Hello, friends. Meta ads are without a doubt the fastest way to grow a newsletter. But my second favorite way is word of mouth – also known as referrals.

Today, I’ll show you exactly how to create a local newsletter referral program that’s almost fully automated and highly effective. But first, some numbers.

Long story short: All local newsletters need a great referral program and I love making those stupid graphics

Publishing on beehiiv: included on all paid plans. Starting price: $34.40/month

Publishing on Kit: included with Creator Pro. Starting price: $50/month

Referral programs are built around milestones. When you accomplish X, you get Y.

For us, X is getting a certain number of your friends to read our newsletter and Y is a prize.

Aside: This is my referral program soapbox. People won’t share your newsletter because they want your prizes. They’ll share your newsletter even without a referral program if they love it enough. It’s your job to make them love it enough.

However, if they love it and were going to share anyway, you can encourage them to share more with clever milestones.

Here’s a dirty little secret of referral programs.

98.7% of people won’t make it past the first milestone.

And that’s fine. It just means picking the right first milestone is 98.7% of the battle.

Lucky for you, I stumbled upon the perfect first milestone for a referral program years ago.

The birthday shoutout.

It’s simple. You refer 3 friends and this happens.

People love seeing their name in the newspaper (or local newsletter).

This is also a growth hack although I don’t have data to prove it.

I suspect that when this happens, screenshots get shared in group chats and at least one or two folks ask, “What’s that?”

Someone sends their referral link and the process repeats itself.

This is also a perfect milestone because it costs you zero dollars. I like growth that costs zero dollars.

It can also be automated at no cost.

🤖 Use the email sent by beehiiv or Sparkloop to link a Google form that’s tied to a database (Google sheets) using Zapier and check the database before scheduling the next newsletter so you never miss a shoutout.

Make this milestone worth 2 or 3 referrals. The easy thing to do is make the first milestone 1 referral. You’re selling yourself short if you do.

Something I used to hear all the time when I was trying to fill Naptown Scoop’s ad calendar is, “We don’t advertise. All our business comes from word of mouth.”

That’s stupid.

Yes, we all known successful businesses that don’t advertise. Heck, the two wealthiest people I know have never had a marketing budget in their businesses.

This is the exception, not the rule.

Only 10.6% of Naptown Scoop’s subscribers have ever referred another reader.

This is why I always tell people you need a critical mass for referral programs to work well. Don’t expect meaningful results until you have thousands of subscribers. Tens of thousands is even better.

Meta ads will be your top growth channel. Referrals will probably be #2 unless you rock at SEO in which case they’ll be #3.

Alright so we’ve established that almost nobody will reach these levels. But some people will. And they’ll be your biggest fans. So get them something nice. Make it custom. Make it worth about $1 per referral.

Naptown Scoop (and Columbia Scoop) share the same second milestone – a coffee mug. Milestone 3 is a tote bag. Can never have enough tote bags

All mugs and totes are fulfilled through Printful and are pretty much automated.

I designed them all (the Columbia tote bag was aided by ChatGPT) on Canva. You can do it. If you really don’t think you can, hire a designer on Fiverr. It won’t cost much. If you’re patient and good with prompts, ChatGPT can be a great designer, too.

🤖 After winning, beehiiv/Kit sends an email to the reader. A link takes them to a Google form which collects their shipping info. That form is connected to a database (Google sheets). Zapier watches the database and creates a new order with the shipping info every time a new row gets added. Then it emails me to approve the order.

P.S. Don’t sell these prizes if you do happen to sell physical products. Referral prizes should be something you can only get by sharing.

If you create an epic newsletter, you’ll have some super fans. Over 10% of Naptown Scoop’s referrals have come from one single reader. She has 653 referrals. . .

When someone goes above and beyond like that, you should go above and beyond, too.

Are you asking favorite restaurants in your welcome email or onboarding survey? Go get them a $100 (or more) gift card to their favorite restaurant. That’s what I did and the reader couldn’t believe it. She thought it was too kind for simply sharing our newsletter.

Ever heard the question, “What’s more important – distribution or product?”

The only correct answer is distribution.

You can have the best referral program in the world but if your readers don’t know about it, it doesn’t exist.

Promote your referral program three ways.

A brief explainer of it should be in every single newsletter you publish. Add it to your template. Beehiiv has a feature that does this with one click. I’m sure Kit does, too. There’s no excuse. Put it in every newsletter, even if you publish daily.

Occasional explanations of birthday shoutouts. Every third shoutout or so, add a second P.S. under the shoutout P.S. Say something like this:

P.P.S. Want your birthday at the top of our newsletter? All you have to do is share it with three friends. Copy and paste this link and send it to your group chat! (insert their unique referral link here using a merge tag)

Just straight up ask. At least once a month (maybe more), dedicate the entire intro to the referral program. Claim that your newsletter is so valuable that the entire town deserves to read it. Say you’re doing your neighbors a favor by sharing it. Say even though now everyone will know the secret of how you always know what’s happening, it’s worth sharing for the birthday shoutout. Whatever you say, just make sure it’s interesting. Nobody likes a boring, “Please share my newsletter because I want to sell ads.”

Once your referral program is cranking, don’t touch it. I changed our first milestone from a birthday shoutout to a private facebook group and it completely bombed.

Nobody wanted to be in the group. I didn’t want to post in the group. And neither did anyone else.

I never should have changed it.

That’s all for today. If you have any questions about referral programs, respond to this email. I’m happy to help. I’ll even help you set up the automations if you’d like. No charge.