u/savlocal

Inspired by the local newsletter playbook, I created a local sports newsletter with a custom acquisition tool that has allowed me to acquire over 5,000 subscribers in 4 months without spending anything on paid acquisition. Open rate has held steady at 50% with the unsubscribe rate averaging .08%. The audience comes for the acquisition tool (the map, leaderboard, website) and stay for the newsletter. Also a cool fact, ~15% of subscribers have been referred by super fans (see the leaderboard in the image).

I am a fan of this team and found myself just wanting a 3-minute read at the end of the week filling me in on all the action from that week. My X algo doesn’t show me the accounts I follow, the team subreddit is either “the world is ending” or “we’re winning it all”, and it’s just too hard otherwise to stay in touch without spending hours getting in the weeds. The goal is not to add my own voice, opinions etc. - there are plenty of others (some in this subreddit) doing that very thing. The idea is to take the analysis of those talented individuals, curate, and consolidate into a quick weekly read (while of course linking and crediting). My editorial pipeline runs nightly, accumulating roughly 300 stories and sources by the end of the week. A script then runs Saturday night that helps me draft the final email, which is edited by me on Sunday. 

I do not have an audience in this space, but I partnered with a prolific fan in the community who does. He’s the face of it and I’m the silent operator, which is partially how I’ve been able to acquire new users at no cost. Yes, the map is extremely effective, but I’m getting it in front of the right audience for free as well. I did trial this before partnering with this fan - I grew a newsletter for a different team to almost 3,000 subscribers via Facebook groups. I also tried some ads with the map as the focus and was getting new subscribers for around $0.20. Similar feedback from fans - they responded with praise, strong open rate, low unsubscribe rate, etc. 

I am confident I’ve dialed this in to a point where I can scale it across other teams / markets (I’ve actually already built it all in the backend). And I know competition motivates fans - when challenging the audience (e.g. “we have a bigger fanbase in Florida than Georgia, Georgia what are you going to do about it?”), it activates new fans / subscribers better than anything. I anticipate being able to put fanbases and rival teams against each other will produce a similar outcome. 

I have found I most enjoy building this and running it rather than growing it. Rather than partnering with a different fan from each fanbase that already has an audience, I’m wanting to try partnering with 1 individual who can help me expand to a few different markets via Facebook group outreach. While I have proven this is possible, I’ve noticed many Facebook groups have more and more been sold to people who then lock the groups down so only their AI slop can be posted - it has something to do with establishing credibility for their bots. So, TBD on if that will still work. 

The local sports angle is not earth shattering here. What’s different is the acquisition method, the virality of it, and the ability to be run at scale with very few operators. Maybe I’ve been lucky with the 2 teams I’ve done this with (though both were done in the dead of the offseason). Maybe it can repeated. I’m looking to find out and am hoping there’s someone else here in this small newsletter who loves sports, understands newsletters, and would be interested in partnering on this. Hit me up!

Where are all the Cowboys fans around the world?? Created this map where fans from all over can drop a pin to highlight where they support from. You can add yourself and fill this world map up with blue

Where are all the patriots fans around the world?? Gotta have one of the biggest fanbases I would think. I just saw this website where fans are adding the cities they support from. The Bengals are leading with a few thousand fans in 57 different countries right now. Including the link in comments for those curious