Growth In Reverse

AUDIO - Cross-Promos
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Chenell Basilio: [00:00:00] The one that I keep seeing that I'm so excited about is content. It's so good.

Dylan Redekop: It doesn't feel like, oh, this took me two hours to set up and I only got three subscribers from it.

Chenell Basilio: People loved it, like his audience ate that stuff up, but it makes me wonder, like, how did they grow their email list?

Dylan Redekop: I think this is a really strong strategy, especially if you love writing and you're good at writing.

Chenell Basilio: I didn't do that. That would've been smart.

Hello and welcome back to the Growth and Reverse Podcast. I'm Chenell.

Dylan Redekop: And I'm Dylan.

Chenell Basilio: And we talk a lot about newsletters on the show and we actually have a community called Growth in Reverse Pro, where we've been talking a lot about doing collaborations, cross promotions, that kind of thing. And so I thought it'd be kind of fun to kind of talk through and synthesize, like how we think about those things, give some examples of different types and how you can do them better and just kind of.

Nerd out about it. Mm-hmm. What do you think?

Dylan Redekop: I think it's a great idea. That was one of the, one of the ways that I first started growing my newsletter back in the day was [00:01:00] reaching out to people and trying to set up like cross promotions and that sort of thing. And, uh, with some, some successes and some failures all mixed in there.

And I know you can speak to that as well. So I think it be a informative episode along with like, maybe some mistakes that we made or some lessons we learned that hopefully we can help other people avoid.

Chenell Basilio: Totally. Yeah, I'm excited. I definitely ran a lot of cross promotions in the beginning of the newsletter journey, uh, for me, and I'm doing more of them these days.

Uh, we can kind of jump into that in a little bit, but I. I'm excited. I think there's such an untapped opportunity to not only grow your email list, but also build those valuable relationships with other creators and people in your industry. Um, and this is not just for creators talking about creators, this is for, I.

Any niche or industry I think could benefit from some kind type of collaboration with other people.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, definitely. You'll get the idea that it's not just for, um, kinda the creator economy, if you will. There's, there's a whole bunch of different ways you can do this and different people you can reach out to.

So, [00:02:00] um, I think, I think it's important too to touch on why we are kind of bullish on. Cross promotions and collaborations too.

Chenell Basilio: If you've been on social media trying to grow your email list that way. Recently, you probably noticed that a lot of the algorithms and social media platforms are kind of changing all the time.

This has always happened, but I feel like multiples have started tanking reach in a sense. Mm-hmm. Uh, more recently. Uh, so Twitter, I mean, we don't really have to say much about that. That is just like, it's no man's land unless you. Have like the right content right now, but I think people like me and you, Dylan, I know you were on there mm-hmm.

In like 20 22, 20 23. It was great. It was awesome. You could easily build a subscriber base, um, meet cool people. I think we actually connected through Twitter as well as Jay's community, and so I think. It's just not the same anymore. Like it's still okay, but it's not the same, at the same point, uh, LinkedIn has been kind of dropping reach as well.

Um, it's still [00:03:00] great. I still think it's kind of like the Twitter of 2023. Yeah. Ish.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: But, um, impressions are going down. It's getting a little bit harder as more and more people. Transition from Twitter over to LinkedIn. Mm-hmm. So I think it's getting more crowded that way too.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, absolutely. I even have noticed just from at the beginning of 2025, we did like a 30 day LinkedIn growth challenge and um, it was great 'cause I was posting every day.

I was growing, um, I was getting a decent amount of impressions, definitely more than when I was not posting hardly at all. Uh, funny how that works and. But I found now about, um, into Q2 of 2025. Still posting pretty regularly, but impressions have gone down pretty significantly, um, at least on average. So more validation to me that doing cross promotions and collaborations and that sort of, um, that sort of growth planning and pipeline is that much more important because we have a bit more control over that than we do.

What happens with the algorithms?

Chenell Basilio: It's getting dicey out there. I even saw this [00:04:00] morning, this morning I saw on uh, Instagram threads, like their threads platform. I saw the first ad.

Dylan Redekop: Oh, I saw an ad.

Chenell Basilio: I haven't seen an ad on there yet. No. So I guess they're actually testing monetization, so that's even gonna go down, I'm sure.

Of course

Dylan Redekop: they are. Yeah. Then yeah. Yeah. They're gonna take impression so that they'll, you'll have to pay to get eyeballs just like Facebook. It was only a matter

Chenell Basilio: of time.

Dylan Redekop: It was, yep.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, so I guess. We've been talking about cross promos, collabs, um, let's give some examples of types of collaborations and cross promos.

I mean, I think if you've been in the newsletter space for any stretch of time across promo, and your mind is probably just a typical, like I'll talk about your newsletter. You talk about my newsletter in a little blurb somewhere. Inside of an issue of your email.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Um, and we'll send each other subscribers and that's great and that does work.

And I think that could be a good, effective way, but there are plenty of other options as well.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's kind of the most basic, I think, rudimentary version of like a cross promotion is just like sort of newsletter swap, uh, mention swap if you will. [00:05:00] Um, they're easy to set up. They're pretty low lift and um, they can work.

So it's a good place to start for sure.

Chenell Basilio: Absolutely. Yeah. So there's. Newsletter swaps. Uh, you can swap, you can have them talk just about your newsletter. You can give them a specific lead magnet. You want them to promote, uh, a different resource. Um, could be like an email course even. Mm-hmm. Which I guess could technically be a lead magnet, but in a way they're different for me.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Uh, you can share different articles. Like I could go to Dylan and Oh, I could go to Dylan and say, Hey, I wrote this deep dive on x, y, Z person. Can you share it in your upcoming newsletter?

Dylan Redekop: Yep.

Chenell Basilio: And that's. A version of a swap as well.

Dylan Redekop: Yep. That works. If you're just doing it one way, then it's, I guess that's more of just like outreach to get like pr, but if you are Yeah.

You know, offering to share something of theirs as well. Um, then obviously that brings in the cross-promotion, the cross aspect of that into play. So if you are reaching out to do. To kind of promote an article for somebody than um, or in their newsletter, then [00:06:00] you'll definitely want to, you know, offer, Hey, do you have anything that I could share in my newsletter?

'cause they're gonna be much more inclined, uh, to reciprocate if you're going to do the same.

Chenell Basilio: Totally. Yeah. I, this is the most common one that I've done, but I've also done a couple other options as well and seen more, um, done recently. I think one of the other ones that comes to mind is like a dedicated.

Piece of content. So like if I were to write a deep dive on Dylan and how Dylan grew his newsletter, that could be a form of a swap. I haven't done that with my deep dives just 'cause I feel like it's weird, but I know other people do. Um, I know Peggy McCormick has done, or at least used to, he did sponsor deep dives.

So PE companies would reach out if he felt like it was a good fit. Uh, they would pay him. I think at one point it was like 20 grand on. Article or something crazy to do a sponsored deep dive. I mean, he would be honest about everything and like write down the whole story and the journey of their company.

Um, but people loved it. Like his audience ate that stuff up. Mm-hmm. Even though it was sponsored.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. I think he, 'cause he came, it wasn't just like an advertorial type [00:07:00] of like, oh, I'm gonna write some nice words about this company. It was like actually, like he was critiquing. The company and exposing maybe some flaws or some things you should look out for.

And it wasn't just like, oh, they're paying me so I'm gonna say every nice thing under the sun about them. So I think that's really interesting. If you can, and if you can get 20 grand for a, uh, for a deep dive, then power to you.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. Don't quote me on that number. Yeah. I might be forgetting the right number, but I'm pretty sure that's what it was.

Um, at this point I just looked, PKI has over 241,000 subscribers. Wow. So a decent chunk of change for. One of those anymore. Mm-hmm.

Dylan Redekop: Oh yeah.

Chenell Basilio: But yeah, that was something I've seen as well.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, that's a, it's a good strategy to, to, to go down if you can be, if you're permitted to be critical to some degree about it.

If you're doing that kind of a deep dive, then I would be hesitant to take money from somebody where I'm just like, I. Only publishing the good stuff about it.

Chenell Basilio: And I guess as we go down, I just wanted to call this out as we go down this list of different kinds of cross promos and collaborations. Um, it's important [00:08:00] to remember that while we're talking about specific newsletters or written content, a lot of these can translate into podcast episodes, YouTube, mm-hmm.

Episodes, um, Instagram posts, all kinds of things. Yeah. So the format is. It can change, but like the overarching like theme of these stays the same.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. The collaboration is the, the main point. What you collaborate on and what platform you collaborate on is, um, sky's the limit. You can do it, you can do it anywhere and, and everywhere.

So yeah, don't let you think. And if you're like, oh, I haven't really started a newsletter, I have a really small newsletter audience. If you've got like a growing social media presence or YouTube channel or something along those lines, then there's still opportunity for you to collaborate with people and, um.

Bring them new subscribers and in trade off for hopefully them exposing you to their audience as well

Chenell Basilio: on the dedicated content side of things. Mm-hmm. Um, one of the more interesting examples I've seen, and we only know the backend of this because they're creators and they talk about the numbers. Yeah.

But Alex Garcia from marketing examined and Pat Walls and how they did their collaboration. Yeah. [00:09:00] Um, so I think Pat Walls runs starter story. Yeah. Which. At, at the time was a website and a newsletter about how founders got their start, and then he transitioned into a YouTube channel, which has exploded, like completely taken off.

Um, but at the time I think he had like 30,000 YouTube subscribers. Okay. And so he and Alex Garcia from marketing examined who had 30,000 email subscribers were like, Hey, let's do a collaboration. And so Pat recorded a full video about Alex's story. Shared his journey and all this stuff. It was a great video.

Um, and that it got like hundreds of thousands of views. Wow. I think at this point it was like 150,000 views. And then on the, on the flip side, Alex wrote this nice piece about Pat Walls and like shared starter story in his newsletter. So it was like a, a different kind of collaboration in the sense that one was a video, one was an article, it worked out well.

I think Alex Garcia said he got like five to 10,000 subscribe, like email subscribers from that video. Mm-hmm. And that [00:10:00] was. In the beginning when it had just launched, so I'm sure it's even higher now.

Dylan Redekop: Well, I'm sure he is been getting like just, you know, kinda that trickle in subscriber. In fact, as soon as the algorithm kind of picks up this video and starts showing it to a bunch of people, it's like, oh, I just got another 150 or thousand subscribers from, um, from that YouTube video, um, you know, six months, a year later, which is, I'm sure he's gotten a lot of, a lot of trickle in effect of, uh, Pat's channel blowing up.

Uh, for sure. Trickle is probably the wrong word, is probably a lot, a lot heavier of a rush of subscribers from it.

Chenell Basilio: Fire hose. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah. But, so I thought that one was cool and I always like to use that as an example 'cause it's just, it opens your mind to like, hey, they don't have to be the exact same type of content and they don't have to be on the exact same format.

Dylan Redekop: No. It could be something on, um, I think what would be cool is like, you're talking about the same topic, but you, there's a video creator talking about it in your newsletter. Just like these guys talking about it and, uh, not necessarily even YouTube, but maybe a TikTok or a somebody who's [00:11:00] got a really good Instagram audience, you can collaborate with these two different, um, platforms and share this great Instagram account, um, or this great post or this great tip from this Instagram account that's in the same vertical as you, or the same niche or the same industry, and they can share your newsletter on their, one of their posts as well.

So I think there's definitely an opportunity that. People aren't doing as much 'cause we just think like, oh, I read a newsletter so I need to collaborate with other newsletter writers. Whereas, you know, Alex and Pat proves you don't have to do it that way. And I think there's an opportunity to kind of cross pollinate, if you will, from one sort of form format, um, audio, video written, um, to another.

So something to keep in mind For sure. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: I think this could be really interesting for someone who is, you know, maybe they're natively a LinkedIn person mm-hmm. But they collaborate with someone on Instagram. Mm. And then you're almost like launching your Instagram with another person. Yeah. So you can have them like promote your Instagram account if it's new, that's not gonna necessarily drive email subscribers, but I do think it's a cool [00:12:00] way to kind of launch a new channel.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Well, I mean, it's great for at least top of funnel, right? So if you have somebody else who's got 10, 20,000 subscribers, or sorry, followers. On, um, Instagram and you, maybe you have a dormant like me, a dormant, um, brand Instagram account, then why not? If you're gonna, if you have a plan to kickstart it, this would be a great way to do that.

So, uh, finding somebody who'd be willing to share it with you or share, share your account with their audience, where you share, um, your, their Instagram account in your newsletter or, or wherever that might be, would be a good way to do it. It would be a good way to like. Revive an existing account that's maybe gone a little bit dormant.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, I think that's an interesting one.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, I like that.

Chenell Basilio: Um. What examples do you have that you like thinking about

Dylan Redekop: the Alex and Pat? One is, is a really good one that that's the one that I keep coming back to. I just think in general, the, I like thinking about it from the angle of more the industry or format or topic, um, not format, but topic, um, or niche that you're in.

And [00:13:00] there's people who are creating content on all different types of platforms with, with within your niche. So I like thinking about it more in that regard for these, um. Kind of cross promotional opportunities that are maybe a little bit more unorthodox. So if you are, uh, we talked about the creator space, so just as an example, um, that's probably a bad example because there's so many people already doing this in the creator space.

But let's say I. Um, I'm looking at my desk. Let's say you're in the woodworking space, right? And you're writing a newsletter about woodworking and woodworking builds and how you're building out furniture for people. And then you see a Instagram account that's like really crushing it. That would be like a natural fit to swap there.

That's just like a very top of, top of the head, um, idea, but.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, I like this. Let's pull on this thread a little bit. Okay. 'cause this makes me think of, um, I, I, I go down rabbit holes sometimes. I ended up on YouTube a couple weeks ago and I was watching this carpenter and he was so good. And like, I'm not a woodworker person.

Yeah. Like, I think it'd be awesome to be [00:14:00] able to do that. But, um, I, I don't know where I got down this rabbit hole, but he was showcasing, um, how he used a 3D printer to like, make different tools that did serve specific purposes. Mm-hmm. But they don't sell them. Mm-hmm. Wow. So like you can buy his plans.

But this makes me think like if, if you're a woodworker or whoever and you collaborate with like maybe some guy who does 3D printing. Mm-hmm. Like that could be an interesting one.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Um, and then you're crosspolinating on each channel.

Dylan Redekop: Adjacent industries, but not like, yes. Cannibalizing each other's growth.

That's really smart. I love that.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, so I think that could be an interesting one. And adjacent is like the sweet spot, I think Adjacent audiences or the sweet spot. Mm-hmm. Instead of trying to go after like the exact same person who talks to the exact same audience. Like maybe you find someone who's talking to the same audience, but in a different way.

Yeah. Like that. Woodworker and the 3D printer, or I always come back to like, you're like A CFO or a finance person. Like a personal finance person. And you're talking to [00:15:00] dads, right? So go to the the dad channels that are like dad runners. Yeah. Or I don't know, golfers or something, and collaborate with those people.

And then you could just do like one piece of content. Mm-hmm. You're getting in front of the right audience. It's still a really good fit.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, it really works well too when you're like kind of a service provider or you have a, a product that can support them and a specific sort of niche industry that's smart.

I think you give a good example of that in your, in your course that you're creating, right?

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, I guess so. In the growth and reverse pro community, I'm like kind of slowly building out this course of like videos of me just like walking through how I do cross promos, um, ways you can do them better, giving away templates and that kind of thing.

Um. So that'll launch to the public soon. But right now it's just for community members. They get it free 'cause they're in there and there more people. Um, so that's fun. But yeah, I think just having, having people in different industries that you can collaborate with is so critical. Like it's just so important.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. [00:16:00] That's true. And it gets you out of the head space of like. Only watching the same types of people and listening to the same podcasts. Like if you can, like this spans more than just getting subscribers. It's like expanding, like the content you're consuming and the creativeness, creative creativity, creativity that you have with your work.

Um, I think that's such a big piece of this, that a lot of us get bogged down and we like don't realize how much of the same stuff we're consuming over and over and over again.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Echo chamber. Effect.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, totally.

Dylan Redekop: Big time. It's very true. And I think even like, um, going back to what you were saying about somebody who's in.

Um, you know, the adjacent industries, I think there's still, there is still a probably a significant play for somebody who is in the same industry. If there's like, um, again, an audience where they're solely like a video creator, for example, they don't have a newsletter, so you're not gonna cannibalize, um.

Their audience. That way you write a newsletter and you've got a much more significant newsletter on the topic that still can, that overlap. You guys are talking [00:17:00] to the same people. Um, just the content's being consumed in a different way. I still think there is a, a, a valid, and I dunno, strong correlation between those audiences.

That could be really, um. Uh, beneficial for both Dart.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. And so before we move on and go to another type of this, I think it's important to talk about how it doesn't matter. I don't know, I don't know how to say this perfectly, but the size of their audience isn't as important as you might think.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Is

Chenell Basilio: what I really wanna get across. So. I don't know. You might have 10,000 email subscribers and they only have 4,000 email subscribers, but maybe their audience is so perfectly aligned and targeted that they would probably send you more, um, more subscribers than someone who has a 20,000 person audience.

Right. And it's just like an okay fit. So I don't, I, I feel like people get really bogged down with like the size of an audience. Not as much the quality and the alignment in the content and the audience. So I just wanna make that clear before we keep moving because. [00:18:00] I see this happen a lot. People will be like, oh, well I have 20,000 subscribers and they only have five.

And I'm like, honestly, they're probably a better fit for you. Like, like they might actually send you better quality people than someone who with a much larger audience,

Dylan Redekop: especially if, um, I mean you can, you can look to like how long they've been growing their newsletter as well find out. I mean, it, it, you can poke around and find out open rates and that sort of thing if you want, if you wanna be a little bit nosy and see, um, really if this is worth worth your while.

But yeah, I think. Size matters, but it also doesn't matter. So I, I think size matters in the sense of if you only have, you know, a thousand newsletter subscribers or 500 newsletter subscribers, you're probably not gonna reach out to somebody who's got 50,000 or a hundred thousand, right? So, like, be, be cognizant of that and mindful that those creators probably, even if you are, have a hundred percent open rate, which is pretty much impossible, um, there, there's probably not really worth the effort for them, or you're giving.

You're getting way more than they are. So, um, think that [00:19:00] through. Definitely before reaching out to somebody.

Chenell Basilio: I'm actually remembering that I, I did record a video of me being super sleuthy and walking around trying to find out like how this person grew their email list on there too, because it's important, like somebody who's just like, not to poo poo on like paid recommendations, but if somebody's just growing through that.

Or like free recommendations and not doing anything else. Like the quality of their list might not be as high. And so there are certain checkpoints that you wanna kind of pay attention to and make sure like, sure they have 15,000 subscribers, but wait, they just started last month? Mm-hmm. Like how did they do that?

It throws up a little red flag.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Facebook ads. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I'm sure there are some good Facebook. Subscribers, Facebook ad driven subscribers. Totally. But at the same time, it's like, I dunno, the, the value of an organic subscriber, um, is pretty powerful too. So it's definitely something you need to keep in mind.

Chenell Basilio: That's funny. Um, yeah, so quality of audience, very important and size. Um, two things to pay attention to. [00:20:00] Mm-hmm. Um, size being less important in my mind than mm-hmm. Quality. So,

Dylan Redekop: yeah. Well do, don't you have, do you wanna share your horror story? Not horror story, but your story, my horror story

Chenell Basilio: in the early days.

Um, oh, I can't remember my numbers now. I did a cross promotion with someone, I think I had a thousand subscribers and they had 4,000. And so when they said yes, I was over the moon, I was so excited. I was like, this is gonna, this is it. I'm gonna get like a hundred subscribers. This is gonna be great. And then.

I got zero. Wow. It's the short story. I, uh, I actually reached out to them and I was like, you know, did you include my newsletter? And they were like, totally, it was in the, the last email. And so like, I went back and found it and it was, but I got no one, not a single subscriber. And they even had like a tracking link in there.

So I would've seen like on the backend, like a UTM parameter come through of like this person's, um, email, email list. And I was like, oh my gosh, I got none. No subscribers. It was like such a [00:21:00] bummer. I was like, so it went from like super excited to like, so bummed about this. So

Dylan Redekop: did you, did they even get clicks or like, so my question is like, how much can you attribute to maybe your landing page just not being good or good enough and not converting mm-hmm.

To um, them just not. Pushing it. 'cause there's like two, there's two aspects to every newsletter ad you run or every link you include in your newsletter is like, first you have to get people to click on it. So it has to be enticing enough. And then once they click through on the other end. The copy, the landing page, the design, all of that needs to yeah.

Be enticing enough for them to convert yet again. So do you remember at all if you even got any traffic?

Chenell Basilio: I don't believe I did. Wow. I might, honestly, I went back to the Twitter dm, 'cause I had done this cross promo via Twitter dm.

Dylan Redekop: Okay. And

Chenell Basilio: I was so bad, like I didn't even ask like how many clicks. I said, how many clicks mine drove, but I didn't ask again, like to follow up and see.

I think I was just so bummed about it. I just [00:22:00] like wanted to walk away.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. And

Chenell Basilio: to answer your question about the landing page, um, the next week I did a cross promo with someone who had like 1500 or 2000 subscribers and I got like 45 Wow subscribers. Wow. So I, I think it was okay.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: But it makes me wonder like how did they grow their email list?

Dylan Redekop: Totally. And I think the other thing too is like you can always go back historically and see like what your landing page conversion is. And so you can kind of anticipate if they get me a hundred clicks, I'll probably get. You know, 30 subscribers or something like that, right? You could kind of do the backwards math there and figure out if it's worth your while when you're kind of setting up these collaborations.

Hey, how many clicks do you kind of tend to get on these types of links in your newsletter? And if they tell you and that number is, um, way lower than you hope, then maybe it's not, maybe it's not worth your while. So

Chenell Basilio: yeah, I mean. It's all just kind of rolling with the punches. Yeah. And it does change. And I think, I think that experience made me really bummed to do more cross promos.

Like the one that I did the following week, I had set up prior and I think I took a break from it for a little while 'cause I was like, [00:23:00] this is not cool.

Dylan Redekop: Mm.

Chenell Basilio: So now that's why I'm creating like, not to talk about it again, but this course to like showcase like. The mistakes I've made and like what I would do better now and like how to avoid some of these issues because it's so simple.

But like looking back, I just shake my head. Mm-hmm. Like, what were you doing?

Dylan Redekop: Well, I think it also, it's not

Chenell Basilio: that person's fault either. Totally.

Dylan Redekop: But No, no, I think, I think a lot of it comes down to, I. Um, it's always the heavy lift upfront in the beginning too, when you're starting to do this and you don't really know the process and how to set them up, how to find the people, how to set them up, how to, um, sell your newsletter, your lead magnet kind of in copy form to an audience.

So all that stuff takes a bit of heavy lifting, but once, I think the nice thing with cross person is once you kind of have that system in place and you have like, oh yeah, here's my cross promo doc. Here are the like two or three options of things that you can cross promote. Here's the link in the landing page.

Um, fill in your, your newsletter in this UTM parameter. All this stuff gets a lot easier. Um, and [00:24:00] it doesn't feel like, oh, this took me two hours to set up and I only got three subscribers from it. Um, that should. Scale out nicely over time as you do more of them.

Chenell Basilio: A hundred percent. And I see so many beginners, like getting frustrated with cross promotions and they're like that.

I tried it once. It was not for me, it didn't do anything. And I'm like, okay, but there is a system you can put in place to make this easier and have it actually work. And you're building relationships and I'm just like such a big proponent of this 'cause it's so powerful.

Dylan Redekop: Well, that, even that alone, just like the value in building a relationship with somebody over email, um, messaging, dms, whatever that might be.

Or even if you hop on a 50 minute, you know, zoom call or whatever, that alone is valuable too. So, um, even if the collaboration doesn't go. As you both had hoped, you've kind of established a new connection, a new relationship that you never know where it could lead in the future. And I'm saying, I'm not saying set these up for kind of an ulterior motive of like networking.

It's kind of a, a side benefit of setting these things up.

Chenell Basilio: A hundred percent. Um, all [00:25:00] right, cool. Should we move on to another one?

Dylan Redekop: Let's move on.

Chenell Basilio: Um, so I think. The one that I keep seeing that I'm so excited about is co-created content.

Dylan Redekop: Mm-hmm.

Chenell Basilio: I talked about this in my newsletter Marketing Summit talk as well.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: But it's, it's so good. Um, so one of the ones that I found more recently was with a woman named Maya Voer. She does go-to market strategy for product people.

Dylan Redekop: Okay.

Chenell Basilio: And that's her thing. It's not about how to be a better product manager. It's like go-to-market strategy. And so she has been doing cross promotions with other product people

Dylan Redekop: in

Chenell Basilio: the space.

And so she's not just doing cross promos, she's like writing, co-writing these articles with them. So one example is with Akash Gupta, um, who we've had on the podcast before.

Dylan Redekop: Mm-hmm.

Chenell Basilio: And so he had this huge audience and I saw that she had done, um, a collaboration article with him. And I was like, oh, cool. So I like clicked through.

I was expecting her to have like 40,000 subscribers. She had 3000 subscribers, right? And he had a hundred [00:26:00] and something thousand subscribers. And I was like, whoa, how did this happen? Um, which was so cool. And so. I saw that and I was like, we even asked Akash about it because it was, I was just so flabbergasted with it.

Mm-hmm. And he was like, yeah, we were just like talking and like I have known her work through other things and like she's just, she's smart, so I figured like, let's collaborate on something.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. And

Chenell Basilio: so I saw that she had done that collaboration article and two others the same month. Like I went back and I was like, wow, she's, this is her thing.

This is how she grows her newsletter. And so. When I saw it initially, she, she was at 3000 subscribers. Um, she then went on, last time I checked it was at 15,000. So this is working. Yeah. Like this definitely works.

Dylan Redekop: No, absolutely. And I think it's also important to note this, she's just not writing a 800 word article for Akash and these other people.

Wasn't this like an. 80 minute read,

Chenell Basilio: 88 minute read,

Dylan Redekop: 88 minute read. So I think it

Chenell Basilio: was like 10,000 plus [00:27:00] words.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. So she's put together not just a, a go to market strategy, um, article. She's put together, like a go to market playbook, like a book on how to do this, a, a short book, but still like this isn't just a small piece of content.

So I think, um. I think probably that's what it takes to get on somebody's newsletter who has a hundred thousand subscribers. If you want to get like a byline or an article guest posted, um, I'm sure like Lenny TKI is another example. He just crossed a million subscribers on his substack and he even said in that post that like, um, getting people to guest.

Write articles, it does take him time 'cause he definitely edits them and helps massage it and, and the pro and goes through the process with them, alongside them. Um, so it's not like they just submit something to him and he publishes it. His guest posts are really, really well written and they're some of his most popular posts as well.

So my, my hunch is that, um, if you want to get your post on Lenny's [00:28:00] Substack, it's gotta be more the Maya Voer. Depth, breadth, um, quality of content than just kind of like a, obviously an AI generated, you know, blurb is not gonna work. But, um, you get my point. It's gotta be something that's really worth publishing, that is a unique angle that's in depth, tactical, all that stuff.

So, um, I think this is a really strong strategy, especially if you're good and you love writing and you're good at writing, um, and you really know. The topic that you're writing about, then this is a, this could be a very, almost, I don't wanna say quick growth strategy, but if you do it correctly, like Maya's done, then it could be actually a, a pretty scalable, um, strategy.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, and I think the key with these, like co-created content, if you're gonna go after someone with a larger audience, I think the key is like, find, go back through their backlog and see if there's a hole in their content library. Mm. Of like something you know super well that you could write. A long form piece about and then write part of that piece [00:29:00] and send it over and be like, Hey, I wanna like keep writing this.

Do you think like, would you be open to having this published? I saw that you don't talk about, you haven't talked about this yet. Yeah. I've already written half of it. Or you can write the whole thing if you want, but I think that really goes a long way because you're removing the work from their side of it.

Mm-hmm. Instead of being like, Hey, I wanna write for you. Just like leaving it at that, like that will probably never get an answer.

Dylan Redekop: No.

Chenell Basilio: Unless you're like very niche and specific in what you talk about and they know who you are. Um. I think that's a, one of the ways you're gonna have to do this is like put the work in, show that you've done the research and then go pitch them on this.

Dylan Redekop: Yep. And that goes for kind of any type of pitch too. I think you're just more likely to get listened to and get a response and probably get the opportunity if you've done a little bit of just like spend even like 10 minutes doing a bit of research you have done. More work than 90% of the pitches that they have received.

I guarantee it. So, um, putting a little bit of time to do that, A little bit of digging. And um, obviously if it's a bigger audience, the bigger [00:30:00] the audience, probably the more time you wanna put into it. If you show that you have actually paid attention to content they've created. And you see an opportunity where they could, um, where you could support them and they would, they might be willing to say yes, then you're gonna position yourself the best if you do that.

Chenell Basilio: And on the same token, uh, these don't have to be co-written articles. You could do like a guest post if they take those. Mm-hmm. Like, don't pitch someone who does, has never done a guest post before, because it's gonna be an instant No. And they're gonna be annoyed that you even. Reached out. Um, most likely.

Yeah. Unless you can talk to 'em in person and, and get an in, but, um, if they don't take guests on their podcast, if they don't do guest posts, like, don't reach out like that. Yeah. But I think on the same token of co-created content, you could also just write a full piece for them

Dylan Redekop: and then they, you could even have just a co co-author byline, uh, similar to what.

I think Akash and Lenny both have done, do you wanna talk about CJ Gustafson as well?

Chenell Basilio: Sure.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Uh, CJ CJ's awesome. CJ does well at the time I called it the triple stack approach, but now I am [00:31:00] considering it's like a quadruple stack approach because he would write guest posts for like these SaaS companies.

And so they have audiences, they have content that they, that they need to create. Mm-hmm. But they don't wanna necessarily talk about themselves over and over again. So he was like, Hey, why don't I just like talk about you for you, or like, share something interesting that your audience would be excited to read.

And so he started doing these for free and now he actually charges, he does sponsorships with them and he charges like six to $12,000 per like four pack of these. And the best part. So he's getting paid to Reddit. Then most of the time they'll just like pull an article. He's already published on his own site,

Dylan Redekop: right?

Chenell Basilio: So like he's not writing extra content, right? So it's content. He is already written. He's getting paid like thousands of dollars per post. Uh, these pieces of content are getting sent out to these SaaS companies email lists, which are often like 10, 50, a hundred thousand people on their email list. So you're getting.

Immediate distribution in front of another audience.

Dylan Redekop: Mm-hmm. And then

Chenell Basilio: like if somebody comes back to his site [00:32:00] and then subscribes, like he has a paid newsletter. So like, that's like the fourth side of this is he's just gonna like, he's initially getting paid for the posts, then he's getting free subscribers.

And if they become paid subscribers, he's essentially getting paid again for those people. Which is just, it's like so good, so good. It's brilliant. I'm so excited about this.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. I think the challenge, to me, the challenge is finding the right, um. The business that you could do this with, or a creator or whatever that might be, who would be okay with paying for content that's already living on, on the web?

But I just, this makes me think like, I think Justin Moore would just be like, like he would just, yes, he would love this, right? Because this is, he preaches like. Create content. Like you don't even have to have an audience to get, like, to create content for people. Just create really good content and send it, share it with them.

And this is, it's kinda like basically what, uh, CJ did. And I'm sure there it was harder than that, but it's also that simple, right? Like create really good [00:33:00] content, pitch it to these people. At the very least, you've created a. Maybe a really high quality SEO, um, article. An article you can share in your newsletter that people see that there's value in and they wanna subscribe.

Something you can share on social media. So you're creating a great asset for yourself, and then potentially you're creating a great asset for that actual partner who will share it and then drive subscribers your way, who then might actually pay to subscribe to your paid newsletter. So yeah, it, it's, um, it's like.

It feels like a lot of work, but the payoff is just like pretty exponential if you get to, can get it to that point.

Chenell Basilio: I wanna figure out how to do this because it's so good. It's just so good. I can't stop talking about it. Yeah, we probably talked about like six times already on this podcast, but it's such a good strategy.

So it's at mostly metrics.com if you wanna check out his, uh, strategy. Yeah. Where I wrote a deep dive and explained with some screenshots that you can check out too.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, that's a, that's a really good deep dive.

Chenell Basilio: We gotta get him on here.

Dylan Redekop: We do, we do. Do you, have you met him?

Chenell Basilio: I met him at the newsletter conference last year.

Oh, sweet. Okay.

Dylan Redekop: Okay.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah.

Dylan Redekop: Then, [00:34:00] um, CJ, if you're listening, which you probably aren't, this is your irritation, I'll

Chenell Basilio: reach out.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. And I think the last point with all of these, um, unless I missed one, but I think the last point is like combinations of all of these are so. Important too. Like if you can, like we were kind of talking about before, if, if somebody has an Instagram channel and you have an email list, like you can combine some of these and do like a different, I don't know, it just makes it stronger, I think.

Mm-hmm. And then you have more opportunities to pitch them again in three months and be like, Hey, let's do another collaboration.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Because one thing most people don't do. Is reach back out to the partners that had they had great collaborations with and do them again. If it worked the first time, do it again.

Like there, it doesn't have to be a one time thing.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, I agree. Yeah. So what do you do? Um, let's run through some scenarios 'cause people are probably wondering what happens if I do a collaboration or cross promotion and I get, um, a ton of subscribers, but. I didn't drive that many for them.

Chenell Basilio: Well, you can do a couple things.

I mean, you can ask or you can tell them that you'll put it in their, in your [00:35:00] newsletter again in a week or two. Mm-hmm. Um, I think you can also. Find other ways to promote their stuff, whether it's like shouting them out on LinkedIn, or if you have another channel that usually performs better, you can do that as well.

I think those are two easy ways. Yeah. Have

Dylan Redekop: you ever, have you ever had anybody come back at you asking, kinda like you did with that one person back in the day, um, who you collabed with? Have you ever had anybody come back at you?

Chenell Basilio: Luckily, no. I think my audience loves exploring new newsletters. Yeah. So when I do shout one out, they're like excited to check it out.

So I haven't had this issue thankfully. But yeah, I would just keep promoting their stuff until they get something from it. Yeah. Because otherwise I'd feel really bad.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Yeah. That's fair. Yeah. That's good.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah.

Dylan Redekop: You are a, you're a good person, so that makes sense. Thanks. Um, did we talk about tracking? I think we should maybe quickly touch on that.

Chenell Basilio: Oh, yes. Yeah, we were, we had a call earlier. Um, so we're doing the cross promos challenge in the community. Um, and we had a call and I was just kind of shocked that like most people weren't, I don't know, they didn't have a good system down for tracking. So in my [00:36:00] world, like two days ago, I spent like hours figuring out Google Analytics, like GA four, Google Analytics, the original one, like RIPI missed that thing so much.

Uh, it was so much easier to like. Read and find what you needed. And then they launched GA four and I just stopped looking at it. Mm.

Dylan Redekop: Um.

Chenell Basilio: Not totally, but for the most part. But, so I figured out how to set up a conversion, like an email conversion in Gula analytics, right? Which sounds bonkers that I took this long to do it, but, so now I have that laid out and so now I can accurately see like exactly which pages converted into email subscribers and people who sent me that, or like how many I'm getting from.

Chat. GPTI got a subscriber from yesterday. Right?

Dylan Redekop: Yep. Which is fun. Yeah, I had a few of those too recently. It's just inter really interesting.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. So if you're just getting started with tracking, you don't have to go too crazy with it. Um, I. You can just have them put in, like, you know, on the end of your url, say like, okay, growth and reverse.com/uh, question mark, which [00:37:00] just tells, uh, the website, like this isn't part of the page url.

Mm-hmm. Um, REF, which stands for like referral, I think, and then the equal sign, and then you can put in whatever you want. So you could say. Growth Net, which is Dylan's website. So if he were sending me people, that's, I could see like on the backend. Okay. Growth currency sent me two subscribers or 20 subscribers or whatever.

Dylan Redekop: Mm-hmm.

Chenell Basilio: Um. So it's, it's pretty easy to do that if you do that now. Even if you don't look at it, you can always go back in the future and see it. So it's nice to have this stuff set up so that you have that data later on. Yeah. 'cause if you don't do it ahead of time, like you're kind of out of luck. Yeah.

You can't rewind and

Dylan Redekop: get those UTM parameters. Yeah. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: You can also, for some people it might be easier just to like. Duplicate your form and ConvertKit or beehive or whatever, title it, you know, Dylan's cross promo and then give Dylan the link to that. I don't love that method because it's messy mm-hmm.

And hard to like move to other places. But if you are just getting started [00:38:00] and that's the easiest way you can do that too.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. That works. I, I mean, and worst case scenario too, if you, if you're a little bit confused with like these UTM parameters, just get chat GBT to create you one. I mean you, you probably could.

Say, do this for me, and, and I'm sure it'll send you out something that's, uh, half decent. So yeah, you can always do a little, you could also

Chenell Basilio: use like go to Google and type in UTM builder. Yeah. And it'll give you a good tool.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Tracking's important. Um, definitely try to do it.

Chenell Basilio: And, okay, here's an even lower way to do it.

So if you have a Google sheet and you put that person's name in the first row or the first column, and then like put the date that they sent you people and then you can. Say how many clicks? Like ask them after, like a week later, Hey, how many clicks did they get? Okay, so they said 57 or 570 or whatever.

Put that in there and then you can kind of like estimate your subscribers. Mm-hmm. Or you can see like how many you got that day. If you're not getting a ton each day as it is,

Dylan Redekop: it can be hard if you have people coming in, in various [00:39:00] different sources. Um, but you can usually kind of get an, an idea of the average.

If you're not doing any kind of promotion or anything like that, eh, I get an average of, you know, 10. 20 subscribers today and all of a sudden today I got 60, or, you know, there's an outlier day. You can usually attribute that if you know what date the cross promotion happened, then it's, it's, um, reasonable to attribute the, the growth or the significant increase to that cross promotion for sure.

Chenell Basilio: So UTM parameters sound crazy and scary, but I would highly recommend that you have somebody add those to it, because when someone comes to your website from an email, it's like. A black box, like Google does not know where they came from. Like even unless that person has UTM parameters and like it puts in like the title of the email.

If they don't have that turned on, like Google Analytics will not show, it'll say like not set or uh, direct traffic. So it's kind of important with email, like if you were to. Link to my site. Yeah, Google Analytics would see that just on your

Dylan Redekop: website. If I sent, [00:40:00] hey, check out Growth in Reverse in my newsletter and I just linked growth in reverse.com, nothing, and people clicked on that nothing and then went and subscribed, they would, you wouldn't see that that came from Growth Currency Newsletter or from Kit even.

Or anything like that,

Chenell Basilio: right? Yeah. Unless you have, like in kit, they have like auto tagging, so it'll automatically add parameters. Okay. If they have that turned on. Um, but if not, yeah. It's like a complete black box

Dylan Redekop: who has to turn that on? The, like me as the sender of the email?

Chenell Basilio: Yeah.

Dylan Redekop: Okay. Mm-hmm.

Chenell Basilio: Or you could just add like that REF code.

Yeah. That I was talking about earlier.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, exactly.

Chenell Basilio: Fun

Dylan Redekop: learning stuff every day.

Chenell Basilio: This is why I put the, uh. Me walking through Google Analytics and how to set this up in that course too. 'cause I was like, this is gonna be way too confusing.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. They don't even call it conversions anymore, right? You were saying

Chenell Basilio: no key events.

It's called key events. Yeah. Like what?

Dylan Redekop: Those are key events. Oh man. We got, we got 200 key events today. Yes.

Chenell Basilio: Not just events. Key events.

Dylan Redekop: Key events. Yeah. I'm sure there's rationale for it. The Galaxy Brain, some of this stuff like [00:41:00] overthink terms and names and just like keep it simple for the people. Could be

Chenell Basilio: like conversion events.

Key events.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, key events. Any last parting words of advice for cross promotions, collaborations to the people.

Chenell Basilio: Build out a system. Figure out how to make it easier on yourself because these are worthwhile. So if you can kind of just set yourself up for success beforehand, makes it so much easier and you avoid so much frustration.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, I agree. Really helpful thing is keeping track of this stuff in some kind of spreadsheet or database where you're like, these are the people I want to outreach to. These are the people I did outreach to. Here are the days that. We are setting up a cross promotion even if you wanted to like estimate on their size of their newsletter, um, or if they tell you, you can enter that information so you can get an idea of how much, um, or how well it worked if you want to do it again with them.

So all that stuff, if you can keep track of, it's just gonna make your life. A lot easier. And, and then I think one thing that I found very helpful is having like a, a Google Doc or something in notion that basically you can link to for your collaborator or cross promoter [00:42:00] if you're doing like, uh, cross promotion swaps, that kind thing where it's just got all the details for that, the name of your newsletter, a blurb about your newsletter.

So they don't have to do as much thinking. They can definitely, like I'm sure you've let people write. Their own thoughts and feelings and opinions and ideas and all that for your newsletter when they're promoting it with their own words. So people can definitely do that. But if you make it that much easier for them by just like having them to be able to just copy and paste something right into their newsletter, that's just lower friction, easier lift for them.

So you're more likely to probably get yeses from that.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. And honestly, flip that around because it's gonna be easier on you when they're like, Hey, what do you want me to say? Yeah. And then you're like, Ugh, I don't know. Yeah. I did this for so long and even like, look, going back. Honestly, like going back, I'd be like, wait, what did I tell that last person?

I don't remember. Mm-hmm. And so I'd have to rewrite it multiple times and like, I hate talking about myself. So like, figuring out the good way, like a good way to explain what I do was so hard. Yeah. And so. Even just creating like an Apple note with like your blurb is like, like step one, like do that.

Mm-hmm. [00:43:00] And you know, if you end up collaborating with someone in the future, you can just copy paste and it's so much easier.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. And absolute worst case scenario, like just take. The landing page copy on your page. I don't know. I think you should have kind of a one-liner of what your newsletter's about anyway, so at the very least include that.

But the other thing you could do, as I'm thinking about is Chenell, you probably had a ton of people like already saying how great your newsletter was. You could have just probably swiped. Some of those comments and sort of being like, here's what people are saying. Or, um, formulated sort of, uh, an explainer or some kind of social proof type of copy or, um, tagline or, or promotional copy that you could have included with that because, uh, if you don't like talking about yourself, there's lots of other people who have, so you could always go that route too.

Chenell Basilio: I didn't do that. That would've been smart.

Dylan Redekop: Next time. Next time.

Chenell Basilio: So many mistakes. So many mistakes.

Dylan Redekop: And I think one other thing you could do, um, actually, how would you feel about this? Again, it probably depend on the size of your [00:44:00] newsletter, but would you open it up to your newsletter audience that you are looking to do swaps and cross promotions?

Because I know people have done that for advertisers.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. I mean, if it makes sense like. For me. Sure. It would probably make sense because all the people on my email list probably either have a newsletter or some kind of audience somewhere. Yeah. So it could work. But if you're like a golfer talking to golfers, like other golfers might not have a newsletter to swap with, so it might be a little challenging to actually convert that.

But you could try, you could put a little thing at the bottom and see if anybody. Replies.

Dylan Redekop: Yes, that could work. Um, or just saying, reply to my, just hit reply and let me know. Um, one other thing I just remembered too is making sure you are clear on what type of collaboration you're doing, what type of cross-promotion you're doing, whether it's just kind of like a, sort of an invention in your curated link section or at the end of your newsletter, or if it's gonna be like a pretty prominent mention or if it's gonna be like a whole newsletter.

Send just based on them recommending your newsletter. Um, [00:45:00] so you wanna make sure that you've established those parameters, uh, so that you're both kind of giving similar weight, I guess, to the cross promotion and that that's predetermined. Nobody's surprised.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Um, and that's another way, like if you have a smaller audience mm-hmm.

And they have a larger audience, you could always say, Hey, I'll, I'll dedicate a whole issue to yours because it's gonna drive more clicks. Yeah. Likely. Or, um, put 'em in the sponsor spot instead of like your typical cross promo spot. Mm-hmm. Or whatever it is. So, yeah, that's a good call out. Make sure you're on the same page before you do it.

Um. And then just have fun. Yeah. It's supposed to be fun.

Dylan Redekop: Exactly. Collaborate

Chenell Basilio: with people. Enjoy yourself.

Dylan Redekop: Cool.

Chenell Basilio: This was good. Cool. This was good. Um, yeah, and I guess if you're interested in that course when it does launch eventually, um, I. You can go to growth and reverse.com/collabs or collab. I'll have 'em both set up, but yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna launch this eventually to the public.

Yeah, I think it's, I think it's worthwhile and people need to do better [00:46:00] collaboration, so I'm interested in getting that into other people's hands.

Dylan Redekop: I think it's huge. Again, just the way the, the algorithms are treating us these days and. How hard it is to rely on them. And even if you get a significant amount of traction, it's still hard to convert people from social to a newsletter.

Um, it's not easy. So I think collaborations are very powerful. You can do them right, um, and they can, they don't have to be this daunting thing. I am bullish on it. And I'll also even vouch, I have seen this course, or at least the, the amount of, the portion, portion of the course that Chenell's already created and is really good.

So I was like, oh, what, what could she teach me about cross cross promotions? I know, I know how to do these, but no, I'm learning new stuff. Oh, that's cool. It's, it's really good. It's really tactical. Um, and I'm not just blowing smoke because I'm co-hosting this with you. I, I thought it was actually legitimately really good.

Chenell Basilio: Awesome. Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

Dylan Redekop: No problem.

Chenell Basilio: It's, uh, good to hear.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Because sometimes when you're creating these things in a vacuum, you're like, [00:47:00] uh, I hope this is helpful.

Dylan Redekop: No, it's good. And she, and you get into the mind of Chenell too because, um, this is like how you do your deep dives right's.

Scary, right? Like, you're like going down these rabbit holes, finding, finding all how to find newsletters to cross remote with and, um, yeah, it's really, it's really. Valuable. Really interesting. I think a lot of people will, um, get a lot of, get a lot of value out of it.

Chenell Basilio: I'll go ahead and Venmo you now. Thank you for that.

There we go. Nice testimonial. Yeah,

Dylan Redekop: I'm just kidding. We didn't even have Venmo in Canada so it wouldn't work, so. Oh yeah. Well there you go. Consider free.

Chenell Basilio: Awesome. I appreciate that. Um, yeah, so growth in reverse.com/collab. I just set that up so it's good.

Dylan Redekop: Just live on air.

Chenell Basilio: Live on air. Awesome. Cool. Well this is fun.

Yeah, I'm excited to talk more about this and, uh. Get some people on Hero who have done good collaborations. Yeah. And uh, get their take.

Dylan Redekop: That'll be cool. That'll be fun. Looking forward to it.

Chenell Basilio: Alright, we'll talk [00:48:00] soon.