Monetizing The Hustle Daily for HubSpot

In the summer of 2023, my team at HubSpot was preparing to make a big shift. After years of dedication to converting leads on the HubSpot blog, it was time for us to focus our attention on a new property: The Hustle. It's a daily newsletter that delivers trending news on business, tech, and culture to a list of over 3M readers.

My job was to figure out how to make gated content that would convert Hustle readers into qualified HubSpot leads.

Here’s what I did poorly:

I looked to our existing content library of +200 gated offers and tried to plug in existing content that was originally created for our marketing and sales blog properties. These performed okay. But, they weren’t created for this ICP—so, really, okay performance was as good as we could expect.

The other big mistake I made for this channel was leaning too far into the personal and professional development space, where I was creating content that just didn’t make sense coming from HubSpot. I thought this 14-day Digital Detox challenge was really going to win with this audience—and I was super wrong.

Here’s where we won:

In October 2023, I left a meeting with the newsletter analytics team where we had seen the (poor) gated content performance for the prior month. We needed to try something new. After a few Slack messages and a little research, I began working on this ebook:

We published quickly and delivered it to the team for distribution. It crushed. Within its first 7 days of distribution, it broke our average lead goal by 5X. In May 2024, it still runs as a top-performing lead driver for The Hustle and has seen incredible success as a lead magnet with HubSpot Creators on YouTube.

I was able to bundle this ebook with 4 other AI and ChatGPT-related content pieces to create an additional gated content offer. Between these two landing pages, HubSpot has gained +26K new leads in 2024—all from content that took less than 10 hours to produce.

This content taught us an important lesson about converting an audience that is engaging with trending, timely channel. We got the data to support a strategic shift from the kinds of gated content we had historically produced. Obviously the deviation has led us to get more leads, but it’s also empowering our team to work more nimbly. We’re leaning in to snappy, utilitarian content that is equally as useful as it is educational.

Here are a few more top-hitting pieces I’ve created for this channel:

• The Hustle’s Content Swipe File

• How to Use AI as a Personal Assistant

• How to Land a Job Using AI

• LinkedIn Profile Playbook

Influencer Partnerships for Content Diversification

HubSpot is known for producing several industry reports every year, including the annual Social Media Trends Report. This comprehensive guide leverages original data, case studies from real brands, and expert takes to help marketers and content creators stay in-the-know on the ever-changing social content landscape.

In 2024, we had a big, hair, audacious lead goal for this report—and we knew that our traditional distribution approach needed to change in order for us to reach it. As HubSpot Media continues to expand its creator/influencer program, we knew this was the perfect opportunity to tackle 2 experiments:

1. Producing co-branded gated content, in collaboration with influencer partners

2. Implementing on-demand video content to diversify our historic content approach

We identified 4 social media and content marketing thought leaders, and recruited an internal subject matter expert, to participate in a fireside chat inspired by the 2024 report. I worked directly with each of the creators to prepare relevant questions and facilitated the conversation when it came time to record.

This webinar was the first of its kind for HubSpot Media’s gated content program. Because of our influencer partnerships, we were able to unlock the additional distribution channels that each creator owned. Not only were we able to crush our conversion goal on this report, but we saw unexpected performance on the accompanying webinar. Although the webinar was far from the focus of any distribution or promotion plans, the video surpassed 3K views within the first 3 weeks of distribution. The immediate response from leadership was “concept proven.”

In addition to this being the first webinar for our program, it was also the first time we published content in collaboration with influencer partners. Since then, we’ve been able to produce other co-branded content offers, including:

• The Marketer’s Guide to TikTok (this offer features several quotes from Creators)

• Sam Parr’s Process for Finding Million-Dollar Business Ideas

How a Monthly Newsletter Formed Habits For Retention & Engagement

A no-frills monthly newsletter helped Right Side Up connect with customers in a whole new way. Right Side Up is a growth marketing consultancy that partners with VC-backed tech companies like DoorDash and Stitch Fix. Our target audience was 2-fold: a network of skilled marketing freelancers, and the brands that hired Right Side Up for fractional marketing support.

With "The Step-Up" newsletter, our main goal was to keep our both sides of our audience engaged and informed about all things tech industry and growth marketing. We wanted to show our audience that we were a trusted source of valuable insights and updates.

Each month, I carefully curated "The Step-Up" to include the latest industry trends, marketing success stories, and growth marketing tips. The goal was that the content was educational, inspiring, and reflective of our expertise in driving growth for venture-backed companies.

We saw 3 key results:

1. Engaging Content: Our customers loved the newsletter, with higher open rates and click-through rates than we'd seen with other communication channels.

2. Thought Leadership: By consistently delivering high-quality content, we were able to position ourselves as an authority in the tech industry, catching the eye of potential clients and industry influencers.

3. Stronger Relationships: "The Step-Up" played a crucial role in strengthening our bond with customers, leading to higher retention rates and increased loyalty to our services.

This helped us boost customer engagement, establish ourselves as thought leaders in the tech industry, and build stronger relationships with our clients. By staying ahead of industry trends and delivering valuable content, we were able to drive loyalty and open up new opportunities for growth.

Here are 2 issues of this newsletter that I curated, wrote, and produced:

• July 2022

• May 2022