The One Tactic That Skyrocketed Exploding Topics’ Newsletter to 104,793 Subscribers

Not so long ago, while browsing YouTube, I saw Brian Dean’s video in my recommendations. The video marked a milestone for his Exploding Topics Tuesday newsletter.

91,892 subscribers. Interesting, I thought; I should dig into that.

However, I didn’t act on it until I saw Brian publish a LinkedIn post two months after posting that video, announcing that the ET newsletter had reached a new record.

104,793 subscribers! Almost 13k subscribers in just two months.

I started searching through the data and reached out to Brian himself to help me figure out how this success came to be. And I was surprised with what I found, to say the least.

My search for answers to the hows and whys of this case led me to create the post I want to share with you today.

What is Exploding Topics?

Exploding Topics is a platform that detects search trends and topics with rising interest.

Image source: Exploding Topics

The company launched in December 2019 after Brian Dean acquired a trend-spotting platform, Trennd.co.

Since then, Exploding Topics has seen exponential growth, with features like Exploding Topics Pro, topic filter, and others successfully launched between 2020 and 2023.

But how did this success come to be?

I’d say it’s a story of how one can use a common and often undervalued strategy that follows a very specific goal and maintains a consistency that ultimately helps the business gain momentum.

Looking into ET’s backstory will help you understand what I mean.

The Launch

Before the purchase opportunity came, Brian Dean already had an idea for a tool similar to Exploding Topics.

In fact, his team of developers already had a prototype for it.

However, there was already a platform on the internet that had far better capabilities than Brian’s had at that time.

This platform was Trennd.co.

And that’s how everything started.

Purchase of Trennd.co

Trennd.co was a platform that scanned the internet for trending topics and provided their statistical overview.

Although the exact Trennd.co launch date isn’t clear, Wayback Machine shows that the first significant signals on the domain appeared in July 2019.

Image Source: Wayback Machine

Later that year, Lloyd Jones, the then CTO at Backlinko, found Trennd.co and shared it with Brian Dean.

Then, as Brian shares in his Here’s the Deal with Exploding Topics video, he contacted Josh Howarth, the owner of Trennd.co, to discuss the possibility of a purchase.

Having discovered that they share the same goal for the platform, as Brian mentions in the video, he invited Josh to join the company as a Co-Founder and keep working on developing the product.

Josh confirmed Brian’s words in his content piece for Marker on Medium.

So, they started working together, and the first thing they had to rehaul was the website’s design.

As Brian shares in his video, there was nothing wrong with the previous design; it just needed refreshing.

The old design on Trennd.co looked like this:

Image Source: Wayback Machine

It was decided to update the following elements first:

• A new domain name
• An upgraded layout and UI

Thus, by the time of launch, the website looked like this:

Image Source: Wayback Machine

With time, using data from user feedback, Josh added an arrow in the search bar to allow users to add new topics.

And, with a few more changes, the website design turned into the one you saw in the introductory section.

The next task on the list was promoting Exploding Topics before the big launch.

Here’s how it went.

Digital PR and audience outreach strategy

The launch date was set for December 3rd, 2020, with these promotional strategies helping to boost it.

How effective was this strategy?

Exploding Topics received 25,000 visits on the day of launch.

One particular channel was responsible for most of these visits, though.

It was Product Hunt.

On the launch day, Exploding Topics hit 2,484 upvotes on this platform and was voted #1 Product of the Month:

Image Source: Product Hunt

With the promotional machine up and running, it was time to set the growth strategy for Exploding Topics.

Following the path of product-led growth

In his How I Built a $2.9M SaaS Company video, Brian shares that it was decided to make Exploding Topics a free platform and turn to product-led growth.

Indeed, Exploding Topics was entirely free at the very beginning until July 2020, when the Pro version was launched.

As Brian puts it in the video mentioned above, this approach turned out to be a game-changer in terms of getting early traction.

And so Exploding Topics launched.

The platform had a good start. People upvoted it on Product Hunt and spread the news of the launch on Twitter by sharing Brian’s post.

Image source: Twitter

Traffic was booming (25k visits on the launch day, as mentioned earlier), but then a natural stagnation followed.

The initial excitement died down.

Nevertheless, Brian and his team were ready for it.

The success on Product Hunt and people subscribing to the platform for free helped build a solid email list.

And Brian knew how to benefit from it.

Weekly newsletter

In his video on the launch of Exploding Topics, Brian shared the following:

So, the demand for a newsletter was already there not too long after the launch of the platform.

Besides, they already had a Kickstarter.

All the people who signed up to use the platform were an ideal audience for the newsletter.

So that’s how the Exploding Topics Tuesday newsletter was born.

Every Tuesday, subscribers would receive a fresh issue with a selection of topics curated by the team at ET.

And, over almost four years, it reached 104,793k subscribers.

(Hint: there was a potential to capitalize on those subscribers, so Brian naturally went for it.)

You might be fidgeting in your seat right now, eager to learn more about the strategy behind this success.

All in good time.

Let’s review its timeline and strategy first to help you spot that “magic bean” that was ET’s tactic for the newsletter.

Exploding Topics’ Newsletter Growth: A Timeline

Here’s how the Exploding Topics newsletter came to be:

Let’s explore this timeline in a bit more detail:

• Purchase of Trennd.co and launch of Exploding Topics. As you remember, the publicity on Product Hunt brought many platform signups, laying the foundation for the newsletter.
• Launch of the Exploding Topics Tuesday newsletter. New issues come out every Tuesday, containing a fresh selection of topics trending at a given time.
• Exploding Topics introduces a paid Pro version. The team at ET used their email list of newsletter subscribers for a product launch.
• Free and Pro versions of the newsletter. Those subscribed to a pro version of the newsletter receive a bigger list of trends in their newsletter.

Throughout the ET newsletter’s existence, it hit several important milestones in terms of the subscriber count, reaching ~105k in November 2023.

Naturally, the team at ET saw this newsletter as a tool to grow their audience, gain recognition, and then start monetizing the platform.

But, as you can see, it was done gradually and in a very calculated manner, with a specific strategy in mind.

Let’s take a closer look at that strategy.

The Growth Strategy

Let’s start with this map to see each step involved in the growth strategy behind Exploding Topics’ newsletter.

Now, let’s see how these steps were implemented.

Step #1: Choose a branded name

Using a unique name for your newsletter turns it into a separate brand.

Brian Dean shared his idea in his post on November 3rd when announcing that Exploding Topics hit 104,793 subscribers.

Image Source: LinkedIn

Here’s what’s interesting.

A branded newsletter, as Brian names it, has a higher chance of getting more signups than a traditional newsletter and can also have higher open rates.

How much higher?

Exploding Topics Tuesday has a whopping 51% open rate.

Not bad for a newsletter with over 100K subscribers.

What’s the catch here?

Essentially, coming up with a unique name for your newsletter makes you more recognizable.

Alright, let’s assume that you have such a name in mind.

What’s next?

Step #2: Plan newsletter design and format

The layout of the Exploding Topics Tuesday newsletter is very simplistic and straightforward.

Here’s what it includes.

Every newsletter issue shares four randomly picked trending topics, followed by five topics available only for Pro users.

Each trend goes with a description and a projection of how it will perform in the future.

What’s notable here is the consistency of this layout.

The newsletter design doesn’t change with every new issue, which helps people build familiarity with it.

Thus, as Brian Dean puts it in his How I Grew My Newsletter to 91,892 Subscribers (Without Paid Ads) video, there forms a marriage of familiarity (subscribers recognize the newsletter by its structure) and the unknown (they don’t know what trends they will get).

As a result, subscribers get more motivation to open a new email every time.

Besides, every time a new newsletter issue has to go out, the team at ET already has a template that they only have to fill out with topics trending at that given time.

With the structure clear, let’s discuss the next step.

Step #3: Set up newsletter landing page

No need to reinvent the wheel here, either.

In fact, the simpler your landing page is, the better.

Let’s take a look at ET’s newsletter landing page again.

Image Source: Exploding Topics

So, essentially, there are only five components:

• Heading indicating the main value proposition of the newsletter
• Subheading describing what subscribers get and when
• Visual demonstration
• Email submission field
• Trusted by brands testimonials for extra credibility

The focus here is not on creating a content-heavy landing page but on driving traffic to it.

More on that later.

Now, let’s talk about the next step.

Step #4: Drive traffic to the newsletter landing page

When the landing page for your newsletter is ready, you want more people to check it out.

So, hiding it deep in your website’s architecture would be counterintuitive.

The ET newsletter’s landing page link was initially placed in the website’s footer, making it hard to spot.

Image Source: Wayback Machine

However, as data showed, there was a better place for it.

So, here’s what followed:

Image Source: Exploding Topics

Additionally, Brian’s team added a banner near the end of the Blog and About pages, inviting readers to subscribe to Exploding Topics Tuesday.

Image Source: Exploding Topics

So, no rocket science here either.

For the next step, you’ll need another landing page to greet new subscribers.

Let’s see how Exploding Topics went about this task.

Step #5: Create a welcome landing page

As you might have noticed, ET’s approach to every activity around its newsletter is quite straightforward.

The same can be said about their Welcome landing page, where all new subscribers land after submitting their emails.

Let’s break down its components.

As you can see, this landing page is as easy as it gets to create. You’ll need only four elements to create a page like this:

• A greeting in the main heading
• Confirmation of membership
• A short explanation of what each newsletter issue includes and when it’s scheduled
• A nudge for new subscribers to further interact with your brand

All in all, you won’t need more than 45-50 words for the whole page.

Which step comes next?

Let’s take a look.

Step #6: Send a branded CD welcome message

CD stands for confirmation deliverability.

Essentially, you want to confirm that a subscriber made the right decision to sign up for your newsletter.

What if your newsletter goes out once in a while?

It doesn’t matter.

You want a new subscriber to remember who you are and what they signed up for.

Thus, the CD welcome message should be delivered right after they share their email.

So, what would the optimal CD welcome email look like?

Let’s investigate the one from the Exploding Topics Tuesday.

What do we see?

• Introductory welcome message. A simple introduction will suffice.
• Directions to move the newsletter to the Primary folder. When a subscriber does that, it sends a strong signal to Gmail that they want to see the newsletter among their primary emails instead of promotions. Exploding Topics Tuesday newsletters still ask to do that, even though they now mostly appear in people’s Primary folders.
• Explanation of what people get by subscribing. You want to remind subscribers how they will benefit from your newsletter.
• Example of a previous newsletter issue. You need to affirm the value of your newsletter.
• A reminder of when to expect an email. After hyping up the newsletter a bit, it’s a good idea to remind the subscribers when to expect it.
• Opportunity for two-way contact. Another component that increases your credibility in Gmail’s eyes – it shows that people engage with your email, which ultimately impacts email deliverability rates.

Essentially, you pursue two goals here:

1. Welcome new subscribers and reinforce the benefits they get from your newsletter.
2. Increase your email’s chances of ending up in the Primary folder to gain credibility points from Gmail and not land in the Promotions or Spam folder in the future.

Now, let’s discuss our last important point.

Step #7: Set a schedule

From the beginning, Brian Dean approached the ET newsletter’s schedule with consistency.

As he puts it in his How I Grew My Newsletter to 91,892 Subscribers (Without Paid Ads) video, he didn’t want to repeat the same mistake he made with the Backlinko newsletter (Brian founded Backlinko in 2013).

So, every new newsletter issue was set to go out every Tuesday, 9 AM ET, and by September 2023, subscribers had received 150 emails.

The key point here is never to miss a day.

You want to form a habit of opening your email.

And you already know one way to do it – keeping the same email format so that subscribers can easily build an association.

Sending out new newsletter issues consistently is also paramount to its success.

Brian Dean in the How I Grew My Newsletter to 91,892 Subscribers (Without Paid Ads) video.

Now, if we were to sum up all these tactics in just one, what would it be?

Let’s do that now.

The One Tactic

Consistency and forward-looking attitude.

These words are enough to describe the one tactic that helped the Exploding Topics newsletter reach almost 105k subscribers.

The “consistency” part is reflected in the following elements:

• Create a branded newsletter with its own recognizable name
• Use a format that repeats in every newsletter issue (from the subject line to the content structure and design)
• Focus on delivering unique value with every email
• Make sure each new issue goes out at the same time – no exceptions

What about the forward-looking agenda behind this?

Creating a newsletter helped Exploding Topics build its email list.

Then, as the email list started growing consistently, Brian and his team could use this audience to pitch new product launches, the first one being Exploding Topics Pro.

Going forward, this strategy became a reliable source of new product users.

Brian Dean in the How I Built a $2.9M SaaS Company video.

Key Takeaways

So, how can you repeat ET’s success with your own newsletter?

Here’s the gist of the lessons we learned today that will help you get off on the right foot.

• Leverage products like Product Hunt to kick-start your email list. When it started in December 2019, Exploding Topics was voted the #1 product on Product Hunt and maintained this position for a month, which played a role in collecting emails for the newsletter.
• Make your newsletter branded. Giving it a unique name will make it more recognizable.
• Help users develop a habit of opening your newsletter. Start by asking them to move your emails to the Primary folder. This method will ensure that your future emails won’t end up among promotions or spam.
• Focus on a single objective. For Brian Dean, it was delivering high-quality content in every issue of the newsletter consistently.
• Keep the format consistent. Maintain the same structure in all newsletter issues so that the subscribers can memorize it and know where to look for information in the future.
• Don’t miss a single newsletter issue. A consistent schedule without missing a day (even if it was a holiday) played a significant part in the ET newsletter’s success.

With these steps, you can lay the foundation of a strong marketing channel – a newsletter – that you can then use for product launches and attracting more customers.

Final Thoughts

Brian’s approach to the ET’s newsletter is brilliant in its simplicity.

There weren’t any significant investments in its design.

On top of that, there was no need to hire copywriters or devise a complex content strategy.

You just create a template, add new trends, and spice it up with descriptions.

Simple, and yet super effective if you do everything consistently.

And, if you persist in delivering the same value regularly, you could just turn your newsletter into a channel that successfully nurtures and converts future customers.