TLDR Newsletter
With over 1.25 million subscribers to their main newsletter alone, TLDR is one of the most successful tech newsletters you can sign up for. Here's how I doubled their monthly subscriber count.
My results are built on strategic, audience-winning creative
5.95
x
ROAS boost in 3 months
47
%
Hook rate up from 25%
100
%
Higher subscriber count
The challenge
TLDR Newsletter is a free email that delivers the most important tech stories as expert-curated summaries in a 5-minute read, every weekday.
But despite their best efforts, their marketing hit multiple plateaus. TLDR’s video creatives just didn’t hook the audience, and the most successful image ad was launched way back in early 2022.
It was clear to their Head of Growth that they needed a creative strategist with the marketing skill set to get through to their target audience.
TLDR's 'Astro' ad from early 2022
The solution
Within the first week, I applied my audience analysis method to redefine TLDR's key messages.
The young professionals, software developers and tech enthusiasts who read TLDR are time-conscious, curious and always looking to improve their skills. However, this audience has to contend with digital fatigue, social isolation and dark patterns just to stay up to date.
“Impress your boss/peers” and other surface-level hooks weren’t meaningful to a risk-averse audience.
Therefore I focused on emotionally resonant hooks that directly addressed underlying fears and motivations. Instead of vague potential gains, I led with highly targeted messages that directly addressed their concerns for job security and staying relevant:
“Here’s how to never become obsolete in tech”
“These are the 3 main reasons why you’re scared of losing your tech job”
TLDR's new ads are still crushing conversions since May
The results
Understanding TLDR’s audience allowed me to craft content that got people to stop scrolling, keep watching and actually subscribe — and you can see it reflected in every key metric:
Raised average hook rate to 47% from 25%
Increased average thruplay rate to 19.2% from 9%
Generated over 47M impressions
Within the first month, I had created what would go on to become TLDR’s most successful video and image ads to date.
I also introduced and led weekly strategy meetings to generate new creative ideas, analyse ad performance and iterate on successful content collaboratively, simultaneously improving team dynamics.
Before hiring me, TLDR’s video creative output was 4-5 videos per month from a single UGC creator. So I set up a weekly production cycle that took that to an average of 14 videos delivered per week. It gave us significantly more creative to test and iterate upon.
Here are some of the most notable improvements since our collaboration began in April:
4 regular UGC content creators
Scaled from $70k to $320k in spend within the first 3 months
Increased ROAS from 3.61x to 5.95x
