Colin and Samir

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I’m sure you’ve seen this stat:

20% of businesses fail within the first year. By year five, 50% of those businesses failed.

As a company, our goal is to reduce the percentage of companies that fail.

Is that a big goal? Is it audacious? Did you just read it and say “Whatever Alex”?

Probably.

But nothing life-changing is easy. And it never will be.

That’s why over the next year I’m going to share with you how we’re going to accomplish this goal.

And, damn…

As a kid of an immigrant who built a company that he’s been running as a one-man show for the last twenty years…

And for the first time in the last 20 years, took 5 complete days off…

I’m relentless about this goal.

And excited to share it with you.

More to come but today - enjoy this newsletter.

But first, a huge thank you to our partners Ahrefs and Vidico.

In Partnership With Ahrefs

My #1 goal in Q1 is to double our newsletter subscribers.

And aside from Twitter, and Instagram, SEO is our biggest driver of growth.

That didn’t happen by accident.

I live inside Ahrefs Webmaster Tools to keep traffic flowing and find optimization opportunities.

And it’s completely FREE.

I couldn’t think of one reason why not to use it.

How Colin & Samir Use Giveaways to Grow Their Newsletter

Giveaways are often considered a bottom-tier lead-gen strategy.

For one reason - high volume but low quality.

This perception will be flipped after learning about how Colin and Samir used giveaways to grow newsletter subscribers. Mine definitely did.

Colin and Samir ran a giveaway contest two years ago that generated 8000 subscribers in just one day.

It was so successful that they’re back with another giveaway, using the exact same playbook.

This is how they did it.

Pump Up The Volume With Urgency

Colin and Samir’s giveaways have a 24-hour time limit.

If you don’t sign up the moment you see the message, you could miss it.

To make the time limit credible, they title the YouTube announcement, “deleting this video tomorrow”.

On top of it - they keep updating the video title to reflect the time left until the video is deleted.

All of these create a powerful sense of urgency that generates hype and pump up subscriber volume.

Pre-Qualify And Nurture Giveaway Leads

Giveaway leads are cold leads.

Colin and Samir use a couple of tactics to pre-qualify and nurture to maximize return.

On the sign-up page, they noted that the giveaway winner is announced in the newsletter.

This incentivizes subscribers to open at least the first few newsletters.

And they can easily flag those who don’t open as low-quality leads.

In the sign-up confirmation email, they ask subscribers to reply to the email to warm up their inbox.

Again, serving as a subscriber interest indicator.

The giveaway announcement video is meticulously designed to educate the audience.

First, they announce the giveaway.

Then comes the hook: their team picks the prize and you don’t know what it is until they’re done shopping.

Queue the anticipation.

When viewers' attention levels are at their peak, they sneak in a quick intro about the newsletter and why it's worth signing up for.

This primes viewers about the newsletter and filters out uninterested leads.

The goal of a giveaway shouldn’t be to get everyone to sign up, it should be to attract highly interested and engaged leads.

Right Prize = Right Audience

Most giveaways generate low-quality leads because they take their eyes off the prize.

Most prizes are generic and attract a wide audience.

Anyone would give up their email for a trip to Greece without being interested in the return.

Colin and Samir’s giveaway prize is a $1000 creator starter kit.

Who’s interested in a kit with video gear? Current and aspiring content creators! The target audience of their newsletter.

“Show me the incentive, and I'll show you the outcome.”

Align the incentive with your target audience to attract the right people to your giveaway.

If your audience is real estate agents, give away home staging accessories.

If your audience is software engineers, give away software subscriptions.

Know your customer.

Your Giveaway Playbook

So here’s how to apply these tactics to your brand:

1. Create a sense of urgency with a 24-hour giveaway window.

2. Qualify entrants: the purpose of the giveaway is to attract high-quality leads.

3. Tell entrants you’ll announce the winner on the platform you are trying to build, in this case, a newsletter.

4. Build anticipation, and pick a prize that will excite your ideal audience, not the widest audience.

_{In Partnership With Vidico}

Video Marketing Strategy 

Colin & Samir make video look easy because they’re professional creators.

But so does Cascade– a B2B strategy acceleration platform.

When they launched their rebrand on YouTube, the results crushed anything I’d seen from a B2B software company.

They nailed the hook with disruptive humor.

Within days, they racked up:

• 375k+ views

• 56-second viewer retention on a 1-minute video

• Doubled subscriber count

And had a full pipeline to match.

They partnered with Vidico to dial in their video goal and executed flawlessly.

Now it’s your turn to solve your biggest marketing problem.

I got you $500 off your first video project + a FREE video marketing plan to get started.

🕳 Rabbit Hole Reads and Resources

• YouTube → Newsletter: Beehiiv case study on how Colin and Samir expanded from YouTube to newsletters. (LINK)

• Community: What if you could build a Reddit like community on your site? And leverage it for content and retention? This startup made it happen. (LINK)

• The Full Story of Mr Beast: by Colin and Samir w/ 20M views! If you’re a long-time fan or have kept your distance - we highly recommend either way. (LINK)

• What if your D2C products looked nothing alike?: See how Super Coffee radically changes the packaging of similar products to reach different target demographics.

• To say or not to say: fewer Americans want brands to take a stand on controversial issues. (LINK)

• Measure of Success: retailers won’t quit talking about EBITDA. (LINK)

 🎥 3 Creators. Giving You A Personalized Short-Form Playbook.

We opened the next BootCamp up for Cut30.

And it’s specifically for anyone who wants to learn short-form video and use the skill to build their personal brand or business.

At the end of last year, I decided to go all in on short-form video after spending countless years building up brand accounts and personal accounts…

The result was 43 videos that drove 11,000+ followers and 2700+ subscribers.

And I’m sharing all the lessons, playbooks, and tactics with you.

Alongside Oren John and Colin Landforce, both added 400k+ followers last year.

And if you use the code “Examined” you’ll save $100.