SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1329 His Product? A Daily Email, 172k Milennial Subscribers and $100k+ in Revenue
15 Mar 2019
Chapter 1: Is email really dead, or is it still a viable communication tool?
Email is not dead. His list is 152,000 people focused on millennials, young people that want to do big things in life. He makes money by selling brand sponsorships at a $30 to $40 cost per 1,000 opens. On average, gets between 40 and 60,000 opens between 1,000 and 2,000 clicks. So that's obviously healthy. He did about 100 grand last year in revenue.
Today, two people based in Chicago, list size 172,000. Again, pursuit, hoping to hit out $800,000 this year, mixing in events, digital products, and more sponsors. This is the Top Entrepreneurs Podcast, where founders share how they started their companies and got filthy rich or crash and burn.
Each episode features revenue numbers, customer counts, and other insider information that creates business news headlines. We went from a couple of hundred thousand dollars to 2.7 million. I had no money when I started the company. It was $160 million, which is the size of many IPOs. We're a bit strapped. We have like 22,000 customers.
With over 5 million downloads in a very short amount of time, major outlets like Inc. are calling us the fastest growing business show on iTunes.
Chapter 2: How did Case Kenny grow his email list to 172,000 subscribers?
I'm your host, Nathan Latka, and here's today's episode. Hello, everyone. My guest today is Case Kenny. He's the founder and editor-in-chief of Pursuit, a top daily email focused exclusively on self-development content. Named a top email newsletter by Entrepreneur Magazine and features in Inc., Forbes, Chicago Tribune, and more. 152,000 daily email subscribers and growing.
Case is also the host of The New Mindset, who does podcasts and iTunes top 50 podcasts focused on real and no BS self-development content. Case, you ready to take us to the top? Yeah, man, let's do it. All right, so we've kind of like, we'll call it flirting. We've been flirting for the past couple of years. Matt, a guy named, a friend named Matt introduced us a couple of years ago.
Then more recently, a guy named Brian in DC. So I'm glad to have you on the show. Yeah, man, me too. It's good to finally connect for sure. So everyone says email's dead. What's your response? It's definitely not dead. I think it's one of the most personal forms of communication in this day and age where you can get DM'd anywhere. You can get hit up on LinkedIn. Like it's personal.
Chapter 3: What revenue model does Case use for his email newsletter?
It's literally your home address. So I firmly believe in the future of email. So true or false? I mean, you've built your whole business really. I mean, your splash page, it's sign up for my email newsletter. That's it. That's all we have to offer. That's all I want to offer. So yeah, for sure. Yeah.
So I want to dive deep into this and just highlight the fact that there are many people building great businesses with this model. You look at Sam part, the hustle, you look at a lot of people, it's just really email and kind of email only really. So case take us back to day one. When'd you launch the company?
Yeah, so I actually launched Pursuit like four years ago, but it was a traditional publisher, traditional online publisher focused on monetizing through programmatic advertising, direct buys, banner ads, right? Or maybe some native. Pivoted about a year ago, actually, to the email-only model. Obviously, I think that's in line with a lot of what's going on in the digital publishing space.
It's increasingly difficult to monetize given the nuances and the changes with third-party Facebook, Instagram, Google, it could really screw you over.
So I took this idea of I didn't want to build my presence on rented land, as I call it, took a look at our assets, saw that email was very engaged, took a look at what Sam was doing at The Hustle or what Alex and Austin are doing at The Morning Brew. And I love that concept. And I really wanted to focus on doing one thing and one thing right.
So just did a simple pivot and then started to host all of our content in a daily email. So what did the site look like before what we're looking at now? Was it literally like a blog website? Yeah, it was like entrepreneur.com. Okay, interesting. So you basically put all that now, you took all that historical long tail content down and now it's all gone out just via emails. Correct.
And it's a little nuanced in that, you know, from a publisher point of view, I wanted to make it special. I didn't want to just say, okay, now instead of having our contributors, which at the time we had over 600, we had folks like Gary Vee, Mark Manson, James Altucher, big name guys, as well as anyone who can contribute open contribution.
Kind of did a pivot, and now it's going to sound like it's all about me, but I actually create all the content in the email. From a self-development standpoint, I saw a lot of value in trying to be more relatable, not hiding behind a team of contributors, just being Case Kenny, here's his thoughts on certain self-development. So I actually write all the content from a first-person point of view.
It's short, 400 or 500 words in the email, but brought it all back in. Obviously, I have a team of editors and whatnot, but yeah, it's all... it's all my content in the, in the daily email. So, so how does that work? Right. So like Sam, they've got a team of four people that kind of sit around and drink coffee all day and, you know, throw different headlines out and laugh and say that works.
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Chapter 4: What was the initial model for Pursuit before it pivoted to email?
So we are really, really adamant about it. So it varies. I mean, it could be 40,000 opens for 60,000. It really, it really depends. Yep. And then of whatever the 30, 40% that actually open, what's what's click throughs look like? Uh, it's strong. So again, that's it. That question depends on how many links we include, but we, we have, uh, you know, three links plus our advertiser links.
So it depends on that. Really the metric that I'm interested in is advertiser click-through rate, which for us is about two, it's about 2%, um, which is, which is high, uh, relative, relative to my, at least my knowledge of other email newsletters. And is that, is that 2% of the 40% that open or 2% of the total list? 2% of the people who open. Okay. Got it.
So if you're sending to 172,000 people and let's say 60,000 open, you're saying on average, you'll drive about 1200 clicks to the advertiser. Correct. Yeah. That's, I mean, look, it's pretty solid. And why have you decided to cost? Why have you decided to charge? You're not a CPM base. You're not a cost per click base. You're a cost per open base. Why that metric?
Yeah, I mean, that's the value for us. I mean, I don't want to play a CPA game. I don't want to play a CPC game. I think most publishers don't want to do that. We also don't really play in affiliates either. I think our value is that we think we've created a great piece of content as a publisher. And the value there certainly is eyeballs on with opens, but it's the clicks from there.
So it's a cost per thousand opens value. Um, which I think at scale, like the value is always there. So yeah, obviously we offer make goods and if we don't always hit our stride, but we're after great case studies with our advertisers. So we're willing to, you know, make sure that we perform. That's great.
So just to actually, just to sum up the economics in one sense, 170,000 send, call it maybe 40,000 opens is a worst case scenario, 2% clicking there and they're paying 30 bucks per fourth at 40,000 opens or times 40. So it's like 1200 bucks basically for a day. Correct. That's a little under, but yes, that's about right. Yeah. Yeah. And again, it all, it all depends, right?
So let me ask you a question. Does the advertiser kind of prepay for how many opens you think will happen or do you just build them after based off how many opens? I like to prepay surprise. A lot of these folks will prepay. Uh, the, the, the logic there is sound, you know, we create this content upfront, we hold the inventory for you. We can't replace it within 40 hours necessarily.
So you need to prepay us sometimes to do 50, 50 prepay. But if not, it's always, it's always, we don't, we're not going to, I mean, we'll do like a net 30, but usually it's 48 hours prior or 48 hours following.
Name a couple of companies that you have potentially analyzed in the past of essentially like listing your email list on, I mean, like paved where essentially their marketplaces were this kind of thing. Have you looked at those guys? No, no, really. I mean, I mean, I mean, no. So you own, you have all the direct relationships with the advertisers yourself. Correct. Okay.
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Chapter 5: How does Case create content for his email newsletter?
Do you do that at Pursuit or no? I mean, call to action in a lot of emails is reply. So we definitely try to incentivize people to reply. It's not something that we necessarily optimize towards, but it's definitely something we encourage. And we always say that we always respond. We'll respond to everything. But yeah, we include a CTA that has that. Yeah.
I just got your first email subject line guys. It's clever. I'll see you there or I'll see you at another time.
I won't read the whole thing, but a part says, imagine if Tony Robbins, Oprah Winfrey, Tim Ferriss, and that really smart guy from accounting had a baby and that baby was super clever, great writer, but not too wordy and sent you daily perspectives that help you be the bad-ass that you really are. That is what pursuit is all about. Nothing more, nothing less. So cases of good stuff.
What's the open rate on this, on this first email that goes out? Do you know? Uh, I'd have to check that one's high. It's probably in the seventies. Yeah, that's great. Now, do you do walk me through as you start thinking about monetizing your own stuff? How do you, you know, product development is not easy. It can be costly. Are you thinking you'll start with physical products or digital?
Probably digital and probably events, frankly. There's a lot of interest. Everyone's always asking, oh, when are you going to do a Chicago meetup, LA, New York, something like that. I think that'd be easy for us to scale. There's no overhead initially. So we'll probably start with events and then probably from there, digital products.
But one of the reasons that we're adamant about testing and we even discount our rates for brands right now is to understand what types of products resonate with our audience, whether they are digital, whether they are service or whether they are some kind of offline CBG or something like that is digital.
using that experience to then fulfill our own internal development of those products potentially. But for now, advertisers and then events and then the products will come. Yeah. Let's go back quickly to the machine last minute or two here. How many people on the teams total today? Two, myself and one other person. Okay. So when you say you have an editing team, it's just this one other person.
It's myself or that person. Yeah. I mean, I've had VAs and things like that, but it's, it's not fast enough for me. I need someone here in Chicago and I have that. So they're actually there in that office with you. Correct. Oh, very cool. Okay. And then how do you decide when to bring someone on full time versus keeping, keeping them as like a VA?
Uh, honestly, I, I, I want to keep the team as lean as possible. I mean, I want pursuit pursuits going to scale. We've got very, uh, very high forecasts and projections for the year, but for me, I've always envisioned it more of a lifestyle business. And to me, that's three, four people max. I really don't envision the need for a huge team.
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Chapter 6: What strategies does Case use to monetize his email newsletter?
So for right now, two people's fine. Bring on another person once we hit a couple of our benchmarks revenue-wise. And what's your goal for benchmarks this year in 2019? Goal right now, if we're not including our expansion to the other monetization efforts, is around 800, 900K. And that'd be an increase of what from last year? Just shy of 100. Oh, wow. Okay, good. That'd be a good increase.
All right, man. Good stuff. Let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book? Favorite business book, The Lean Startup. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying right now? Always a big fan of Bezos, especially with all the stuff in the news. He's scaling. He doesn't care. I love him.
Number three, what is your favorite online tool for building the business? Uh, active campaign probably makes mix. I need it. Yeah. Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? Seven. And what's your situation? Married, single kiddos, single, uh, no kids running around Chicago. Nope. And, uh, last set of questions here. How old are you? I'm 30. And, uh, last, uh, last question.
What do you wish your 20 year old self knew? I would say don't be afraid to pivot, whether that's in your business or in your personal life. Don't be afraid to pivot. Guys, email is not dead. His list is one hundred fifty thousand people focused on millennials, young people that want to do big things in life.
He makes money by selling brand sponsorships at a thirty to forty dollar cost per one thousand opens on average gets about six between forty and sixty thousand opens between a thousand and two thousand subscribers. clicks. So that's obviously healthy.
Did about a hundred grand last year in revenue today, two people based in Chicago list size, 172,000 again, pursuit, uh, hoping to hit out $800,000 this year, mixing in events, digital products, um, and more sponsors case. Thanks so much for taking us to the top. Thank you, man. Appreciate it.
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