How Cameron grows his marketing newsletter

Meet Cameron Scully from South Africa.

Cameron has always been fascinated by understanding how businesses grow, so he pursued a degree in marketing. He enjoys studying successful companies to understand how they achieve their goals, and is constantly exploring ways to apply similar tactics with the resources available to him.

This curiosity led him to start sharing his findings with others who find this interesting. So he founded The Growth Archive.

The Growth Archive is a B2B marketing gallery/newsletter where Cameron curates marketing examples, conducts in-depth case studies, and interviews successful founders.

The story told by Cameron

Gaining the first 100 newsletter subscribers involved experimenting with various strategies, including creating shareable content, networking, and Reddit comments.

Here’s what worked

1) Shareable Content Strategy

I create content designed to be shared before it is released. Before making marketing examples around a particular business, I always have conversations with the founders for data to improve the quality of the content. By involving them early on, I can also ask them to share the piece with their audience once it’s ready, often resulting in new subscribers.

If you're in a niche where you write about other people, there's always the chance of them sharing it with their audience.

2) Sub-reddit content distribution

The r/entrepreneur subreddit has been particularly successful for me. Repurposing content in this subreddit typically generates 40k-60k views per post.

To avoid ‘self-promotion’ bans, I focus on providing upfront value (the entire content) and include a call-to-action inviting users to subscribe to my newsletter for similar content.

Reddit hates self-promotion, so provide value upfront on the subreddit. Then, conclude your call-to-action by saying, "If you enjoyed this post, I share similar examples every Monday here". Typically, no one complains about it.

Don’t try to force them to get value only from your site.

3) Hot Reddit comments

Inspired by Exploding Ideas, I've successfully engaged with hot posts and comments. This strategy involves providing valuable insights and examples in comments, driving traffic and subscriptions.

This is another effective method that can generate more subscribers than posts if you spend the whole day commenting on the correct type of posts. However, it's time-consuming, and you may grow weary of repeating the same things repeatedly.

My niche is easy to bring up in conversations because I can naturally support my answers with targeted examples from my site.

It works like this:

1. Find a hot post that asks a question

2. Find a hot comment that people enjoyed

3. Agree to the comment

4. Start with the answer

5. Support your answer using lists so it's clear and concise

6. Share your personal experience with examples

7. Integrate your solution with another one so it is non-promotional

4) Facebook groups

Repurposing content for active communities, like SaaSWarrior, has led to significant engagement and new subscriber opportunities.

Whenever I post a new B2B marketing example, I repurpose that content and distribute it to active FB communities where my target audience hangs out.

In these groups, I typically post a short version of the content and encourage readers to express interest in accessing the long-form version by commenting 'yes' for the examples on my site. I only post short-form content because I can't share the entire post effectively on Facebook.

As you can see below, repurposing and sharing content took just 3 minutes, resulting in 42 comments from people interested in viewing the long-form content on my site.

When visiting the page, readers get additional value through the long-form version (+ examples). A popup will appear towards the end of their reading experience when they feel most satisfied with the content, and they can subscribe to the newsletter.

5) Refind ads

I was pleasantly surprised by how well Refind worked to get active subscribers. I only spent $100, and each new subscriber cost me just $1. I paused the campaigns for a bit to check if the subscribers were of good quality.

Now, I've started them again, but I'm finding it tough to keep the cost down to $1 per subscriber like it used to be.

6) DMing X (Twitter) followers

Sending DM’s to my X followers was also a big win. Almost 80% of them agreed to subscribe to my newsletter, including business founders and indiehackers. It was even better than I expected and helped me get a solid start with subscribers.

What did not work?

1) Viral X ad "‘glitch’

I tried this viral X ad ‘glitch’ that people were talking about where I promoted my tweet at only $1/day without targeting.

($1 dollar = 18 ZAR (South African Rand)

This got me over 2 million views on this tweet. As you can see below, there is also a lot of engagement on the actual tweet.

It also brought over 2.4k new users to my site - see below.

Even though I didn't target a specific country, the US still received the most traffic from the ad - see below.

The numbers look cool, but none of the subscribers I got from this strategy turned out to be active subscribers, which damaged my open rate.

2) Search Engine Optimization

SEO isn't a big traffic driver because most of my content isn't tailored for SEO. It's short and to the point. However, my two long-form case studies on Paddy Galloway's $50k MRR consultancy and Cyberleads are doing well regarding SEO traffic. So, I plan to create more long-form case studies and an AI side project to boost SEO growth.

Future experiments

In terms of future experiments, I have a few ideas in mind.

1) X influencer promotions

Since my target audience is active on X, I'm considering leveraging influencer marketing to promote my site. Many competitors have invested in influencer collaborations to feature their sites in listicle tweets. This could be a valuable strategy for me to reach a wider audience, generate word of mouth on X, and use them as testimonials to get more signups.

2) Product Hunt launch

I've been studying successful Product Hunt launches for a while now, as I want to start implementing these strategies for my upcoming launch.

My plan involves actively engaging with the Product Hunt community, supporting other launches, and building connections on LinkedIn to gather support for my launch.

3/ AI side project marketing

I’m working on a free AI wrapper for B2B marketing and using it to attract more potential subscribers to my main gallery.

That is all for now. Any questions, feedback, or advice for Cameron? You can find him here:

• Email

• X

• LinkedIn

Please note that Cameron also owns Outforce, a VA agency specializing in training offshore talent from South Africa (his home country) and the Philippines for growth marketing roles with US clients. Outforce allows businesses to hire highly skilled English-speaking professionals at a fraction of the cost compared to local salaries, saving up to 80%.