How did Morning Brew's newsletter referral program work?
Every reader got a personal link, and a referral only counted once the new reader confirmed their email. That is how Tyler Denk, Morning Brew's second employee and by then its Senior Product Lead, described the program in How Morning Brew's referral program built an audience of 1.5 million subscribers, published on Medium on 19 August 2019 (Medium now shows it as a member-only story, and this archived copy has the full text). Denk joined in 2017, when the daily newsletter had 100,000 subscribers, and built the program in Ruby on Rails with integrations into Sailthru, Morning Brew's email service provider.
The program had three parts, as Denk described them:
- A link for every reader. Each subscriber had a unique referral code and link. Anyone who signed up through it stayed tied to that referrer for good.
- A share section in every issue. The Share The Brew block showed each reader's referral count and the rewards. Sailthru's scripting changed it by count, so a reader with fewer than 3 referrals could get a Light Roast plug and a reader with 20 a note that a T-shirt was 5 referrals away.
- A referral hub. One page with a live counter, a copy-link button, email invites with contact import from Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook through CloudSponge, a pre-written blurb readers could edit, and share buttons for social apps, SMS and WhatsApp.
It didn't start as custom software. Co-founder Alex Lieberman, who had just moved from CEO to chairman, told podcast host Nathan Barry in June 2021 that the team first used KickoffLabs, then paid a developer on Upwork $500 to copy the referral page Harry's razors had used, before Morning Brew's own engineers rebuilt it. Co-founder Austin Rief, quoted as COO in a 2019 case study by CloudSponge, the contact-import vendor, put the rule plainly: "Make it as easy as humanly possible to share the newsletter."
What did each referral reward cost Morning Brew?
25 cents per new subscriber at the first physical tier, and 23 cents at the next. Denk's August 2019 post lists the reward ladder and, for the cheaper tiers, the cost:
| Referrals | Reward (August 2019) | Cost, as Denk gave it |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | Light Roast, an exclusive Sunday newsletter | No real cost: readers are added to another email list |
| 5 | Morning Brew stickers by post | Roughly $1.25 ($0.20 a sticker, $0.65 a pre-stamped envelope), so $0.25 per new subscriber |
| 10 | The Insider community, a private Facebook group nearing 10,000 members | No real cost |
| 15 | A silicone phone wallet by post | $1.50 plus a $0.65 envelope; with the stickers, $0.23 per subscriber across all 15 |
| 25 | A tri-blend T-shirt | Not given |
| 50 | A coffee mug | Not given |
| 100 | A crewneck sweatshirt | Not given |
Milestone emails also went out at 1,000 referrals; the post doesn't say what that reward was. For comparison, Denk put the cost per acquisition on Facebook and Instagram, Morning Brew's largest paid channels, at typically $3 to $5. At $0.25, the sticker tier cost a twelfth to a twentieth of that per subscriber (our arithmetic).
Two caveats. Lieberman told Barry that the free tiers still cost staff time, to write the Sunday edition and moderate the community. And Denk wrote that the first cheap T-shirts were so uncomfortable that no one really wanted to wear them, so the team paid for better ones. Lieberman's test for any reward is whether it gives readers more of the content that makes them better at their careers, or lets them show their status in a community they care about.
How did Morning Brew stop fake referrals?
By crediting a referral only after the new reader confirmed their email, then adding checks on top. Denk's warning in the 2019 post: "Providing free rewards and incentives always invites nefarious actors." The controls in the post:
- Double opt-in. The referrer got credit only when the new subscriber clicked the confirmation link. Over 85% of referral signups went on to confirm.
- Email validation. A third-party tool checked every address that entered the list.
- Milestone reviews. The team got an email each time someone hit a milestone, listing all of that reader's referrals, which makes fake and disposable addresses easy to spot.
- A domain block list. 600 fake email domains, and growing.
- Bans. People caught gaming the program were barred from referring anyone else, and specific IP addresses were blocked.
- An admin panel. Built on Forest Admin, so interns could correct referral counts and rewards for confused readers.
The trade-off was deliberate. Denk wrote that requiring confirmation cut the conversion rate on referral signups by 15%, in exchange for higher-quality subscribers.
What got readers from zero referrals to one?
A dedicated email seven days after signup, plus reminders timed to each reader's count. Denk wrote that most readers had zero referrals, so most of the effort went into getting the first one:
- The 7-day email. Every subscriber with no referrals got a dedicated email exactly 7 days after subscribing, split-tested five ways at a time: rewards, a note from the CEO, Starbucks gift cards and more.
- Milestone emails. Eight emails, sent after the first referral and at 5, 10, 15, 25, 50, 100 and 1,000 referrals, each saying how many referrals were left to the next one.
- Nudge emails. Readers stuck one referral short of a milestone (at 2, 4 or 9) for two weeks got a reminder.
- Giveaways. Every 4 to 5 weeks, each confirmed referral in a set window counted as an entry. Prizes included MacBook Pros, phones, $2,000 cash and trips.
Two promotion results appear in The Drum's January 2021 interview with Lieberman (archived copy): a MacBook Pro giveaway added 40,000 subscribers, and branded jogging bottoms drove 24,000 sign-ups, with 8,000 people bringing in at least three subscribers each to qualify.
The channel data matters most for a business audience. In Denk's 2019 numbers, people invited by email converted at 75% on the landing page, against 35% for other referral traffic. Shares over WhatsApp and SMS produced 10 times the signups of LinkedIn shares, 5 times Twitter and 2 times Facebook. Rief told CloudSponge that the preset email invite was the most used feature on the share page.
How much of Morning Brew's growth came from referrals?
Over 30% of all subscribers by August 2019, according to Denk. The share changes with the date and the definition, so read each figure on its own terms:
| Date | Who said it | Figure |
|---|---|---|
| Summer 2018 | Denk, Medium (2019) | Some months averaged over 1,000 referrals a day |
| August 2019 | Denk, Medium | Referrals accounted for over 30% of total subscribers, with 1.5 million on the list; over 225,000 people had referred at least one person; paid acquisition began in early 2018 |
| January 2021 | The Drum, interviewing Lieberman | 60% of the audience came from paid acquisition; 15% came through word of mouth, some of it prompted by referral rewards |
| November 2024 | Denk on Mixergy | The referral program led to over a million subscribers; about 100,000 readers had made three referrals for the Sunday newsletter, so at least 300,000 referrals |
These are insiders' own figures from different years on different bases, so don't add them up or compare them directly. Both Denk and Lieberman describe referrals as a multiplier on paid growth. Lieberman told Barry the program gave the team the confidence to pay for ads, because each paid subscriber would be worth a little more than one subscriber.
How to run a newsletter referral program for a B2B newsletter
Start only if readers already forward your newsletter. Lieberman told Barry that people often bolt a referral program onto a marketing newsletter that is a roundup of links back to their website, then wonder why it doesn't grow. Denk made the same point in 2019: Morning Brew grew by word of mouth for years before the program existed. If your newsletter isn't there yet, start with our guide to marketing without a marketing team.
If it is, this ladder is our suggested starting point for a B2B newsletter. Every tier is something a small team can deliver without a warehouse:
| Referrals | Reward (our example) | Cash cost | Morning Brew equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Your best template pack or checklist as a PDF | None | Content that makes readers better at work |
| 3 | A private monthly briefing, such as benchmarks or a deal teardown | Writing time | Light Roast |
| 5 | A seat at a quarterly online reader roundtable | Hosting time | The Insider community |
| 10 | A 20-minute review of the reader's own page, deck or process | Your time | Status and something useful |
Smaller newsletters have used cheap rewards too. In the 2024 Mixergy interview, Denk, by then a co-founder of beehiiv, said the crypto newsletter Milk Road wrote a PDF in four hours to use as a referral reward, and suggested a discount code on drop-shipped merchandise as another option with no inventory. Some newsletter platforms include referral tools; beehiiv's referral program page, for example, says you set milestones with digital or physical rewards and it tracks them.
Copy Morning Brew's fraud rules from day one: count a referral only after the new reader confirms, check addresses, and review the list each time someone reaches a reward. Then post each issue's best idea where your readers already are; our LinkedIn post templates help with that.
Frequently asked questions
What rewards did Morning Brew give for referrals?
In August 2019, Tyler Denk listed Morning Brew's ladder as: a Sunday newsletter called Light Roast at 3 referrals, stickers at 5, a private Facebook community at 10, a phone wallet at 15, a T-shirt at 25, a mug at 50 and a crewneck sweatshirt at 100. Milestone emails also went out at 1,000 referrals.
How much did Morning Brew pay per referred subscriber?
Denk's 2019 post says the sticker reward cost roughly $1.25 to send, or $0.25 for each of the 5 new subscribers. At 15 referrals, the phone wallet plus stickers worked out at $0.23 per subscriber. Morning Brew's cost per acquisition on Facebook and Instagram was typically $3 to $5.
How did Morning Brew stop fake newsletter referrals?
A referral counted only after the new reader confirmed their email, and over 85% did. Denk's 2019 post adds third-party email validation, a block list of 600 fake email domains, a review email to the team at each milestone, bans for people gaming the program and blocks on specific IP addresses.
What software did Morning Brew use for its referral program?
Alex Lieberman told Nathan Barry in June 2021 that Morning Brew started on KickoffLabs, then paid an Upwork developer $500 to copy Harry's referral page. Engineers later rebuilt it. By 2019, Denk wrote, it was custom code in Ruby on Rails connected to Sailthru, with CloudSponge for importing email contacts.
Which sharing channels worked best for Morning Brew's referrals?
In Denk's 2019 data, people invited by email converted at 75% on the landing page, against 35% for other referral traffic. WhatsApp and SMS shares produced 10 times the signups of LinkedIn shares. Austin Rief told CloudSponge the preset email invite was the most used feature on the share page.
Sources
- Tyler Denk: How Morning Brew's referral program built an audience of 1.5 million subscribers (Medium, The Mission) (published 19 Aug 2019)
- Wayback Machine copy of Tyler Denk's Medium post (snapshot 22 Aug 2019; checked 20 Oct 2026)
- Nathan Barry podcast, episode 40: Alex Lieberman (transcript) (published 28 Jun 2021)
- The Drum: Morning Brew founder shares growth tips and dispels the idea email is the next media pivot (published 5 Jan 2021)
- Wayback Machine copy of The Drum interview (snapshot 20 Jul 2024; checked 20 Oct 2026)
- CloudSponge customer story: Morning Brew (published 6 Mar 2019, updated 21 Feb 2024 (page metadata); checked 20 Oct 2026)
- Mixergy: How is beehiiv making $15 mil per year? (Tyler Denk interview transcript) (published 1 Nov 2024)
- beehiiv: Newsletter Referral Program (checked 20 Oct 2026)
- beehiiv: About (checked 20 Oct 2026)