The Newsletter Agency Founder Who Helped a Client 10x Revenue by Increasing Their Cost Per Lead

This week on Audience Bridge Insights, I sat down with Nathan May, founder of The Feed Media, the largest agency focused specifically on growing newsletter brands.

And let me say this upfront:

If you're still optimizing for cheap leads instead of valuable readers, you're building a list that looks good and performs terribly.

Nathan and I went deep on what's actually working right now in paid acquisition, why Facebook still dominates newsletter growth, and the biggest mistakes publishers make once they start scaling.

Here's the story that stopped me cold.

You can watch the entire podcast now or scroll down to get my insights.

One of Nathan's clients was stuck.

Their cost per lead was low. Their list was growing. But revenue wasn't moving.

So Nathan did something most growth marketers would never recommend:

He increased their cost per lead by 30%.

And revenue went up 10x.

How?

They stopped training Facebook to find "anyone who would sign up."

And started training it to find "people who would actually engage."

Before the change, they were telling Facebook:

After the change:

The algorithm did exactly what they asked.

When you optimize for signups, you get signups.

When you optimize for engagement, you get engaged readers.

The cost per lead went up. But the value per subscriber went up 10x.

That's not a growth hack. That's understanding how to build a real business.

That’s why our Smart Leads at Audience Bridge are only tied to subscribers who actually click inside emails.

This is the trap most publishers fall into:

They obsess over CPL.

$2 per subscriber sounds better than $3 per subscriber, right?

Wrong.

If the $2 subscriber never opens your emails and the $3 subscriber clicks, buys, and stays subscribed for a year, you just paid 33% less for 10x the value.

Nathan sees this constantly:

The cheap traffic sources (co-reg, boosts, traffic exchanges) look great upfront.

Then you realize:

You didn't save money. You wasted it.

This is what Audience Bridge is solving for newsletter publishers by providing insights by source and cohort to understand what the real costs are for generating engaged subscribers.

Here's what changed in the last few years:

The old Facebook playbook was all about interests, demographics, and micro-targeting.

That era is over.

Today, Facebook learns from your creative.

Your ads teach the algorithm who your reader actually is.

The winning strategy now:

If your ad could apply to "everyone," it will convert no one.

Nathan's advice: "Stop trying to be clever. Be specific."

Don't say: "Get smarter about business"

Say: "B2B founders, stop losing deals because your follow-up emails suck"

The second one converts. The first one gets ignored.

One of my favorite parts of the conversation was around deliverability, because almost no one wants to talk about it until it's already broken.

I dropped the truth bomb about open rates with Nathan:

Not all 40% open rates are created equal.

A list where everyone opens sometimes will always outperform a list where half the list never opens.

Zombie subscribers don't just sit there doing nothing.

They actively hurt inbox placement.

If you're still blasting your full list "for the sponsors," you're playing with fire.

Because here's what happens:

You destroyed your reach trying to inflate your numbers.

With Smart Delivery, that we built into Audience Bridge, you get an inside look at performance by ISP (Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc.) to keep an eye on any issues that may be occurring before it’s to late.

The best publishers Nathan works with don't just grow lists.

They grow valuable audiences.

Here's what they do:

As Nathan put it:

If your average subscriber generates $10/year and your competitor's generates $2/year, you can pay 5x more for acquisition and still win.

That's the moat.

Near the end of our conversation, Nathan said something that really stuck:

That reframe changes everything.

Because if you solve the value problem first, the growth problem becomes easy.

You can outbid competitors. You can afford better acquisition sources. You can build a real business instead of a vanity metric.

But if you solve growth first and ignore value, you just build a bigger problem.

We'll look at your acquisition sources, engagement metrics, and revenue per subscriber and show you exactly where you're leaving money on the table and how you can leverage Audience Bridge to scale your list the smart way.

👉 Click here to book your call

(If you're spending on subscriber acquisition but revenue isn't scaling proportionally, you need this call.)

Let’s acquire those engaged subscribers,

Chris Miquel

PS: That newsletter Nathan helped? They didn't just 10x revenue by increasing CPL. They built a business that could actually sell because the unit economics finally made sense. Cheap subscribers build cheap businesses.

BEFORE YOU GO

This is just the surface. The full episode with Nathan May is packed with real numbers, real strategies, and real mistakes we've all made (including me).

🎧 Listen now 👈