I scaled an email list from 0 to 500k subscribers in 10 months without using paid ads.
Here’s exactly how I did it:
(Steal my playbook)
THREAD
1. Cold email
Cold email was our top channel.
We built a tool that aggregated the following data from Instagram:
> Accounts with posts tagged #travel
> Popular travel account followers (e.g. NatGeo)
> Accounts people geotagged with popular traveling destinations (e.g. Bali)
And continued collecting until we hit 5 million addresses.
Once we had the emails, it was time to start sending.
Which meant finding some killer subject lines.
Luckily, we knew everything about these people from their IG profiles, so…
We were able to send highly-personalized subject lines.
For example:
> Your {{hashtag}} photo
> Travel influencer
> Came across your Instagram
> {{username}} <> Email Travel Series
The average open rate?
45-50%.
Meaning out of the 5 million addresses, almost 2.5 million saw our email.
Not bad.
Now we couldn’t just auto-sub these people to the list…
But we could ask them to opt-in to our new community via our broadcasts.
And with our highly-personalized emails based on the data collected, we achieved 10-15% CTRs.
Resulting in 100's of thousands of clicks from roughly 5 million emails sent.
Note:
This result was only possible because of the time we put into segmentation & personalization.
9 Email Formats That Could Make You More Money Today
From a $200MM Email Marketer
Thread:
1. Story Email
- Best for: Colder traffic (people who don't know you as well)
- Why it works: Stories trigger emotion and help readers relate.
How to do it:
- Open with a pain point your audience feels
- Show how the character overcame it (your product as the hero)
- Close with a direct call-to-action (CTA)
Pro Tip: Keep it short. Make the reader see themselves in the story so they need your product.
2. Customer Reviews Email
Best for: Warmer traffic (they know your company but haven’t bought yet)
Why it works: Builds credibility and reduces risk in the buyer’s mind.
How to do it:
- Pick specific, outcome-focused reviews (“I increased my sales by 30%”)
- Address objections (“I thought it was too expensive until…”)
- End with a strong CTA: “Join 20,000+ happy customers—grab yours here.”
Pro Tip: Include pictures, names, or real quotes to make it genuine.