Beehiiv Onboarding

Newsletters.

(I get it, you’re thinking about those spam emails in your Updates and Promotions tab, amiright?)

I’ve been there. 🥲

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I tried the infamous “Inbox 0” trend. And fell short…by like 743 emails short.

Then I asked myself – “I’m sure other people will also have a TON of spam, product, and rando emails in their inbox.”

So – if everyone has spam in their email – how does a person or a company get the attention of their customers via email? Is email marketing dead? And will I ever reach Inbox 0?

I couldn’t be further from the truth. And couldn’t be further from Inbox 0 LOL. 😭

<aside> 📩 There are 4 billion daily email users. Brands know this. In 2023, nearly 37% of digital-first brands increased their email budget to target these 4 billion users.

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The truth is – Email Marketing is alive and well.

But it’s not “Email Marketing.”

Gone are the days when you have emails with subject lines like 👇

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The new Email Marketing has flipped from sales marketing → content marketing. And it’s driven by:

1. Media Companies: Companies that create content and distribute via email primarily.
2. Individual Creators: Creators who want to acquire emails in exchange for long-form content.

This change in Email Marketing Newsletter Content Creation was started by Substack.

And it’s been taken over by beehiiv.​

What is beehiiv?

Beehiiv is a software-as-a-service platform that allows users to – capture emails + share content + earn revenue. The latter part of this – earn revenue – can be through their Ad-Network or by using their platform to create a subscription service.

They allow users to:

• Create a newsletter and send emails
• Create a website and public content

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Who is beehiiv for?

Beehiiv is a newsletter platform for individuals and companies that want to create content that is distributed in this order:

1️⃣ Email First 👉 2️⃣ Social Media Second 👉 3️⃣ Website Third

↩️ Buzzin Bee Note:

This form of distribution☝️ is ass-backwards for traditional media companies.

Think of a traditional financial media company like – Bloomberg or Economic Times – their first distribution channel is the website, second is social media, and third is direct email.

The media companies built on beehiiv want to create a new way to distribute content. One that is email first.

Beehiiv is changing the game.

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What does beehiiv offer?

Beehiiv offers two kinds of products – a free and a paid newsletter:

Free newsletter:

• Upto 2,500 subscribers
• For Individuals starting out
• No custom domain (eg: The domain name will be – aakash@growthx.beehiiv.com)

Paid newsletter:

• Tiered at – Entry Level: 2.5k to 10k – Premium: 10k to 100k
• For mid-level media companies + creators
• Custom domains + growth and design options (polls, A/B test, custom HTML, etc)

💰 Cost:

Entry level – $42/month •
Premium – $84/ month

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What are beehiiv’s relevant stats?

📊 Going back to my professor’s adage – “If you want to sound smart, use numbers.” So, some stats:

🐣 Founded in 2021

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☕ Ex-Morning Brew employees

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💰 $12.5 Million Raised (Series A)

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🎢 $3 million Annual Recurring Revenue

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📤 Over 7,500 newsletters active

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🌐 10 million monthly website visitors

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What Are The Top Publications on beehiiv?

As mentioned earlier – beehiiv wants to bring on a different set of media companies and new-age creators.

These are – media companies building out a newsletter before any other distribution channel **or creators looking to capture emails in exchange for long form content.

Some of beehiiv’s top newsletters 👇

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• biggest crypto media company in the world
• over 250k subscribers
• sold for $8-$12 million in the crypto bear market
  

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• a daily newspaper established in 1872
• over 300k subscribers
• the 2015 Oscar-winning movie Spotlight was based on journalists from The Boston Globe
  

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• a financial influencer creating Microsoft Excel content
• over 2 million followers across platforms
• makes $100k a day selling Excel courses
  

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• financial news and meme media company
• over 200k subscribers (mainly bankers and VCs)
• owned by Litquidity Capital, an early-stage VC

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🏁 WHAT Are Beehiiv’s Users Trying To Do?

Beehiiv’s users are trying to do one thing well – distribution.

What will be distributed based on ICPs

To understand – what the user is hiring the product for let’s look at each user’s – Customer Journey Map.

💰 For this – I’ve created 3 separate videos of each ICP (based on my conversation with them) on:

1. How would they land up at beehiiv
2. How would they navigate the beehiiv landing page
3. How would they end up creating an account or buying the package?
   

✍️ Note:

1. These videos could not be added to the Notion doc. Hence, I’ve added a Google Drive link with shared access.
2. These are fast-tracked for a paucity of time. In the real world, some ICPs will take weeks to make a $99/month decision #IYKYK

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1️⃣ Creator

🔗 CJM link → ‣

👉 How would they land up at beehiiv?

Creators would’ve heard about substack. They would end up being disappointed with subtack’s 10% take rate and would search for an alternative.

When searching for substack competitors or alternatives, beehiiv shows up, albeit at the end of a list of alternatives. 👇

One of the links is – this one – written by the beehiiv team, which clearly shows the benefits of beehiiv over substack.

👉 How would they navigate the beehiiv landing page?

On landing on the comparison page, the creator would read:

• the testimonial
• the testimonial author [Young Money Jack]
• the testimonial author’s proof of work – who is also a creator
• the comparison sheet – between beehiiv and substack

From there – the reader would navigate to the main landing page and see a bunch of companies that used beehiiv. The one that will catch her eye is – Miss Excel, a Microsoft Excel influencer who uses beehiiv for her newsletter.

This is when the creator is S O L D.

🗣️ “If 2 out of 3 creators use this, I should too. And I already know it’s better than substack”

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Now, a quick glance at the product features + pricing plan and the creator clicks the button 👇

[ Start a Newsletter →]

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3️⃣ Marketer

🔗 CJM link → https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sUryXvPSpRttZhczjKQbZQ86CiUIJbgp/view?usp=sharing

👉 How would they land up at beehiiv?

A marketer would be checking out a bunch of resources to determine – How Do I Re-engage My Users?

One of the answers comes from this blog, and one of the solutions is – content marketing through newsletters.

A quick Google search and the user finds beehiiv with the following suffix – “The newsletter platform built for growth.”

She’s now on the landing page but isn’t sold yet.

👉 How would they navigate the beehiiv landing page?

She needs to take back talking points to her higher ups because she is NOT the decision market.

So, she looks for brag-worthy points.

1. Beehiiv is used by top publications
2. Beehiiv has solid features – sending customized newsletters, first party data segmentation, audience engagement, etc.
3. Beehiiv can integrate with their existing SAAS suite

From there, she navigates to the pricing section and scrolls down to the Enterprise offering, because her company’s email volume cannot fit into the existing paid plans.

After filling in the details she hits 👇

[Create an Account]

🏁 WHY Are Beehiiv’s Users Hiring The Product?

🪜 Onboarding Teardown

The user lands up at the first onboarding page after clicking one of 3 screens:

“Start A Newsletter” (the primary CTA on the homepage)

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“Get Started” (the secondary CTA on the homepage)

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Either of the three CTAs on the pricing page – “Sign up for free” or “Start 14-day trial” on the pricing plans

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Each of these ☝️ three screens – brings the users to this screeen 👇

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Now, let the onboarding process begin. 💡

Page 1

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🔗 Link to the whimsical

Page 2

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🔗 Link to the whimsical

✋ Each of the three onboarding pages have the following statement – "By signing up, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.”

This skips the step of manually agreeing to the Terms and Privacy Policy. Hence, avoiding a minor pain point.

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Page 3

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🔗 Link to the whimsical​

💡 Suggestions:

• Option to skip this step and process entirely, and get straight into the product. This can be done by a button that says – “Do this later.”
• Better spacing in the top section to avoid Cognitive Load of reading chunky sentences.
• Adding social proof in the section below – “99% of newsletter readers are not writer. Be part of the 1%” – This can be adapted in the next few screens depending on the user type.

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🔢 Metrics To Track

✋ Additional points:Distributing the newsletterIntegrating the newsletter with pluginsCross-recommending the newsletterCollaborating with brands via the newsletterBeehiiv is part of the – content distribution game.Hence, we need to look for metrice that track how much content is distributed, how many people distribute the content, and how consistently is it distributed.

🔎 Activation Metrics

When is a user – an active user

Hypothesis of metric x (red) in time y (blue).

ICP – 1 | CreatorThe user has sent 2 emails in the span of 10 daysThe user has set up 1 Welcome Email

Key Overall Metrics To Track If The Onboarding Flow Is Working:

Subscribers added + Content Added within 48 hoursD1 – D7 – D30 – Number of Newsletters SentD1 – D7 – D30 – Number of Subscribers AddedD1 – D7 – D30 – Welcome + Design CompletedD1 – D7 – D30 – Website Visits (if using a beehiiv website)Daily Active Readers (DARs) and Daily Active Clickers (DACs), similar on a monthly basisAcquisition source of emails – growth over time —————————————————————— READING 🐝 BREAK ———————————————————————Thanks for reading my assignment. 🙏I’ve been writing a daily crypto newsletter called – doodhwala – on beehiiv for the past year. I love the platform and it was a pleasure doing its tear down.If you’ve got any feedback or coffee recommendations, drop me a DM with “🐝” on:🤩Slack🐦Twitter💼LinkedIn📩Email —————————————————————— READING 🐝 BREAK ———————————————————————AAakash Athawasya09/02/2023

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