Your readers are your best growth channel

Everyone wants more word of mouth.

Some people wait for it to happen, and others make the ask and drive it themselves.

Lyneka Little, Audience Engagement Editor at the Prison Journalism Project isn’t one to let strong audience trust go to waste. She knew they could be getting more shares from readers, based on conversations and audience survey data, so she turned referrals into a whole campaign.

Could Prison Journalism Project’s audience double their newsletter sign up rate in just two weeks?

WOW, DID THEY EVER.

PJP’s fans came through in a major way—resulting in more than 200 new readers, 100s of social shares and several donations.

If you’re like me, and you struggle to get readers to share your work, you’re gonna want to hear what Lyneka said about why this campaign was such a success. Read on and get more referrals!

Why a reader referral campaign

You’ve got many actions you want readers to take: read the latest, become a subscriber, send a tip, listen to the podcast, come to this event, and more. With all this going on, it can be hard to prioritize a “share” action, especially when it feels less measurable than the rest.

But when you have a committed audience of any size, you’re sitting on a goldmine of potential amplifiers. And sometimes, they just need to be asked.

Lyneka had this idea of a dedicated referral campaign simmering in her head for a couple years. Two things made now feel like the right time to do it:

1. Readers kept saying they wanted more ways to support PJP beyond donations.

2. PJP’s Bluesky account experienced rapid growth bringing them to 25k+ followers between last December and April of this year. Lyneka knows that you can’t rely on these social platforms longterm so she wants to move as many of these followers onto the newsletter as possible.

Lyneka was finally able to slot the referral campaign into her content calendar in May, around donation appeals, reader surveys and all the other initiatives that Prison Journalism Project has going on, but she told me that it was a little nerve wracking to run a campaign not centered around donations. PJP is a 501(c)(3) after all.

She made the right bet because now they have 200+ more readers and new donors for when those donation drives come around.

How they ran this referral campaign

Since Bluesky growth was a big motivator for the timing of this campaign, Lyneka posted the most asks and progress reports there. She also said she didn’t want to exhaust Prison Journalism Project’s audience via email so she aimed to squeeze this campaign down to JUST TWO dedicated emails.

Here’s what the campaign included

• 2 dedicated email appeals for shares/forwards (Email 1 and Email 2)

• 1 small plug inside the regular newsletter (Email 3)

• 2-5 posts on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn

The campaign ran for two weeks, starting on May 13 and ending on May 27. And since I know what you’re thinking about the dedicated emails, PJP saw a regular amount of unsubscribes on the emails, no big drops.

Why the 200 reader goal
I asked Lyneka where this goal came from and she said she looked at their month over month growth to figure it out. She wanted the campaign goal to be both ambitious and reachable so she decided to double their typical growth rate.

Prioritizing the Bluesky audience
Lyneka’s paying closer attention to Bluesky right now because it’s their biggest account and their biggest site traffic driver. She noted that everything there needs to be real time since the conversation changes so fast.

The weekend before the campaign ended, she was short of her goal by 25 or so new sign ups, so she turned to PJP’s Bluesky followers to ask for their help and they came through with 38 reposts and more than 40 new readers in a couple days, helping the team surpass their goal.

Tracking success
One thing I love about this reader referral campaign is that Lyneka put her energy towards the audience and getting them excited about backing this campaign. She didn’t worry that much about separating out this traffic from other growth traffic, which I think is a smart move. Who has the time to do that? Marketing attribution is a futile exercise.

She did include UTM trackers in the emails (these are extra data snippets you add onto your URL for your analytics tools to pick up) with mixed results but she also just knew that a lot of these shares would be untrackable.

That’s the hardest part about word of mouth. It’s semi-invisible. What Lyneka focused on was the growth delta (did the list grow at double the pace it normally does?) and the audience engagement (what was the feedback and reaction from readers and followers?)

What made it so successful

After chatting with Lyneka and looking at the campaign, I pulled out four success factors that are worth understanding if you’re considering something like this.

Enlisting the audience in a specific quest

This campaign almost reads like a donation appeal, with lines like “If The Inside Story has made a difference for you, we’re asking for your help.” and “With your support, we can expand our mission to train incarcerated writers and publish their work.”

Lyneka is asking readers to step up in this moment to achieve a goal together.

They took this even farther in the graphics, writing the reader into the campaign with fill in the blanks and email templates they could share. The intention behind this, in Lyneka’s words, was “you're part of our story.”

Grabbing attention in the feed and in the inbox

This campaign caught my eye on Bluesky because it included these colorful graphics and because the message was really unique. I don’t see a lot of publishers asking for shares this way and I’m betting that PJP’s audience doesn’t either.

Lyneka noted that the bright colors were important for stopping the scroll. “Don’t be afraid to let go of the brand colors. Play around with color a little bit more,” she said.

Setting a reasonable goal

We’ve talked in this newsletter before about how powerful public milestones are.

For PJP’s campaign, Lyneka calibrated their goal so it was doable but still meaningful for their growth. She pointed out to me that the scale of this goal was relatable for an individual reader, making it more likely that they would take action to help, because even a contribution of 1 share would be substantial against the target.

Along these lines, Lyneka’s ask was “Share our weekly newsletter, The Inside Story, with a friend!” Sharing with 1 friend is a very doable task compared to telling everyone you know.

Adding a personal touch

Part of why I noticed this campaign was that Lyneka named herself on the PJP social channels.

I think this personal touch is so important for brand accounts because they can become abstract representations of the very real team behind them. When Lyneka writes “Hi, I'm Lyneka, PJP's Audience Engagement Editor” or “I am also the newsletter editor, which means I produce the weekly newsletter that is delivered to your inbox,” now I’m interested in engaging because I know who I’m talking to and what they do at this organization.

Lyneka said she thought this approach needed to be carefully balanced though. Keeping it focused on what the audience is interested in and uplifting the work the team is doing.

Try your own reader referral campaign

Are you as inspired as I am by Lyneka’s referral campaign? Here’s how to run your own reader drive.

Set a doable target, choose your two most engaged channels, draft a few dedicated promotions that explain how to refer and share your target in public. You’ll want to carve out space in your promotional calendar if you have other subscriber or donation drives planned. This campaign should stand alone.

👀 We’re going to keep talking about referrals for the next couple weeks so stay tuned for more ideas to grow your audience from within!