📨 Deliver Email to 5.4M Subs Daily, No Problem!

Happy hump day, email gladiators,

Hope you’ve been spinning your Newsletter Engagement Flywheel like a champ.

(If you missed it last week, no shame — grab it [here].)

Now, onto this week's power move:

I kicked off the first-ever Audience Bridge podcast with none other than Matt Paulson — the guy who built MarketBeat into an 8-figure email empire.

A quick scoreboard check:

• 📨 5.4 million+ email subscribers

• 💵 $1M+ per month on paid acquisition (not a typo)

• 🚀 A monster 8-figure annual revenue

Curious how he pulled it off (and why he doesn’t sweat algorithm updates anymore)?

🎧 Listen to Episode 1 Now or Continue Reading for the quick summary.

Let’s dive right in. 👇

The Real Story

Forget "follow your passion." Matt says follow the opportunity.

In 2006, he launched a personal finance blog. It was... fine.

But when he created "American Banking and Market News," he hit the jackpot — landing on Google Finance and Yahoo Finance before "content marketing" was even a buzzword.

But when traffic started to slide, he made a pivot to email.

In 2009, Matt realized SEO wasn't enough. One bad algorithm update = disaster.

Solution? Own the relationship.

Enter: the email newsletter.

By 2015, after partnering with financial publishing giants like Agora, email had become MarketBeat's golden goose.

To scale their subscribers, Matt mastered the art of paid acquisition to grow their list to 5.4M+ subscribers.

Today, MarketBeat spends $1M+ per month acquiring new subscribers. That’s not a typo.

They purchase media through Adwords, Bing, Facebook, co-reg, and curated methods.

Any way that seems viable for them to acquire email signups.

The key?

Matt’s goal isn’t just list growth — it’s predictable, profitable subscriber ROI.

He won’t purchase media if he can’t track back to where the initial subscriber or traffic came from.

And how does he make it predictable?

He uses a cohort-based monetization model to track subscriber revenue performance with surgical precision.

They monitor:

• Initial revenue (first 30/60/90 days)

• Ongoing lifetime value

• Break-even point (Target 90 days).

These metrics are important as not all channels behave the same.

For example, Adwords and Facebook are more expensive channels, but they have a longer life cycle compared to Co-Reg, so the ROI ends up similar.

With these metrics in his arsenal, all he has to do is hit the scale button.

And what occurs? Predictable, profitable subscriber growth!

Today, email is still their biggest revenue machine.

Now to the fun stuff.

🚀 How MarketBeat Delivers to 5.4M+ Subscribers (Daily. Repeatedly.)

The inbox game in 2025 is no joke. Spam filters are savage. ISP rules are brutal. Attention spans? Even worse.

So how the heck does MarketBeat manage to land in 5.4M+ inboxes not just once — but multiple times per day?

I tried prying the actual daily email volume out of Matt Paulson...

He smiled, but stayed silent. 🫠 (Smart move, Matt.)

But here’s what he did share: the infrastructure and strategies that make it possible to hit "send" at monster scale without getting nuked.

🛠️ The Infrastructure Built To Scale

Mailchimp? Cute.
Aweber? Please.

Matt rolled up his sleeves and built a custom CRM from scratch — one that automates daily emails based on:

• Real-time stock ratings

• Subscriber engagement data

• Cohort-driven revenue targeting

Basically, if you blink, his system has already sold something (and sent a gazillion emails).

📨 Email Delivery Pipes: SendGrid Since 2010

MarketBeat partnered with SendGrid as their SMTP backbone, and they’re not just skating by on shared IPs.

• 7+ dedicated IPs (and growing)

• Full control over domain/IP reputation

• Zero risk of being dragged down by someone else’s mistakes

When you're sending millions of emails daily, you don't share the playground. You build your own.

🧩 Multiple Lists. Single Domain.

MarketBeat runs multiple newsletters under the same MarketBeat brand umbrella — but everything flows through one unified sending domain.

• Different newsletters = different flavors for different trading strategies.

• Some readers subscribe to one. Many subscribe to all.

• Goal: Own as much inbox real estate as possible.

More lists = more mindshare = more $$$.

📬 ISP-Specific Deliverability Strategies

At 5M+ subs, one-size-fits-all doesn’t cut it.

Each ISP (Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft) gets its own handcrafted deliverability strategy.

Here’s the breakdown:

Gmail

• Laser-focus on recent openers and clickers.

• Daily monitoring via Google Postmaster Tools to catch any reputation dips before they become disasters.

Yahoo / AOL

(Yahoo’s recent algorithm change was brutal.)

• Cut 90% of Yahoo sending volume at the height of the crisis.

• Only mailing to hyper-recently engaged users (like we talked about in Yahoo Nuked Your Deliverability).

• Stopped acquiring new Yahoo addresses from co-reg sources.

If Yahoo were a nightclub, MarketBeat’s now operating a strict VIP-only door policy.

Microsoft

• Dedicated IP pools just for Microsoft domains.

• Customized content streams: Microsoft users get a different flavor of email than Gmailers to better fit Microsoft’s strict filters.

🎯 The Big Takeaway:

Delivering at this scale isn’t just "send and pray." It’s part art, part war room strategy.

• Precision at scale: MarketBeat’s custom CRM allows them to easily segment, route, and tailor content based on specific ISPs in real-time.

• Deliverability consultant on speed dial: SendGrid handles ISP mitigation requests before they snowball.

• Adding new IPs every year: More private roads = smoother traffic.

• Extreme hygiene: 21-day window to engage or you're unsubscribed.

You can listen to full podcast below.

FULL PODCAST: How MarketBeat Delivers to 5.4M+ Subscribers (Daily. Repeatedly.)

🎧 Listen to Episode 1 Now: https://youtu.be/NwipDlN1Elc

Quick Yahoo Update:

Still broken. Still annoying. 🥲

In case you blinked, Yahoo's Postmaster headaches are alive and well.

We tried to get aggressive — reactivating clickers up to 90 days back — thinking, “Hey, maybe we can sneak some old-timers back onto the ride.”

Yeah, no. 🚫

The momentum flatlined, and we slammed the brakes.

Here’s where we landed:

The base engagement window for our Yahoo Managed Domains is now locked at 30/15/7:

• 30-Day Clickers

• 15-Day Openers

• 7-Day Added

These Newsletters are going out twice daily, so keep that in mind with your own engagement windows.

Sometimes, less really is more.

BEFORE YOU GO

Better Inbox Placement Starts Here

If your emails aren’t landing in the inbox, they’re not doing their job. I’ve seen too many brands struggle with deliverability issues without knowing why.

The truth is, a few key optimizations can make all the difference in getting your emails seen, opened, and clicked.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s newsletter.

Time for you to scale,

Chris Miquel

PS: If this is what we drop in Episode 1, just imagine what’s coming next. Think deeper tactics, weirder hacks, and guests who make inboxes rain. Stay tuned — and maybe forward this to a friend who still thinks Mailchimp is “pretty scalable.” 😉