Growing a newsletter isn’t always easy. To build a successful newsletter, oftentimes you need to create a community that gets people buzzing. Rewarding them with an NFT is a great way to do that, especially if your newsletter is Web3-focused.
With the recent explosion of interest in NFTs, marketers can now give low-cost digital assets to community members that get them excited and don’t put a dent in their budget. In this guide, we will walk through the best ways to set up your newsletter for success with programs that give free NFTs to your subscribers.
Tools You Will Need
Before we go into setting up your newsletter NFT reward program, we need to get two main tools set up: Beehiiv and Versify
Beehiiv
Beehiiv is an amazing email hosting platform that newsletter producers to seamlessly create referral programs, send automated emails, and more.
Beehiiv pricing ranges from free to $99/month.
Versify
The next tool is Versify. Versify is a platform that lets business owners quickly and inexpensively create Polygon-based NFTs at scale for use in rewards and customer loyalty programs. Versify is the tool we will use for actually creating and then distributing the NFTs.
First, you need to create an NFT on Versify (Versify’s dashboard calls these “Products”). You’ll need to add information like:
- The number of NFTs you want to create
- Insert an image file for the NFTs
- A meta description of the NFTs that will be shown on OpenSea and other marketplaces.
- Any properties you want to be included in the NFTs
After setting up our NFTs on Versify, you can generate a “mint link” that, when shared lets the recipient mint an NFT for free.
Versify pricing ranges from free to $99/month.
Ok. Now it’s time to pick a means of distributing your NFT rewards.
Picking Your Reward System
The system in which you choose to reward readers with your NFTs will determine the actions you ultimately incentivize. Any can be used depending on the current goals you have for your newsletter
There are three main reward systems we will discuss:
- Referral program (ex: refer 3 friends and get an NFT)
- Welcome landing page (Join the newsletter and immediately be sent to a welcome page containing a link to claim your NFT)
- Automated welcome email (Instantly reward people for subscribing to your newsletter by sending them an NFT mint link in your automated welcome email)
The first option (referral program) is designed to help you boost your subscriber account by leveraging your most loyal readers.
The other two options, allow for a more immediate and low-friction way of incentivizing email sign-ups.
Let’s explore each in more detail…
Adding NFTs to a Newsletter Rewards Program
The Referral Program Method
One thing we really love about Beehiiv is how easy they make it to launch and customize a referral program. You can easily set up different rewards depending on how many people refer new subscribers.
It works like this:
- Create rewards. These can be either physical or digital. Physical items you will need to ship, digital can be sent via email. In the case of sending NFTs with Versify, we will use digital rewards.
- Set your milestones (the number of referrals needed to earn each reward)
A properly set up newsletter referral program in Behiiv might look like this:
When you create a referral reward, you can set up automatic emails to be sent to community members as soon as they reach your pre-determined milestones.
Within the Beehiiv referral system editor, you can set the text of the automated email to be sent. This is where you will add your mint link.
Example: Here’s the automated email sent by NFT Lately when they send NFTs to members with enough referrals:
This is when Versify comes in.
In the above email sample, you’ll notice the link “Claim Your Free NFT Here” this is a mint link generated by Versify. Insert yours here.
That’s it. Boom!
On to the next method.
The Welcome Landing Page Method
So here’s how this one works:
- Someone visits your website
- This person signs up for your newsletter
- They are immediately redirected to a landing page that welcomes them to the newsletter
- Side note: this landing page method is a great way to measure conversions on your site.
- The landing page they are sent to has a link to mint a free NFT
Pretty simple process here.
The important thing about this method is that you need to have your own website and that website needs to have a page created that is only used as a destination for redirection of new subscribers.
How to set this one up (from Beehiiv)
Within the settings page of Beehiiv, you have a feature called “Subscribe Forms”. These are forms that you can embed on your own website that give your visitors an easy and fast way to subscribe to your newsletter.
Within the edit feature of these forms you have options of what you want your visitors to see immediately after they subscribe. You’re choices are to either show a success message or redirect to a specific URL. Here is where you insert the URL to the landing page you create.
That’s it. Super simple process. Now, whenever someone joins your newsletter, they will immediately be given a button to claim their free NFT reward. Let’s go!
Now, last method to go over…
Automated Welcome Email
This is probably the simplest way to send free NFTs to your new subscribers and one that can be done with essentially any email hosting provider (so you don’t necessarily need Beehiiv here).
Almost all email hosting platforms give you the option to send an automated email to someone as soon as they join your newsletter. You typically have control over what this email says and can edit it to say (and link to) anything you want.
By simply adding your Versify mint link here, you can, once again, give your new members an exciting new digital collectible reward.
Wrapping Up
Overall, as newsletter marketers, the search for new ways to excite our subscribers never ends. The recent popularity of NFTs paired with the creation of helpful tools like Beehiiv and Versify poses an interesting opportunity for us, in that, we now have some pretty awesome fantastic ways to delight (and later engage) our communities with digital assets.
If you found this walkthrough helpful, shoot me a follow on Twitter. DMs are always open.
