Milk Road: From 0 to Acquisition in 10 Months

Situation:

Milk Road was founded by Ben Levy and his team in early 2022 after a cold Twitter DM initiated the idea of launching a crypto newsletter. With no subscribers, content, or brand—just a hunch about the rising interest in crypto—they started from scratch. They aimed to build a daily crypto newsletter that stood out in a crowded space and could scale quickly.

Challenge:

The founders had no existing audience or content library and needed to grow fast. They faced the typical early-stage tradeoffs: limited time, no technical team for complex design or infrastructure, and the need to prioritize growth-focused strategies over marginal improvements.

Solution:

Milk Road leveraged nearly every feature beehiiv had to offer:

• Design & Web: Used beehiiv’s no-code editor and SEO-optimized website builder to quickly launch and iterate without developers.
• Referral Program: Offered a simple reward (a crypto investor PDF) for one successful referral, fully automated via beehiiv.
• Recommendations: Partnered with other newsletters to cross-promote through beehiiv’s native recommendation engine.
• Analytics: Made data-driven decisions on paid acquisition channels like Facebook and TikTok by analyzing engagement and unsubscribe rates.
• Audience Polls: Embedded real-time reader feedback polls in every issue to boost engagement and optimize content.

Results:

• Reached 250,000+ subscribers in under 10 months.
• Grew via organic traffic, referrals, and paid channels like Facebook and TikTok, using memes and social proof ads.
• Achieved acquisition in under a year due to sharp focus on growth levers and content excellence.