I just wrapped up my Beehiiv tutorial, where I walked you through step 1 to step done on how to create an email newsletter website with Beehiiv.
This platform is excellent if you’re looking to start a branded, email newsletter that you send out once a week to your audience.
It’s not perfect (not platform is), but where it really shines is that you get a high converting website, the ability to custom design the emails, automations for sales, the ability to segment your audience and a lot of creative ways to monetize your list.
Let’s get started.
High converting websites (though a bit cookie cutter)
Beehiiv websites all have the same sort of “cookie cutter” layout, but it works (similar to Substack).
First you get a big offer section inviting visitors to subscribe to your website. 👇
You can end your site design here, or you can add in different sections at the click of a button. The most common sections to add in are an “archive” section, another call to action to subscribe to the email list, or specific blog posts you want displayed.
Simple and no code
Beehiiv’s website design tools use a simple, no-code approach that focuses on conversion and simplicity over creative control. It makes it easy to build sites quickly but this approach does end up creating websites that all look very similar to each other.
The platform offers basic options like uploading logos, changing fonts and colors, and choosing from preset layouts like Default or Headliner.
These limited choices force most newsletters into the same basic structure with nearly identical home pages and subscribe sections.
While users can adjust spacing and text styles, the underlying framework stays the same across all sites. Most people end up with slight variations of the exact same visual template because there aren’t enough customization options to create something truly unique.
On top of that, free plan users are stuck with a Beehiiv subdomains that make their sites look obviously platform-hosted. But it is free and you can build your list and upgrade later if you like.
Pros:
- Quick and easy setup with no coding required
- Perfect for beginners without design experience
- Fast publishing and launching capabilities
- Simple interface that’s not overwhelming
- Built-in newsletter integration that converts
Cons:
- Limited customization options
- Cookie-cutter appearance across all sites
- Restricted to basic themes and layouts
- Free plans use Beehiiv subdomains
Beehiiv website builder rolling out
Beehiiv is working on a proper website builder so you can have more control over the layout and design of your newsletter website.
Here’s what the website builder (still in beta) can do:
- Drag-and-Drop: You can move stuff like text, pictures, or buttons around with your mouse, like playing with blocks. It’s super easy to make pages look how you want.
- High converting templates: It comes with new designs to start with, so you don’t build from scratch. You pick a template, add your colors, and change fonts in a few clicks.
- Marketing features: You can add animations, custom signup forms, or special pages that change based on what your readers like. It also works great on phones and computers.
- Design control: You can tweak the menu bar, footer, or even add your own code if you’re on a high plan. This makes your site feel more “you.”
Beehiiv’s Website Builder v2, still in beta but it will become fully available at some point.
Email delivery and customization (important!)
The most important aspect of any email service is deliverability. That means, do your emails hit the inbox? Not the spam folder. Not the promotions tab in Gmail. The primary inbox.
Beehiiv focuses on making sure your emails reach your subscribers’ inboxes instead of getting stuck in spam folders.
For most users on Launch and Scale plans, the platform follows a standard delivery process that starts when you hit send. The system automatically checks your subscriber list to remove bad email addresses that don’t exist, which helps avoid delivery problems.
It then records how many people will receive your email and runs additional checks to catch issues like full inboxes or fake addresses.
When problems are found, Beehiiv handles them differently depending on the type. Soft bounces happen when someone’s inbox is temporarily full, and the system will keep trying to deliver these emails for 72 hours.
Hard bounces occur when an email address is completely fake or no longer exists, and these are immediately removed from future sends.
The platform uses Twilio SendGrid as its email delivery service, which they say has improved their deliverability by 52% compared to the previous year. However, getting delivered doesn’t always mean reaching the inbox.
Emails can still end up in spam folders if your sender reputation is poor or your content triggers spam filters.
Several features help improve your email delivery rates.
List cleaning allows you to filter out inactive subscribers who haven’t opened emails in a set time period, like 90 days, which keeps your list healthy and improves open rates.
The analytics dashboard shows important metrics like open rates, click rates, and bounce rates so you can identify delivery problems early.
You can also create segments to target your most engaged readers, which helps with overall delivery. Beehiiv automatically sets up authentication protocols called SPF and DKIM, and provides a DMARC wizard to prevent others from sending fake emails using your domain name.
Smart warming
For users on Max and Enterprise plans, Beehiiv offers beta features that provide more advanced delivery tools like “smart warming.”
Smart warming automatically builds your sender reputation by gradually increasing your sending volume, which helps new newsletters avoid being flagged as spam.
Re-engagement campaigns can automatically send emails to win back inactive subscribers or remove them from your list entirely.
Perhaps most importantly than anything else is that these higher-tier plans include dedicated IP addresses, giving you complete control over your sender reputation instead of sharing an IP address with other users whose poor practices could hurt your delivery rates.
Email marketing automations with Beehiiv
With Beehiiv, you can setup an email autoresponder for new subscribers and various triggers of your choosing. Perfect if you want to create an email welcome series, sell a product or service, create a 6 month autoresponder sequence or a re-engagement sequence.
Email automations work like a chain of messages that send automatically when something specific happens, such as when a new person signs up for your newsletter.
Beehiiv offers different automation features depending on your plan level.
Automations for the Launch, and Scale Plans
For basic automation needs, all beehiiv plans include at least one welcome email feature:
- Launch Plan (name of the free plan): You can set up one welcome email that goes out when someone subscribes. Find this option in your dashboard under “Settings” where you can use a simple editor to write your message.
- Scale Plan Features: This plan gives you access to more powerful automation tools. Go to the “Automations” tab and click “New Automation” to get started. You can choose different triggers like “Signed Up” for new subscribers, then add steps such as sending emails or adding delays between messages. For example, you could create a welcome series with three emails that go out over one week.
How Triggers and Actions Work
The system uses triggers and actions to control when and what happens:
- Triggers include events like someone signing up or upgrading to a paid subscription
- Actions are mostly about sending emails, but you can also add time delays or basic conditions (like sending a different email if someone clicks a specific link)
Tracking Your Results
beehiiv provides analytics to help you understand how your automations perform. You can track open rates, click rates, and see how many people complete your entire automation sequence. This data helps you figure out what works well, like whether your welcome email gets opened frequently.
Current Limitations
The automation features have some restrictions depending on your plan:
- Free and Launch plans only allow the single welcome email
- Scale plan automations are fairly basic, offering only a few trigger options and no advanced logic
- There’s currently no way to automatically stop an automation if someone replies to your emails
While Beehiiv’s email automations handle basic needs like welcome series effectively, they remain simple for most users.
Grow and monetize your audience with Beehiiv
With email marketing and unique monetization features build into Beehiiv, there are quite a few ways to grow and monetize your audience.
1. Beehiiv Boosts (Get Paid to Recommend)
Boosts is like a marketplace where you promote other newsletters and get paid for each new subscriber you send them. After someone joins your newsletter, they see suggestions for other newsletters. If they subscribe, you earn $1-$4 per person (average $1.63).
Who can use it: Scale, Max, or Enterprise plans
Tip: Pick newsletters that make sense, if you’re publishing a personal finance newsletter, a real estate newsletter is a good related topic. You can also check the marketplace and sort by highest payouts.
2. Built in ad Network
Beehiiv has it’s own built out network that you can leverage once you’re on the Scale plan and have a subscribe base as you’re paid based on impressions and clicks of any ads you display.
This ad network connects you with brands that want to advertise in your newsletter. You get paid when people click the ads or just see them. In your Beehiiv dashboard you’ll have an advertising section when creating a new email.
Here you can reject ads that don’t fit your audience.
3. Paid Subscriptions
Charge readers for exclusive content they can’t get anywhere else. Set monthly or yearly prices (like $5/month or $50/year). Create special posts only paying subscribers can read.
4. Affiliate Marketing
Promote products with special links and earn money when people buy through your link. Beehiiv’s also offers a Partner Program that pays you 50% of what new users spend for 12 months. You can also promote other companies’ products.
5. Sponsored content
Companies pay you to write about their products in your newsletter (or they will write the content for you to publish). You can charge $100-$1,000+ based on how many subscribers you have. Write in your own voice while talking about their product.
On top of that, they may also give your audience an exclusive coupon code and an affiliate link. So you get paid to publish the content and make ant commission on conversions.
6. Sell Digital Products / memberships / communities
Create and sell e-books, courses, templates, guides or private communities to your subscribers. Take advantage of the automation feature built in to warm up your audience and convert them into buyers.
Yes, you’ll need a way to host your products (like with an online course platform)
7. Donations and Tips
Ask readers to support your work with one-time or monthly donations. Add “Support Me” buttons linking to a “Buy Me a Coffee” page.
8. Run your own referral programs
Reward subscribers for bringing in new readers, the bigger your audience the better your monetization options become. Give prizes like free content or merchandise for successful referrals. More subscribers means more opportunities to make money from all the other methods.
Final thoughts
Overall Beehiiv is growing in rapid popularity because it’s simple excellent and what it’s designed for; and that’s to publish a weekly email newsletter.
With great monetization features built in a various ways to grow your audience as well as reliable email delivery it’s no surprise that popular brand like The Milk Road and The Neuron use Beehiiv to power their respective publishing businesses.
BEEHIIV
Build a beautiful, high converting newsletter website today with Beehiiv.
Free plan to get you started, Scale plan unlocks all the features you need to grow and monetize your audience.
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1. Website Review Your website may be clear and specific to you, but it may be really confusing to anyone who visits. That's where I come it, I'll give you actionalbe feedback to improve your site with my highly rated gig.2. My YouTube channel Helpful video tutorials showing you how to launch, grow and monetize your audience.
