The "Growth Loop" that Tripled My Newsletter Subscribers
Build this system in 15 minutes or less.
Want to have your audience build your email list for you?
Today, you’ll learn how to build a marketing automation that will 2x, 3x, or even 50x your email signups—all on autopilot.
I call this the “Fair Trade.”
It’s how I get genuine testimonials from people I’ve never met…using an automation you can build in 15 minutes (or less).
If you’re looking to grow an audience on social media, collect more email leads, and nurture prospects that turn into clients…this will help you do that.
It will create a flywheel effect for continuous email list growth.
I’ll be describing how you can build this entire automation from start to finish.
And the examples I’ll be using is from my personal brand.
If you’re new here:
I write a newsletter called “The Autopreneur” which gives 1 tip on AI & Automation every week.
Two weeks ago, I launched an educational email course to my newsletter subscribers called “Build Your AI Marketing Machine.”
So far it’s been a big hit →
Here’s the open rates and click through rates from the free course:
Just yesterday, I compared these stats with my new friend from Twitter, Matthew Brown.
Compared with some of his client’s stats, I’m right on par with or slightly better in terms of open rates and click-through-rates.
Matt’s one of the best Ghostwriter’s I’ve met this year…so when he tells me I’m on the right path then I can breath easier.
As an Autopreneur, I’m constantly looking for ways to leverage myself.
Whether its a piece of tech, an automation, or offloading to an expert - always be on the hunt for ways to “clone yourself.”
Here’s my macro strategy for the next 12 months:
My Marketing Strategy for 2025.
Social media is getting crowded.
It’s starting to feel like the kiddie pool at a backyard BBQ in July.
My business strategy for 2025 → borrow other people’s trust. Using creator collaborations, sidekicks, and JV partnerships in order to find new eyeballs.
Relying solely on organic traffic to build a business will soon going to be a losing strategy…as our social media kiddie pool runs out of room.
But networking takes time…
So my next thought was:
“How can I get the audience to promote my course to their channels?”
Social proof is the most powerful tool to grow your business. Without it, you’re losing hundreds of thousands of dollars over time.
And every single time I share a testimonial…I earn more revenue.
There is no other piece of content or copy that’s a close second.
My goal is simple:
Ask the reader to give a testimonial review of my free AI course, which will attract new people to signup for the course.
This allows me to find new communities of potential customers. Allowing me to acquire more leads with much less effort.
The Big Problem.
Getting testimonials is much harder than all the gurus will tell you.
Paying customers will rarely go the extra mile to leave a review…let alone share your stuff to their social media.
Why?
The reciprocity scale is no longer tipping in your favor.
They paid you for your thing, and you delivered. The scale is back to even.
If you were to ask them for a testimonial, to the client it feels like you’re overasking.
This is also why so many business owners I mentor, have a hard time asking their clients for a testimonial. What’s worse, is they don’t have a system for it. You should always have some sort of template to guide your client in completing the testimonial.
But in this situation, there’s an added level of difficulty.
These free course subscribers haven’t paid me a dollar yet!
A New Marketing Technique.
Chenell Basilio is one of my favorite marketers on the internet (and a fellow Philadelphian!).
After you read this → go subscribe to her INSANELY valuable newsletter, “Growth in Reverse” (https://growthinreverse.com/)
#notsponsoredbutwishiwas
It’s one of the only newsletters I read religiously…one that challenges the way I think about marketing & business growth.
Back in June, Chenell wrote a story about a Twitter creator who grew a massive newsletter using a social media marketing trick.
He used what Chenell calls a “Growth Loop” to increase newsletter signups AND audience growth at the same time.
This guy went from zero presence online to building a 100,000+ person Twitter following AND a 50k+ list within a few months.
I sat back in my recliner after studying this growth loop…wondering, “How can I use this trick inside my own newsletter...but automate the entire thing?”
And during the creation of my Free 5 Day AI Course…
The light bulb went on.
I found the perfect way to include this growth loop…
But with a slightly better twist.
One that’s uniquely my own.
Here’s how it works:
Step 1: Give away so much free value that you feel sick over it.
Unfortunately…I used to think like this guy. You've probably even caught me ranting against guys like Gary Vee and Hormozi for repeating this mantra.
Here’s what I didn’t understand that they did:
The “give everything away” model is the fastest way to grow distribution at scale.
There’s 2 thoughts we all have as fledgling business owners:
If I give it all away, then I won’t have anything left to sell.
If I give it all away, then they won’t need me for anything else.
And both of which…I’ve learned…are dead wrong.
If you don’t give away at least 1 thing that you know people would pay you money for…then you’re only as good as the information you talk about:
And the moment your information is no longer valuable to the market, your brand is no longer valuable.
When you give this valuable thing away for free…they start banging down your door to pay you money. They start following you religiously, and start telling their friends about you. They start giving you testimonials (like the ones below) without you ever asking for them.
People need to feel provided for, to know that you fully understand them, and that you’re willing to serve their highest interest.
And when you give away so much that you feel sick over it, you attract less “kiddie pool” clients and more “olympic swimming pool” clients.
But my aim was to give away so much free value inside the course that someone can’t wait to open the next email.
Offering the straightest, quickest path to a desired result.
Throughout the course, I teach you how to build your very own “AI Employee.” One that writes & repurposes your social media content. It even schedules & posts this content across multiple social media channels…
Using only a chatGPT window and a basic spreadsheet.
You’ll never have to log on to social media ever again to post content.
Its the exact system I use today.
These AI & Automation tools save me hundreds of hours a month, and keep me focused on revenue generating activities…not wasting time writing content or messing with shitty GPT prompts.
In the free course, you learn how to build a marketing system I charge $4000 for. I don’t hold back any information or gatekeep anything. You learn the headaches to avoid, my funnel strategy, the entire marketing automation, instructional videos, and all the benefits this AI-driven system provides.
When I decided to give this away for free…it made me sick to my stomach. In the end, karma is the best strategy.
But maybe you don’t have time to learn?
Maybe you’re flat out exhausted from running a business, and your brain is too tired to figure it all out?
This is where our growth loop becomes valuable → People will do anything to save time.
Re-read that sentence again and again.
Make it the mantra for your business model.
Step 2: Engineer a “Fair Trade” with your reader.
After 5 days of giving insanely value info, the reciprocity scale points back in my direction.
Keeping with the theme of saving time, I included a “fast forward” button for people who just want the next email to come ASAP.
All of this sets up the reader for a huge “time-saving” bonus when they complete the 5 day course.
Ask Yourself: ‘What’s one thing that I could offer my audience, that is so absurdly valuable, they would do almost anything to get it for free?’
This valuable thing is free for everyone taking the course, but only under 1 stipulation:
We trade for it.
I thought, “Why don’t I just give them the whole system, templatized and built for them…in return for a genuine testimonial?”
The Fair Trade:
“If I gave you a $4000 marketing system, complete with an AI + Automation tools, that you could tailor for your business in minutes…Would you write a social media post about my course?”
Your first thought might be like, "That doesn’t sound fair at all.”
On the surface, you would be correct. But you’re only looking at it from the POV of the subscriber.
Take a look at it from the my side:
What happens when that 1 social media testimonial turns into 20 new course subscribers?
What happens if 5 of them give testimonials to their audience?
What happens when I have a swipe file of 100 testimonials for a free course…what will people think about my paid stuff?
What happens when 1000, 5000, 10000 people go through the course - at my current rate of 20% who offer testimonials?
What happens to my list, when someone with 100,000 followers writes a testimonial?
This is called the Network Effect.
And it’s the only viable way to scale a great business with organic traffic.
The best part? These testimonials are evergreen. They will do the selling for you forever. You can use them literally anywhere - in your emails, your content, sales pages, etc.
I wanted to tip the reciprocity scale so far on the reader’s side, that none of this feels like “work.”
So the next step was to make the act of posting this testimonial as easy as a few clicks.
Step 3: Remove as much friction as possible.
If writing the testimonial post “feels” like a chore or work, then no one will do it.
Your readers will do the mental math: the farther away they are from completing the task…the less likely they are to take the first step.
So I needed to find a way to automate it.
Here was the exact copy:
The Twitter posting link is an entirely automated process.
I used clicktotweet.com to automatically volley up this template based on the template you see above.
Here’s the URL if you want to see how it works: https://ctt.ac/9hAQl
When you click the link, the template is automatically drafted for you as a new tweet.
All the reader has to do is write the review, tag me, and click post.
Unfortunately, LinkedIn does not have this feature. I could build this in a more complex technical automation, but this would require more work than I was willing to figure out.
So for now, the LinkedIn link inside my email sequence just sends the reader to my LinkedIn profile page.
Once the reader publishes their social media testimonial - they reply to my email with proof of life. I ask for this because 90% of the time, LinkedIn doesn’t notify me when I’m tagged in another post.
At this point the deal is done.
My $4000 marketing automation is instantly emailed to them, within minutes of their reply.
Step 4: Automate your end of the bargain.
I didn’t want to be monitoring my inbox for these emails to come through, and then have to send a reply back. Nor did I want to hire a virtual assistant for such a low-value task…
That’s where Make.com comes in.
This email reply automation is so stupid simple. It’s only 3 steps.
And even if you’re the least technical person on the planet, you can have this workflow built and running within 15 minutes or less.
But instead of telling you how to do it…
Why not just show you?
Here’s the automation flow:
Set up a filter inside of gmail: when subject line includes (insert subject line text) → automatically label that email as {name your label} inside of gmail.
When new label is added to email, the automation will trigger.
Delay for 90 seconds.
Download the attachment from google drive.
Send new email to the reader with the downloaded attachment + URL to setup instructions.
Step 5 - Nurture the relationship further.
In October 2024, email is still the single greatest way to build relationships with your prospects.
It’s the only communication medium that everyone signs onto.
Since my automation sends them the delivery email…I will always end that email with a question. This prompts the reader to reply back answering the question and continuing the conversation. More trust = More sales.
Remember: The highest ROI skill you can have is understanding people.
The relationships I’ve built, the amazing clients I’ve helped, the mentors who showed me how to level up…
It’s your people that make you wealthy…Not the assets you own.
Learn to automate the button clicks…not the conversations.
Benefits of The Fair Trade
Here’s what happens when you deploy this sales automation:
You stop manually asking for testimonials…and start getting referrals from prospects you’ve never met before.
You get more net new leads & followers by uncovering new communities of people.
You fast track the “Know Like Trust” factor by borrowing the trust that someone else built with this new audience.
Your list growth is built by your raving fans. This growth compounds over time - the more people on your list, the more raving fans you get, the more people who provide a testimonial. Make the free thing they get so ridiculously valuable and you’ll go mega viral.
Your work is entirely automated from start to finish. All you have to do is open your inbox and continue these valuable conversations.
It’s such a crazy marketing hack, definitely one of my favorites that I’ve engineered to date.
It’s tripled my weekly newsletter signups in 2 weeks since launching it.
But I won’t lie to you…
Even though I worked my ass off building this free course…I never expected so many testimonials to come from it.
But everytime someone writes a post, I feel like a little kid on Christmas morning.
Here’s some of my favorites so far:
These amazing entrepreneurs all took my free 5 day AI course.
They’re pioneers who want more for themselves, and take the necessary steps to get there.
They’re regular people like you and me, business owners striving for more freedom and autonomy.
If you’re interested, you should join 950+ other business owners leveling up their AI & Automation skills here:
TLDR:
Give so much value up front that it tilts the reciprocity scale in your favor.
Engineer a “Fair Trade” for the reader → subscriber or reader does a desired action and you give them something valuable that you sell for free.
Have the person reply to the email after they’ve completed the action you want them to do.
Use my simple Make.com automation (video above) to automate an email delivering your valuable thing.
Include a strategic question at the end of your delivery email, to prompt the person to reply back…continuing the sales warmup process.
Thank your lucky stars you’re subscribed to “The Autopreneur” newsletter…and forward this newsletter article to a friend.
See you next week Autopreneur.
Time > Everything,
PS - If you’re looking to get more leads and clients without working more hours…
Here’s a few suggestions that can help you:
Build Your Ai Marketing Machine - Get my Free 5 Day Email Course and learn how to build your “AI Employees.”
Grow Your Business to 40k Per Month - The Complete B2B Roadmap, including a daily action plan, systems, and automations to help get your business to consistent 40k months.
Done For You Automation Builds - Book a Project Call with me and we’ll discuss any custom automations your business needs.
I've been thinking about the value strategy for weeks and got to the same conclusion
relationship before transactions.
Love this idea, I already have a couple of free email courses, I'll implement 2 to 5 soon, and in the meantime I'll do one better than #6, I'll send this to all 7k+ of my subscribers tomorrow :)