Running the business
Should a local newsletter cover one town or a whole county?
Short answer
Start with the county. I built my brands town by town and spread six newsletters across unrelated cities. One of my biggest mistakes: 60,000 subscribers in one place is worth far more than 10,000 each spread across six.
I get to give this advice because I did it wrong.
Concentration wins. One metro means one set of advertisers, one sales motion, one set of relationships, and a list big enough to matter to the biggest local businesses. Most of my newsletters cover areas of 100,000 to 300,000 people.
Launching is the easy part now
With a newsletter builder, a signup form system, and Meta ads, a new brand takes about a day to set up. For a new market, I tell my AI coding tool in plain English to copy an existing market's survey, offers, and lead flow, and change only the city names, logos, and landing page.
You don't need a local person on day one. You do need one long term, for content, social, advertisers, and events.
Once you pick the map
- Send daily, keep it short. The point of a daily send is getting eyes on the ad. Break one long weekly into short daily pieces themed by topic: events one day, news another, real estate another.
- Watch open rates. At or below 30 to 33%, shift to sending mainly to people who open.
Almost nobody runs the local newsletter model correctly, with real growth spend behind it. That's the opening.
Answered by TJ Larkin. From operator calls in June 2026. Last updated .