We ran a 3-day test ad for our coffee newsletter, acquiring 31 subscribers at $8.13 ad spend and $0.26 CAC.
Aravind and I run an India-specific coffee newsletter for those who love specialty coffee and brew their coffee at home.
We acquired our first 50 subscribers organically. I tweeted out asking my feed to tag people who are into coffee. Then I spent half a day speaking to ~70 people one-on-one on DMs. The feedback validated the newsletter plus gave us insights on what our readers look for.
Our total distribution across socials and newsletters is ~15k. Plus coffee brewing is a micro-niche. These two reasons convinced us ads are the best way to grow our newsletter at a steady pace.
We planned to advertise on IG from day 1 but gave Reddit ads a chance. Big mistake. We believed it was a good idea as nerds hang out in subReddits like r/indiacoffee, and Reddit allows us to target specific subs. We spent $10 to realize the platform gives you impressions but hardly any conversions. We acquired only one subscriber. Someone I respect and has great knowledge mentioned, "Reddit ads are known for bot traffic. You get a lot of impressions or visits but little conversions." I don't know how accurate it is, but it turned out to be true in our case.
We returned to Plan A. Meta ads.
I had no experience running ads. I just set up whatever is needed and created a basic ad. We only wanted to know if this is a path worth pursuing.
The objective was to create a minimalistic ad with zero friction - since this is only a test. We didn't make a fancy carousel or a reel, but a simple static image with text and a cat picture (coffee + cat is kinda our branding.)
We hit publish; the results we pleasantly surprising:
- $8.13 ad spend
- 31 subscribers
- $0.26 CAC
I'd spend $8-10 once a week when I work from cafés. I don't know the industry standards yet but acquiring 31 subscribers for the same price as my day out seemed a good deal, for a start.
What worked?
- Little competition. We're early in the India-Coffee scene. Especially in newsletters - there are some IG, YT creators/channels. I am sure the CAC would have been much higher for a saturated market like marketing, AI, personal development, etc.
- Cat image + Simple copy ("Coffee science for those who brew coffee at home"): I can't help but notice how we go aweee to cute animals, especially cats. It's not a trick; just our branding.
- Website: 8/10 folks say we have a cool website; thanks to Aravind. The coffee + cat theme makes it look premium, legit, and kinda cute.
- "Free": We didn't have the word free on our website prior to ads. But we felt it's a good reassurance to improve conversions.
Next steps:
- We decided to continue the existing ad to keep the momentum up.
- I spoke to Pratish. He runs ads at his job. While the test ad gave me context, the chat with Pratish helped me understand the levels of optimization we can apply to our ads.
- Testing. We will test ads, age groups, genders, cities, interests, etc.
By the way, the ad.
To India's Coffee culture!