Scott Perry walks through his 90-day goal process for growing Substack paid subscribers. He started Q3 2024 with 721 total subscribers and 2.8% paid conversion, reached 983 total and 9.6% paid by Q4, then hit 41-47% conversion rates in early 2025 using organic reach, direct outreach, and paid ads.
Chapters
Once you have an understanding of how your marketing web is designed, then you have to define whatever your 90-day objective. And this is what the Close the Gap program is all about. This is what the last workshop was all about. And I'm gonna actually show you the power of the 90-day objective. I've been doing this since July of 2018, so I'm not gonna take you all the way back. Beginning in the third quarter of 2024, My priority, my objective was I want 900 free subscribers or 900 total subscribers. I want 30 paid subscribers. That's what I was shooting for. I started with 721 and 20 paid. I ended up with 866 total, 24 paid. So obviously didn't reach my objective. But the thing that I was really collecting data about was how many of my subscribers are becoming paid subscribers. And I achieved, in my first attempt in the third quarter of 2024, 2.8% of all subscribers became paid subscribers. This is completely average. Everybody I know and have talked to that is leveraging Substack as part of their marketing strategy tells me that between 2 and 3% is the norm. Anything over 4% is really good. So I got some data, I iterated and improved my strategy. And, you know, there's the strategy and is all laid out here. I'm identifying my constraint. I'm figuring out how I'm using organic reach and direct outreach and paid advertising and implementing those strategies and iterating my objective and plan. In the last quarter of 2024, I wanted to get 1,000 overall subscribers and 40 paid subscribers. I started with 866 and had 24 paid. I ended up with 983 and 35. So I didn't achieve my objective again, but I came closer. And the real important data here was 9.6% of all subscribers became paid subscribers. And every digital marketer and guru on Substack who has heard me talk about that number told me I was a liar. If you want proof, I am happy to go show you how I'm calculating these numbers. In fact, I'll even do that in this last thing because the next set of numbers is really unbelievable. So for this quarter, I'm averaging about 1 new subscriber a day, so I can expect about 100 at the end of the, this first quarter. So I'm just, I'm setting a realistic target of 1.1 Substack subscribers. I'll probably keep it at 1,000 and just keep dropping people that are opening my emails to boost my open and click rates. That's more important to me than total subscriber count. My goal is 50 paid subscribers. I started this quarter with 983 subscribers, 34 were paid. I, of course, don't know what I've achieved yet, but just in the first 2 weeks of January, I'm converting at 41%. I had— this is— these are numbers I got yesterday. All subscribers, 17. So one a day exactly as of yesterday. 7 were paid subscribers. That's a 41% conversion rate. Nobody I've shared that number with that's in what I call the growth hacker club on Substack believes these numbers. And that's fine. I am being very thoughtful, deliberate. I don't— and just to be transparent, I don't anticipate that I'm going to keep this trend going., but let's face it, even if I drop all the way back down to 10%, I'm still outperforming the average by at least a 3x margin. When I checked, actually, I did calculate today and I was at 46%. So even more unbelievable. And just to be, again, like fully and honest, uh, honestly transparent here, I'll, I'll just show you real quick what I'm, how I'm doing this. And these numbers could have changed since this morning, obviously. But yeah, this is— so my open rate is down to 32%. When I started, it was at 40+%. When I was doing Facebook ads to boost my subscriber rate, I was getting 2 subscribers a day instead of 1, but it drove my, my open rate below 30%, which is why I'm going to try to repair that by keeping 1,000 overall subscribers, but Slowly taking people off the list that are, that are not opening, but you know, other numbers that are impressive, 13.1 thousand views for those of you on Substack. That's, that's a pretty highly unusual number. You can see. So I don't know, you, this is, this is another like kind of quick metric that I check just over the last 30 days. If I take those 8 paid subscribers and I divide them by the 32 overall subscribers, I'm still converting in the last 30 days at 25%. But here's, here's how I determined where I'm at so far in January, just again in case the math is helpful. So I'm going to go to my all subscribers. I'm going to go to— I showed you this on my document. I started with 983. I'm currently at 998. So 998 minus 983 is 15. Everybody keep that number in your head for me. And then if I look at my paid subscribers, and I'm not counting comps and I'm not counting gifts, um, I have 2 comp subscribers. They're actually the people that are my coaches, so I'm not charging them for the benefit of following me and my numbers. But I started with 34 paid subscribers. You can see the little green there, and I'm at 41. What'd I just say? 34. So 41 minus 34, that's 7 divided by 15 overall subscribers. That's a 47% conversion rate right now. That's completely a result of the campaign that I'm gonna be showing you. So that's the power of the 90-day objective, the Close the Gap process that you all have access to in the book. And having a very clear 90-day objective and a 3-step plan for how you're going to achieve that objective.
