The newsjacking strategy for rapid email list growth
The newsjacking strategy for rapid email list growth
Marketing Powerup #36: Camille Trent, Director of Content and Community at PeerSignal, explains the newsjacking technique she used to double PeerSignal's email list in 45 days.
Hello, and welcome to Marketing Powerups! ⭐️
Today's powerups include:
Camille Trent’s newsjacking strategy.
How to fact-check AI-generated content (using AI!)
Why the “product-market-fit” concept must die.
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⭐️ The newsjacking strategy for rapid email list growth
Camille Trent, Director of Content and Community at PeerSignal, successfully harnessed the power of newsjacking to double the company's email list from 6,000 to 12,000 in 45 days.
How’d she do it?
By capitalizing on the news about tech layoffs, they created PeerSignal's Hiring Tracker to find other tech companies still hiring.
Here are the four steps the PeerSignal team did to newsjack their way to email list growth:
Step 1: Identify the news trend. 📰
Camille Trent started by identifying a trend that was relevant to their audience. Since most of their audience works in tech, they tapped into news about mass tech layoffs from included companies like Meta, Stripe, Lyft, and other tech giants.
Step 2: Create relevant content. 📝
Once they identified the trend, they created content that was relevant to it. In this case, they compiled a list of tech companies still hiring in PeerSignal's Hiring Tracker.
"When we created our Hiring Tracker, Google and Facebook were making job cuts. We wanted to share that there's a silver lining in all of these bad news. There are still tech companies growing and hiring."
Step 3: Promote the content at the right time. 🚀
Timing is crucial in newsjacking. In this case, they waited until another tech giant announced mass layoffs. Luckily, they didn't have to wait long. Meta announced on November 9, 2022, that they're laying off 11,000 employees, which was 13% of their workforce). Within a few days, Camille shared their Hiring Tracker on LinkedIn, which gained over 100k impressions, 1.3k likes, and 70 reposts.
Step 4: Engage with the audience. 💬
Camille didn't stop at sharing it on LinkedIn. She and the PeerSignal team made sure to reply to every comment and answer any questions people may have. People often forget that LinkedIn and Twitter are social media; so responding to comments is part of continuing the conversation and remaining social.
Free powerups cheatsheet
I’ve created a powerups cheatsheet exclusively for Marketing Powerups subscribers to apply Camille Trent’s newsjacking strategy for rapid email list growth.
You can download and make a copy of it here (a direct link with no email required).
In the latest Marketing Powerups episode, Camille further explains the newsjacking strategy for rapid email list growth.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcast and Spotify now, or watch it on YouTube.
✨ Mini powerups
Fun-sized blurbs and links to help boost your marketing.
As AI tech gets better, it’s getting harder to distinguish AI-made assets from their human-made counterparts. Frontify created Real or Not Real? Quiz, where you decide which brand assets are real…and which aren’t. I failed and only got 5 out of 10 correct! Find out if you did better than me.
✨ Death to Product-Market-Fit:
wants the idea of “Product-Market Fit” to die! Why? Because it doesn’t consider other factors it takes for a startup to be successful—the brand, channel, and business model. He shares a new model: the 5 Fits Framework.✨ Appcues’ multi-pronged content strategy:
Jimmy Daly (former VP of Growth at Animalz and founder of Superpath) interviewed me for his show “Content, Briefly.” I share Appcues’ multi-pronged content strategy that’s focused on thought leadership. I also discuss how I’m using AI to repurpose content.
🧰 Tool powerups
Tools to supercharge your marketing.
🌁 Minicourse’s LinkedIn Carousel Generator: Use an AI-powered LinkedIn carousel creator to get an educational carousel post with images. I’ve started playing around with this, and it’s surprisingly good!
📝 Factiverse: The problem with AI is that it lies! Sometimes it makes up things. It could be damaging to your brand if you put out false content. The solution? Use AI to find factual mistakes in AI-generated content using Factiverse.
📲 QRCraft: I’ve seen people use QR codes in presentations at in-person conferences and events. This tool levels it up and turns boring QR codes into works of art in a snap!
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Damn thanks for the shout out Ramli! :0