4 builders who never spoke to each other

Judge a channel by who it delivers, not how many

Subscriber quality varies enormously between sources even when every signup arrives on the same page and gets the same emails, and the first fortnight of opens predicts how engaged someone stays across the whole time they remain subscribed. That logic also justifies pruning dead addresses and reading unsubscribes as the list sorting itself, even though both make the headline number go backwards.

The method

1. 01

   Judge each acquisition channel by the quality of the subscribers it delivers rather than by how many it delivers, because quality varies wildly even when every signup arrives via the same page and receives the same emails.

2. 02

   Skip co-registration deals if engagement is your goal: the reader ticked a box while signing up for something unrelated and has no attachment to you.

3. 03

   Use a new subscriber's open rate over their first fortnight as the leading indicator of how engaged they will be for the rest of their life on the list.

4. 04

   Prune dead subscribers from an email list even though it makes the headline subscriber count go backwards.

5. 05

   Watch how many readers keep coming back rather than how many signed up, and treat that as the number that matters.

What it returned

• 2.5

  Morning Brew reached 2.5 million subscribers but its growth team treated engagement, not subscriber count, as the metric that mattered.

• 8,000

  He cut close to 8,000 stale Swipe Files subscribers in 2024, which reduced total list size while the real audience was still growing.

• Jenny Rothenberg's verdict is that co-reg adds raw subscriber numbers but not enthusiastic readers, and can depress engagement metrics.

• Morning Brew's growth team used the first fortnight of opens as its primary quality score when comparing acquisition channels, alongside slower cohort measures.

Sources

• 2024 Year In Review | Corey HainesCorey Haines · corey.co · Swipe Files · 2025-01-01
• My First Year Teaching: How I Built My Audience - Double Your FreelancingBrennan Dunn · doubleyourfreelancing.com · Don’t Fear Rejection · 2013-08-15
• An update on The Audience Building ChallengeNathan Barry · nathanbarry.com · A few numbers · 2013-12-12
• The Secrets Behind Morning Brew's Growth to 2.5 Million Newsletter SubscribersJenny Rothenberg · sparkloop.app · The Key? Quality Over Quantity · undated
• 🪄 AI Screen Capture 📨 1,000 Paid Subscribers 🧲 Lead Magnet Guide - Trends.vcPolina Pompliano · trends.vc · 🔧 Try This · 2023-10-02