multiple variations.

Ad 2: Static Overlay Text

Newsletter: Market Briefs

What Makes It Great:

This is a format that works consistently in video, but it’s now applied to a static image. The visual does just enough to stop the scroll while the text carries the actual message.

I would call this an "ugly ad" because it is stupidly simple and looks like something you could make in two minutes. And you can. That's the point.

This kind of creative will consistently outperform the ad that has a logo, brand colors, custom imagery, and took a designer an hour to put together. It blends into the feed and looks like content, so people engage with it like content instead of immediately swiping past it.

The lesson for newsletter operators is that you do not need to overthink your creative production.

A background image with text on top, made in Canva in a couple of minutes, is a legitimate testing format.

Run five or six of these with different hooks and images, and you'll likely find a winner faster (and cheaper) than going the polished design route.

You do not need your logo and brand colors in your ads. Full stop.

This is something I tell every newsletter operator when they hire us: do not expect us to make "digital billboards." I get that you spent time building your brand, and you want it front and center, but within subscriber acquisition ads is not the place to do it.

A user does not open Instagram hoping to scroll past a heavily designed ad with your logo and brand palette. They want to see content. They're scrolling through stories from friends, memes, Reels, and posts from accounts they follow. The second something looks like an ad, they scroll past it.

So make your ads look like regular platform content. Use native formats, casual imagery, and copy that feels like a post from a friend (side note: there are TONS of mobile apps that do a wonderful job of making this type of creative).

We do this for our clients, and it’s a big factor in why the CPAs we can achieve are much stronger, because the creative doesn't trigger that immediate "this is an ad" reaction that kills performance.

I simply do not see why you wouldn't try this on your next batch of creatives.

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 from 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 for you - join our waitlist here (note that we only onboard three clients per month).

That's all for today. I'll see you back here next week!

_{P.S for current clients of the agency who are subscribed… the first one to DM me on Slack with the name of the OpenClaw AI agent Matt Paulson said he is building in his quarterly update will get $300 of ad spend that I will personally apply to your ad account!}