Nowadays just about every business wants their team to become content creators. Increasingly, your content creation is one of the best distribution channels for your company. Writing online went from professional suicide to normal and possibly required, particularly for founders or execs.

Those who became serious about creating content quickly realized they couldn’t rely on social media platforms like LinkedIn or X. The platforms are feast-or-famine with no guarantee that anybody will see what you post (unless, of course, you pay for it). You need to take control over your distribution.

The most natural place to turn: your own B2B newsletter. There’s a relatively low barrier to entry, far lower than podcasts or video content. It’s inherently shareable as people forward good writing to friends or colleagues. And a newsletter attracts long-tail readership by moonlighting as both a blog and personal website.

I launched this newsletter, Growth Unhinged, exactly five years ago in 2021. I wish I could say I spotted the trend early. In hindsight I was in the right place at the right time, and I stuck with it. I launched Growth Unhinged with 1,000 subscribers thanks to my announcement post on LinkedIn. It took a full year to grow to 4,000 subscribers. Then things started to click: the newsletter reached 20,000 subscribers in February 2023 then 40,000 in February 2024 and now well over 80,000.

Today I’m letting you in on what I wish someone told me five years ago: a step-by-step playbook to launch and grow a B2B newsletter. I’ll cover everything from the basics to advanced plays.

I initially thought about calling this Kyle’s Newsletter, a nod to the OG Lenny’s Newsletter. Then I wised up: Kyle’s Newsletter wasn’t particularly memorable and nor did it hold much meaning for potential readers. Give your newsletter a standalone identity.

Many would tell you that having your own domain is optional. Technically it is. You can certainly host your newsletter on beehiiv or Substack without a custom domain.

In my experience, the lion’s share of newsletter traffic comes directly to your website. Having your own domain makes it significantly easier for readers to find and share the site. And it makes the newsletter look legit. Another benefit of having your own domain: you can switch platforms without breaking any of your links.

I bought my domain via Squarespace (other options include Namecheap, GoDaddy, or Cloudflare). It cost $36 for three years. This is the single highest ROI decision I’ve made.

Many newsletters default to the name of the publication. I prefer to use my own name as the sender. In my experience this increases open rates and creates a stronger, more personal connection with readers. (You could also go with something like “Kyle Poyar from Growth Unhinged” to include your name while creating separation with 1:1 emails.)

Having a consistent visual identity makes the newsletter far more memorable, whether a reader is getting it forwarded to them, seeing it on LinkedIn, or landing on the website.

It doesn’t need to be super complicated or produced by a 5-figure agency. I have a visual template in Google Slides with two standard fonts (League Spartan, Covered by Your Grace — shoutout to Meg Dalessandro!) and a distinctive shade of blue. My logo is simply Growth Unhinged in all caps with those two fonts. This minimum viable identity allows me to make professional, on-brand visuals in minutes and without any extra help. (I’ll sometimes use Canva for its background removal feature, turning images into GIFs, or for higher-res images.)

Pro tip: always include your newsletter logo or domain somewhere in your visuals. People will repurpose these (usually without attribution) either internally or on social media. The logo turns this sharing behavior into a growth loop.

The logline is your promise to readers. It’s about them, not you.

Some examples for inspiration:

Nothing else matters if you don’t get this right. A good place for inspiration is to jot down topics that you’ve been asked about multiple times. Perhaps ask your AI notetaker for a list.

My initial approach was what I called a content <> community flywheel. A topic would come up from my conversations with portfolio companies. I’d test the broader appetite by posting about it on LinkedIn. Only if there was solid engagement would I go a step further and turn the LinkedIn post into a full newsletter article. (Comments and DMs would also help refine my perspective on the topic.)

I’ll be the first to admit: there’s an insane amount of writing on the internet. The best way to stand out is to find a hyper-specific niche, ideally one that’s underserved. If you think your niche is small, remember that there are successful newsletters solely about procurement tech, emergency medicine and even dumplings.

In the first year of Growth Unhinged a post unexpectedly hit the top of Hacker News. Traffic went through the roof and I thought I had MADE it.

It turns out this didn’t move the needle. Subscribers never spiked materially and any growth subsided within 24 hours. (And I haven’t landed on the front page since…)

My learning: B2B newsletters are a game of singles and doubles, not home runs. My top five most viral posts accounted for only 14% of my total subscribers. The singles and doubles, aka posts that generate 50-150 new subscribers, accounted for 55%. These are what really matters.

I schedule my newsletter sends for Wednesdays at 6:50am Eastern Time. Having a consistent schedule holds me accountable for deadlines and stops me from becoming a perfectionist.

I’ve sent the newsletter at other times including bonus posts on Sundays. Honestly, there’s not much difference in open rates or engagement. Don’t worry too much about when you send; focus on sending consistently (i.e. at least monthly). That being said, I do recommend sending early in the morning before people’s brains are fried.

Readers respond best when a domain expert gets tactical at the thing they’re great at. My top performing posts have tangible examples (with screenshots), step-by-step instructions, sample AI prompts, or practical frameworks for solving a problem. If a reader can immediately apply something they just read about, that’s a win.

You can’t outsource your thinking to AI. You also can’t outsource your authenticity or tone of voice, which fosters trust with readers. But you can make AI your thought partner.

I start with a “shitty first draft” (usually hastily written), then the draft into ChatGPT. From there I ask ChatGPT to brainstorm subject lines, help me make the piece more concise, or do mundane things like write an SEO description.

I’m a huge fan of Deep Research mode as a way to get smart on a topic I’m writing about. It’s great at summarizing external perspectives, compiling data into a table, or finding new examples. (This was particularly helpful for my investigation into AI credit pricing.)

Overlook the welcome email at your peril. This is your chance to start a conversation with readers when they’re the most interested in your newsletter. It’s something that readers can forward to friends who might want to read the newsletter, too.

The non-negotiables of your welcome email:

Your welcome email is just one automation to reach readers on a personal level without extra work. Advanced writers turn these into an extended nurture sequence with personalization based on the reader’s engagement level and interests. (beehiiv does this particularly well.)

LinkedIn is by far the best promotional channel for Growth Unhinged. 38% of new subscribers say they first heard about Growth Unhinged from LinkedIn, which is 6x more than the share who said ChatGPT or another LLM (6%).

Don’t think of these LinkedIn posts as self-promotion (although it is). Promote your newsletter with a zero-click mindset: readers shouldn’t need to click on the link to see value, but they’ll want to click on the link to go deeper.

Some other tips for LinkedIn distribution:

This is free, takes only a couple minutes, and makes your newsletter so much more shareable. Plus, it lets you see when others reference your newsletter, allowing you to amplify those posts to reach even more people. My Growth Unhinged LinkedIn page reaches about 1,000 visitors per month even though I’ve posted from it zero times.

I upgraded to LinkedIn Premium almost entirely for a single feature: the custom button. LinkedIn lets you promote a link of choice and that link appearing prominently on every post and on your LinkedIn profile page.

Even if you don’t pay for LinkedIn Premium, consider the following:

Platforms like beehiiv both have powerful recommendations features, which allow writers to promote their favorite newsletters during the new reader onboarding flow. At its peak, Recommendations brought in half of new Growth Unhinged subscribers and 550 (!) other newsletters recommended Growth Unhinged.

To unlock the growth potential of recommendations, you’ll want to send recommendations to other newsletters, too. Reach out to your favorite writers serving a similar niche or audience (I use beehiiv’s newsletter discovery tool for this).

I’d recommend subscribing to these newsletters first to help you personalize the outreach. You can usually respond directly to their welcome email to introduce yourself and propose a swap.

I neglected any sort of SEO (or AEO for that matter) for a long-time. But search remains an important distribution channel for newsletters. My number of new subscribers from SEO/AEO has tripled compared to two years ago.

My recommendation is to start with basic SEO/AEO hygiene:

This gets your name and your newsletter in front of your ICP: people who love reading newsletters. It also gives you goodwill when pitching a Recommendation swap or co-promotion with another writer. 11% of new readers say they first heard about Growth Unhinged from another newsletter.

Quality matters when partnering with other writers. Some of my external guest posts attracted near-zero referrals. My three bylines with Lenny Rachitsky, on the other hand, each brought hundreds of new subscribers. Working with Lenny opened my eyes to what best-in-class editing looks like and how to apply it, making me a better newsletter writer as well. Think of this as professional development that doubles as a growth lever.

Newsletters are inherently shareable and a referral program can amplify this behavior. When I started my referral program, I really didn’t have much to offer as a reward. After all, I wrote Growth Unhinged for 4.5 years without having paid subscriptions or ad partners. Referrals still brought in about 600 new subscribers in the first 12 months, or 3% of the total growth. Not bad!

Now that I’ve gone paid I’ve revamped my program with new rewards including a one-year gift subscription for 25 referrals. This doesn’t need to cost anything and helps you grow on autopilot.

See what this looks like for a reader here 👇

This is something I neglected until I moved to beehiiv. Now I’m seeing the vast majority of new readers fill out the three-question survey, which gives me surprising insights into who my readers are and what they want from Growth Unhinged. (Turns out y’all care way more about scaling GTM than career building!).

My three questions:

Your newsletter platform can effectively become a lightweight replacement for your marketing automation platform. I’m starting to experiment with trigger-based email flows, for example promo offers for new readers who are highly engaged or special announcements for premium subscribers.

Some other automated flows on my backlog:

I’m not an email deliverability expert, and nor do I want to be. But if readers don’t receive the newsletter, they’ll never read it or engage with it. While on Substack I watched as my deliverability rates steadily plummeted – reaching a low point of 90.3% in December 2025. As deliverability fell, so did open rates.

I’m now seeing 96.3% deliverability and open rates approaching 50%. I did it by (a) limiting my first two newsletter sends only to engaged readers and (b) starting to send my newsletter from my own domain. The latter move helps to strengthen my reputation with email providers and keeps my links consistent with the brand. Eagle-eyed readers will start to see this change as it’s rolled out to a higher share of subscribers.

For a long time the LTV of a Growth Unhinged subscriber was exactly $0, and this meant I really couldn’t justify any paid marketing spend whether on ads, swag, or boosts with other newsletters. Now that I’m a full-time solopreneur I’m thinking much more about how to (profitably) invest in growth.

My rough LTV math considers two factors: advertising (expected ad revenue per subscriber) and paid subscriptions (free-to-paid conversion rate, paid subscriber retention).

My first paid experiment is via Boosts where other writers recommend the newsletter to their readers and I pay per verified subscriber. My cost-per-acquisition with Boosts is $3.

What’s nice about Boosts: I get to review and approve writers who qualify, I can set strict criteria about which subscribers I’ll pay for (currently only in select countries), and the subscribers are thoroughly verified before I’m charged. If Boosts continue to perform, I’ll increase my ad budget and then add third-party paid channels like Meta ads.

If you’re on the fence about starting a newsletter, this is your nudge. None of what I’ve shared is rocket science. But it does take work and the value compounds the longer you keep it up.

The formula: pick a niche, buy the domain, write tactical content based on your unique experience, own your distribution, and stay the course after it stops feeling new.