MEET THE CREATOR
Leo Askan has been interviewing SaaS bootstrappers and shares insights about the SaaS space in his weekly newsletter called SaaStrappers.
Leo has over 12 years of experience in SaaS growth marketing. He organizes quarterly SaaS events in Istanbul as the local leader of SaaStock. Last year, he started his newsletter to expand his network with bootstrapped founders worldwide.
But beyond this, he’s an experienced name in audience building. To name a few of his previous projects:
- In 2015, he created an e-book listing the Best Articles on Medium. This led him to go viral on Twitter, with 100K+ impressions and get attention of big names such as Gary Vaynerchuk and Guy Kawasaki.More importantly, he collected 5,000 e-mails in 3 months.
- He grew the Visit Montenegro Instagram account to over 20K followers organically and sold it.
- He created a community with over 1,000 university students, turned it into an NGO and shared free educative content about online marketing.He reached over 300K impressions on his YouTube channel.
- Last year he launched an e-book called “Audience First – Audience Building Handbook” and reached over 1,000 downloads on Gumroad.
I’m still impressed by that Medium project he did years ago when only a few names tried those strategies. So, I wanted to learn how he reflects his visionary approach to audience-building in his newsletter.
Levent used outreach strategies heavily for all these projects to reach his target audience and achieve organic growth. Today, he believes that personalized outreach is more important than ever to stand out in the crowd.
Although his biggest growth lever is the ‘Recommendations’ feature, he also used personalized outreach extensively while building his newsletter audience.
During our conversation, he shared:
- 4 personalized outreach strategies to grow your e-mail list
- The main pros and cons of the interview format
- Key aspects of building a newsletter audience
- Why he doesn’t have a bigger e-mail list today, despite his solid experience in audience building
Let’s dive in!
NEWSLETTER IDENTITY CARD
TOOL STACK
- ESP → Beehiiv*
- Writing → Google Docs
- Task Management → Notion
- Curation & Note taking → Apple Notes
- Digital products → Gumroad
- Outreach → F5Bot, Expandi
- Video recording → Streamyard
- Video transcript → Descript
- Video repurpose → Vidyo.ai
FOUR WAYS OF USING PERSONALIZED OUTREACH TO GROW YOUR NEWSLETTER AUDIENCE
1. Track posts with relevant keywords on Reddit
F5Bot is a free service that emails you when your selected keywords are mentioned on Reddit, Hacker News and Lobsters.
He used this tool to get notified when a new post about bootstrapping was shared on Reddit. He commented on these posts by mentioning parts from his newsletter and drove engagement. He also send DMs on Reddit to users who publishes these posts and users who make comments. Those engagements turned into new subscribers and new connections. He even interviewed someone he met on Reddit.
Additionally, he recommended Gummysearch as an alternative platform to reach your audience on Reddit.
2. Send a DM to attendees of LinkedIn events
Leo search for “bootsrappers” keyword on LinkedIn regularly. This search doesn’t only show relevant posts and people but also events created in your niche.
Leo found an event for SaaS bootstrappers organized by Nathan Latka, a well-known name among them.
Then, he made auto outreach to attendees of that event by using the Expandi tool. Here is the message he used during his outreach:
3. Find products from your niche on Indie Hackers
Leo used Indie Hackers to network with bootstrappers, explore new interview guests and promote his newsletter through outreaches.
To reach bootstrappers, he created a list of products by filtering self-funded B2B products and sent DMs.
He also published posts that summarize bootstrappers’ stories.
One of his posts featuring an interview made it to the front page of Indie Hackers and was also shared in the IH newsletter.
4. Monitor posts from your target audience on X
TweetDeck enables you to silence the cacophony on X by monitoring specific keywords and accounts you’re interested in.
Leo used it to track tweets containing the keyword ‘bootstrapped,’ sent DMs to those accounts and people who engaged in the comments, and shared his newsletter.
Why he doesn’t have a bigger email list despite his experience in audience-building
Leo started his newsletter to expand his network. So he mainly focused on subscriber quality.
However, I also know that Leo is an experienced name in audience building.
So, I couldn’t help but wonder why he doesn’t have a bigger email list for his newsletter today.
His answer is an honest take on a common problem:
“Recently, I’ve been struggling with shiny object syndrome. I’ve been working on multiple projects at the same time. This way, I learn a lot, that’s for sure. But if you want to be successful in audience building, you need to be laser-focused on that project. If you don’t apply all those growth strategies consistently, it won’t work. I experimented with those strategies but couldn’t continue implementing them.
Let me highlight something very important here. If you expect quick monetization and don’t see results in the early days, it’s easy to get distracted by other projects that might generate revenue.
Building an audience takes time. Monetizing an audience takes even more time. It requires patience both financially and mentally.
So, if you start a newsletter and want to maintain your focus, you need to be well-prepared financially or run it as a side project with no monetization expectation.”
BONUS: RUNNING A NEWSLETTER WITH AN INTERVIEW FORMAT
Here are Leo’s opinions about the key pros and cons of running a newsletter with an interview format:
Pros
- Interviews are great to meet and network with people. You might build new connections that might turn into other business opportunities.
- Leo did interviews through video calls, turned each long-form conversation into a newsletter and then created short-form clips for social media with vidyo.ai. This way, he created materials for multiple platforms at once.
- In general, people love to be interviewed and share their stories. So, the majority doesn’t question your list size, even in the early days of your newsletter. This is a win-win.
Cons:
- Your publishing schedule depends on your guests, so continuous search for new names and follow-ups are required to ensure a seamless process.
3 Popular Issues from SaaStrappers
- Everything You Need to Know about Bootstrapping
- Generating $1M ARR in 3 months: Interview with the co-founder of an AI short-form video tool
- Valuable Advice from SaaS Bootstrappers to SaaS Bootstrappers
Where to find Levent Askan
*indicates affiliate links
