📈 New Media Summit 2026 Takeaways

Hey all,

Got back to NJ after the New Media Summit in ATX over the weekend.

It’s been a minute. We’ve been heads down building our own newsletter (Malachi Daily) and serving our BetterLetter clients.

The New Media Summit featured speakers like Matt Paulson (Market Beat), Erika Burghardt (1440) and Codie Sanchez (Contrarian Thinking).

Which is the main reason I attended - to hear directly from operators who are in the trenches of building.

It was great to hang with clients in person, see industry friends, and make new ones.

Here are my notes from the event 👇️ 

Building a media company in the AI era 🤖

The first speaker (Anik Singal) walked us through the process he used to generate his “AI clone.”

He talked about how his YouTube, IG and Tiktok content is 80% AI generated. AI handled research, scripting, video generation and voice generation. Humans handled the final 20% of video editing.

One memorable part of his talk was when he shared that his AI bot was responding to comments on his Youtube channel left by other people’s AI bots that consumed his AI content (you can check out his YT channel here).

Half the room loved this and was figuring out how they can do it for their business. Half the room hated it.

Regardless of how you feel about AI-generated content, it is and will become more common.

My advice? Optimize for trust.

The advent of smartphones and mass adoption of the internet created The Attention Economy.

In my opinion, the advent of AI is creating The Trust Economy.

Trust is the moat.

And trust takes more time to build than it does to break. For those of us building audiences, let’s act accordingly.

Newsletter Content ✍ 

Sean Devlin walked through a tactical way to think through the actual sections in your newsletter content.

The main questions that should frame your entire newsletter (and each individual section) are:

What is your goal? What are you optimizing for?

Three main takeaways for us and our newsletter were:

• Intro section: Form personal connection between the audience and the team, even if you're a brand. Humans like humans (remember, trust is the moat).

• Consistency + variety: 

  • Consistency lets readers know what to expect from you, which forms habits…But too much of the same without ever deviating lulls people to sleep.

  • Experiment with new sections to keep your newsletter fresh. 80/20 rule applies here.

• End well: How do you want your readers to FEEL the moment they finish reading your email? Align your final content section to that goal.

  • Want them to feel entertained? Give them a meme or fun fact.

  • Want them to think deeply? Give them a profound quote.

  • Want them to feel a sense of awe? Give them an image of nature.*

*Images evoke emotion more quickly than words.

Leveraging Data 📊

Sherrell Dorsey talked about leveraging data as a media company.

• 👉 First party data (for others): Most companies are sitting on data (or the ability to capture data) that would be valuable for other orgs in their industry. If you have access to information others want, consider charging for it.

• 👉 First party data (for you): If you have an engaged audience, people will literally tell you what problems they have that they're already paying for/willing to pay for.

• 👉 Clicks tell a story: Set up a tagging system that applies tags to subscribers based on the types of links they click. Use for future segmenting.

Matt Paulson shared how Market Beat (~$50M revenue) is monetizing their audience from the moment they join their email list as well (and how they’re leveraging SMS to make just as much as they are via email).

Monetization 💰

The moment someone subscribes to your newsletter is their moment of greatest intent. I’ve talked about how we’re already executing this at length here.

The TL;DR is to take advantage of this moment immediately after someone signs up.

Tactically, this looks like:

1. Getting more than 1 opt-in. Instead of just collecting email addresses during the signup, Market Beat collects phone numbers, browser notifications, opt-ins to other newsletters they own, AND

2. Having 2-4 stages of paid offers (a mix of co-reg with beehiiv/sparkloop, your own products, affiliate offers, an offer wall)

Done well, you'll have negative CAC or close to it and can immediately reinvest back into paid growth.

Sign up to one of Market Beat’s emails here and experience it for yourself.

SMS 📱

• SMS subscribers are 10-20x more valuable than an email subscriber. Less competition and 98% open rates.

• Add a phone number field to your landing page or post-subscribe survey. Measure CVR drop-off to ensure it's worth it.

• Even if you're not sure what you'll do with SMS right now, ask for digits.

Other takeaways from Matt:

• Send more emails. The average person gets 500 a day. If you send 1x a day, you have 0.2% of their inbox marketshare.

• On that note, exercise wisdom. Consider what your subscribers’ expectations. Subscribers to financial content EXPECT a lot of emails. That’s normal in the industry, so their tolerance is higher. Even still, most people I know (including us) have room to increase the quantity of emails they send.

• Who cares: People focus too much on unsubscribes. Matt had a great one-liner…99.9% of people in the world already aren’t subscribed to your newsletter. Who cares?”

Building a media company to sell 💸

Alexis Grant shared the exact steps media founders should be taking to build a company to maximize the exit when it’s time to sell.

• 👉 To build brand beyond just you as the face, define the voice and codify the "character," then find others who can embody that. If you are Iron Man, find the other Avengers who share core DNA. Then build a relationship between your audience and the Avengers so the brand can live beyond you.

• 👉 Recurring revenue > one-time purchases

• 👉 Profit is king. Profit > Revenue.

• 👉 Eliminate founder dependency. The less needed the founder is, the more buyable the business is.

I don’t remember who said it (I think it may have been Ryan Deiss), but this quote stuck with me:

“Don't strive to be a company that hires A players and rockstars. Build one that doesn’t need A players and rockstars to succeed.”

If you want help with your company's newsletter growth + strategy, let's talk.

Cheers,

Isaac + Kieran 📈 

P.S. Here are some pics from the event. My favorite meal by far was Terry Black’s BBQ…Not a bad way to end the trip 🐖 

Helpful Links 🔗 

• 🛠️ Our favorite newsletter tools: beehiiv (ESP), Youform (forms), Descript (video editing), Sparkloop (growth & monetization), ElevenLabs (AI voiceovers), Sponsy (managing sponsorship operations)*

• 📈 In case you missed it:

  • Our client Nice News was acquired by Encyclopedia Brittanica along with a group of other Optimism-owned media properties (link)

  • 📈 $300k in Ad Sales: The Exact Process We Used 

  • 📈 Profitable Growth: The Exact Playbook We're Using to Get Paid to Grow Our Newsletter Audience 

_{*All of these are products we use and love. Some are affiliate links.}