Want 10k Subscribers on Your Email List? Copy these 30 CEO's

In this article, you will learn precisely how top software company CEOs use newsletters to acquire new users and generate millions in revenue, complete with real-world examples. We’ll explore how founders of fast-growing SaaS companies have built powerful audiences through email and then converted that attention into a predictable revenue stream. You’ll get the 5-step playbook to launch your own high-growth newsletter, along with over 40 case studies you can use as inspiration. These examples are from top Founders who have collectively generated hundreds of millions in revenue and shared their playbooks at Founderpath events.

The 5-Step Playbook for a High-Growth SaaS Newsletter

A well-executed newsletter is more than just a marketing channel; it’s a strategic asset that can drive user acquisition, engagement, and revenue. The most successful SaaS founders use their newsletters to build a loyal community and a direct line to their ideal customers. Here is the 5-step playbook to build your own.

1. Define Your Niche and Audience: The most successful newsletters are highly focused. Instead of trying to appeal to everyone, they target a specific persona with specific problems. This focus ensures your content is always relevant and valuable, which is the key to building a loyal readership. Start by identifying your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and understanding their biggest challenges and interests.
2. Create a High-Value Content Engine: Your content is the core of your newsletter. Focus on creating “evergreen” content—articles, guides, and insights that remain valuable over time. This approach ensures that every new subscriber gets immense value, regardless of when they join. Prioritize quality over quantity, and aim to become the go-to resource in your niche.
3. Systematize Subscriber List Growth: Getting your first 1,000 subscribers is often the hardest part. As CJ Gustafson of Mostly Metrics shared, this early phase is a grind. He used tactics like finding keywords in his articles, searching for them on Twitter, and then adding insightful comments to existing conversations with a link back to his content. Partnering with other B2B companies in your space for cross-promotion is another powerful way to get in front of a relevant audience without spending on ads.
4. Monetize with Sponsorships and Product Funnels: Once you have an engaged audience, you have multiple avenues for monetization. Sponsorships are a common route, where relevant brands pay to be featured in your newsletter. You can also use your newsletter as a top-of-funnel tool to drive sign-ups for your SaaS product. Thomas Smale of FE International notes that building a strong newsletter audience provides valuable optionality for monetization down the line, including driving leads for a core service or product.
5. Analyze, Iterate, and Scale: Treat your newsletter like a product. Continuously track key metrics such as open rate, click-through rate (CTR), and unsubscribe rate. This data will tell you what content resonates with your audience and what doesn’t. Use these insights to refine your content strategy, test different subject lines, and optimize your send times to continuously improve performance and drive growth.

40+ Examples of Newsletters Driving SaaS Growth

Here are over 40 real-world examples from SaaS CEOs who have used newsletters to build their audience, generate leads, and drive significant revenue growth. Each example provides actionable insights you can apply to your own strategy.

1. CJ Gustafson launched “mostlymetrics.com,” a newsletter for CFOs, and grew it to 35,000 subscribers in 1.5 years. He achieves a 46% open rate and monetizes through sponsorships from companies like Brex, charging between $5,000 and $10,000 per post.
2. Eric Siu from Single Grain leverages his “Marketing School” newsletter, which reaches 30,000 marketers, as a key asset to drive leads and build authority for his agency, which focuses on SaaS clients.
3. Nathan Latka of Founderpath uses his newsletter to maintain a list of potential buyers and investors, sending quarterly updates to build relationships and generate demand for his company without losing leverage.
4. Tripp Brockway at Paddle emphasizes the power of newsletters for nurturing leads, especially in a downturn, by using targeted content to maintain engagement with potential customers who aren’t ready to buy immediately.
5. AJ Eckstein from Creator Match uses his newsletter to provide value to his community of LinkedIn creators and brands, which in turn drives sign-ups for his platform by positioning him as an expert in the influencer marketing space.
6. Jimmy Kim of Sendlane highlights using high-value content like “The Big Book of Funnels” as a lead magnet to grow their newsletter list, acquiring leads for as low as $2-$3 each, which then fuels their sales pipeline for their e-commerce email marketing tool.
7. Neil Patel uses his newsletter to promote new features for his tool Ubersuggest, emailing his massive list to drive traffic and user engagement every time a new version is released.
8. Ryan Allis of iContact grew his email marketing software by building a massive user base and leveraging email campaigns to convert them into paying customers, ultimately leading to a $169 million exit.
9. Rajesh Jain of Netcore Cloud uses newsletters as a core part of his customer engagement stack, sending over 35 billion emails a month for his clients and using innovative formats like AMP for email to increase conversions by up to 10x.
10. Marie Martens from Tally grew her form-building tool to over $600,000 in ARR by using her newsletter to build in public, sharing revenue milestones and product updates that created a loyal following and drove word-of-mouth growth.
11. The CEO of Scoop.it uses a newsletter to qualify leads from their 4 million freemium users, nurturing them with marketing content until they are ready to explore the enterprise version of their platform.
12. Eric Frankel from Ad Greet leverages highly personalized email newsletters in his outreach, writing letters to high-value prospects that lead to meetings and deals for his ad-tech platform.
13. John Fields of Grow Your Base uses newsletters as a primary channel for his clients to engage their audience, allowing companies to distribute marketing budgets directly to “earners” who sign up for newsletters and other assignments.
14. Arnaud Belinga from Breakcold grew his SaaS to its first $2,000 in MRR by building a personal brand on Twitter and driving his followers to a newsletter where he shared his journey, which led to his first 50+ paying customers.
15. The team at Mahana.io uses email newsletters as a key outreach channel to connect with consulting audiences and agile user groups on platforms like LinkedIn, driving sign-ups for their beta program.
16. Ali from Dreamdata.io explains that newsletters are a critical part of nurturing leads for their B2B revenue attribution platform, helping to guide potential customers through the funnel until they are sales-qualified.
17. Adrian Dayton of Clearview Social uses his newsletter to distribute content and drive engagement for his professional services clients, leveraging it as a core feature of his platform that helps law and accounting firms get their employees sharing content.
18. Adam from Leadberry leverages newsletters for lead generation for his B2B clients, using it as part of a full-service digital agency offering before spinning out the SaaS tool.
19. Alex from Atta.com uses a newsletter as a distribution channel for their fitness tracker for developers, sharing productivity tips and insights that attract their target audience of engineers.
20. Brian Petro from AngularJobs built his entire business around a curated newsletter service, which started as a job board and grew into a system that allows business owners to create their own newsletters by curating content.
21. Adam Baker of Dealpad uses his personal email outreach as a founder to get a 70% higher response rate than his sales team, sending simple, direct emails to connect with executive sponsors.
22. Max Rofagha of Finimize built a community of over 1 million members, primarily through a daily financial newsletter. This audience allowed him to launch a premium subscription and a B2B content API, with the API business now making up 30% of total revenue.
23. Martijn De Kuijper built Revue, a platform for personal newsletters, by offering a freemium model that attracted 20,000 users. The “Powered by Revue” link at the bottom of each newsletter was the main growth driver, converting free users into a base of 1,000 paying customers.
24. Bart from Loretta uses a bi-weekly newsletter sent via MailChimp to an 8,000-person list to acquire new hotel customers for his revenue-boosting algorithm. He reports an exceptionally high 30% click-through rate from his local, niche-focused content.
25. Victor from CrazyLister uses email marketing as a key channel to push customers to higher-tier plans. After developing more advanced features, he uses targeted email campaigns to communicate the added value and drive upsells.
26. Peter from The SaaS Co uses email campaigns as the primary tool for his lead generation agency. His team identifies decision-makers, runs email campaigns, qualifies leads through email conversations, and then books appointments for his B2B tech clients.
27. Sreenivas of Vtiger CRM explains that getting customers to integrate their email is the first and most critical step for activation. Once emails are flowing into the CRM, they know the customer will become sticky.
28. Vivek from Izooto leverages email marketing and newsletters as a primary way to nurture inbound leads generated from content marketing, which has been a key driver of their growth to nearly $100k MRR.
29. Guillaume of Scoop.it qualifies and nurtures leads from his 4 million freemium users by sending them a marketing newsletter. Engagement with the newsletter (opens and clicks) helps identify qualified marketers who are then nurtured towards the enterprise version of the product.
30. The team at Convertri used a newsletter and affiliate marketing to launch their product, generating significant revenue spikes. Their strategy involved paying affiliates a 50% commission on initial sales driven through email promotions.
31. Allan from Reachbox.ai used their own AI-powered cold email tool to acquire their first 100 customers, proving the value of their product by successfully reaching the inboxes of their target SaaS audience.
32. Amin Yazdani of Craver uses email as a key part of his outbound strategy. While cold email didn’t work for his restaurant audience, his team found success by using email to follow up after initial cold calls, nurturing leads effectively.
33. Filippo of Llamafi built his churn-reduction tool after realizing manual email outreach to cancelled customers had almost no response rate. His tool automates the feedback process at the point of cancellation.
34. Charles Dairo of Beezop uses email as a part of his storytelling framework, driving demo requests through a powerful narrative that he shares across channels, including email, to connect with potential customers on a deeper level.
35. Thomas Smale emphasizes that a strong email list is a critical asset for any SaaS business, providing a direct channel to nurture leads and announce new products or features.
36. Shuvo of MyAlice.ai relies on a partner network to resell his product, and those partners heavily use email marketing and newsletters within their local markets to generate leads and drive sales for the conversational AI tool.
37. Vivek from PushAlert grew his browser notification SaaS by using email newsletters to distribute high-quality content, which established his brand’s authority and served as a consistent source of inbound leads.
38. Connor Lee of GoPersonas.com utilizes outbound email campaigns as a core feature of his platform, helping his B2B clients manage their people data and scale their sales outreach effectively through automated and targeted emails.
39. JP of Ninja Outreach used cold email outreach as his initial strategy to acquire the company itself, persistently contacting founders of SaaS businesses with public revenue data until he found a deal.
40. The team at Paddle uses email newsletters to distribute their extensive research and data on the SaaS market, which builds credibility and generates high-quality inbound leads for their revenue delivery platform.
41. Eric at Ad Greet uses email as a follow-up mechanism in his high-touch sales process. After sending personalized letters to executives at major brands, his team uses an email follow-up tool to nurture the connection and secure meetings.

Conclusion

You just learned how to leverage newsletters to add millions of dollars in revenue, with proven strategies from over 40 top SaaS founders. From defining a niche and creating valuable content to monetizing through sponsorships and building a direct sales funnel, the playbook is clear. The key is to build an audience, provide immense value, and then create a system to convert that attention into revenue. To get the capital you need to launch and scale your own growth channels, explore your funding options at Founderpath.

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