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Imagine having 3.5 million people at your fingertips…

How much would that be worth?

That’s exactly what two university lads built.

How did they do it?You’re about to find out!

Company Overview

Valuation: $75 million (Source)

2020 Revenue: $20 million (Source)

Morning Brew is a daily newsletter on all things business - directed at the "business leaders of tomorrow".

Well, it started out as a daily email newsletter, by two students at the University of Michigan in 2015

However, just 5 years later, in Oct 2020, Morning Brew was acquired by Business Insider for a whopping $75M.

What started as a bit of fun has now grown into a global phenomenon with 3.5 million subscribers.

So how did two university students gain 3.5 million subscribers in just 6 years? The answer:

Referrals.

Breaking Down The Strategy

It’s 2017, you and your friend have amassed 100,000 subscribers to your newsletter. You’ve done this purely by doing everything and anything you can to make it grow.

But what next?

That’s the exact dilemma Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief were stuck with 4 years ago.

The solution?

They created a referral program. A way for subscribers to be rewarded for bringing in new subscribers.

The concept was simple: “Share the Brew → Get rewards”

But HOW they made their referral program is pure genius.

They focused on 3 things:

1. Educating subscribers

The first thing Morning Brew did when they began their referral program, was let their audience know it existed (and how it works). It seems simple, however, it’s a vital stage in the process. They couldn’t just add a referral program to the bottom of their email; they had to make an effort to ensure subscribers knew it’s started.

Morning Brew did this with the fantastically simple copy I mentioned above:

They followed that up with a timeline that clearly displayed each reward. Accompanied by the associated referral milestone required to receive it.

2. Motivating subscribers

Once people knew about the referral program it was time for Morning Brew to motivate their subscribers to take the jump and refer someone. Again, they did this with some simple but effective copy.

This allows subscribers to feel like a “free” reward is just around the corner. Thus encouraging them to hit the next milestone.

3. Making it frictionless

When it comes to anything digital it’s often friction that kills you. For Morning Brew they had to make referring someone as easy as possible.

How did they make this happen:

• Provided users with a unique referral link that could be easily obtained through a “Copy Link” button.

• Allowed users to refer others via email.

• Provided a section dedicated to sharing on social platforms (and SMS, WhatsApp, and Messenger on mobile). All readers had to do was press one button.

They even provided a pre-drafted “blurb” explaining the Brew and its value proposition for email referrals and social referals. Which prevented the user from having to come up with a way to explain it - again making it as easy as humanly possible to refer someone.

Upon integrating the referal program the newsletter went from 100,000 subscribers to 1.7 million within 18 months. With 30% of those subscribers coming from referrals - that’s 480,000 subscribers. (Source)

Morning Brew essentially took their 100,000 strong subscriber base and got them to work for them.

With the referal program in place, 1 subscriber didn’t equal 1 subscriber to Morning Brew. Instead, it could equal 3 or 4 depending on how many they referred.

For every 100 subscribers they brought in at least 10 would refer 1 person.

I’ll do the maths for you:

100 subsribers = 110 subscribers (min.) to Morning Brew

As you can see from the graph the 10/100 referals allowed growth to be exponential for the Brew. In fact, the program would have rocketed Morning Brew to another level even without their additional growth channels.

Now, if you’re still thinking this was just a nothing process implemented by the Brew - just take a look at these stats and think again:

• 300,000+ people have referred at least one person to subscribe to Morning Brew.

• 20% of Morning Brew’s sign-ups still come from referrals.

• During the summer of 2018, Morning Brew averaged over 1,000 referrals per day.

To back all of this up, Morning Brew CEO and Co-Founder Austin Rief recently said in an interview:

Now, if that doesn’t convince you of the value of their referral programme I don’t know what will.

Morning Brew wasn’t built on referals.

But it sure was made by them!

How To Implement It

Let me start by saying referrals aren’t just for newsletters. They can be used for communities, online stores, brick and mortar businesses - virtually anything honestly.

No matter what you do, it’s definitely something you should be looking into - just look at what it did for Morning Brew.

So, how do you do it?

Well, this is actually much more simple than you’d think. There’s a tonne of online software that will essentially do it for you. I spent the last couple of hours trying these out and found Viral Loops to be super simple to set up; with various templates for whatever you want to use the referrals for.

All you need to do is embed their form into your email or website and you’re all set up.

You just sit back and watch your customers get rewarded for refering you to their friends.

Growing Viral referral program coming soon?You never know ;)This has been a breakdown of Morning Brews’ referal marketing strategy. I hope you have learned something and can implement a similar strategy into your business!

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I’ll see you next Sunday!