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Morning Brew’s Growth Strategy: How a Newsletter Built a $75M Media Empire
The referral program, brand voice, and native ads that turned business news into a viral growth engine
Tom Snyder
November 06, 2025
Howdy, Marketer!
Warren Buffet reads 6 newspapers every day – but how can regular folks make smart investment decisions reading only a fraction of that time?
Morning Brew looked at the business news landscape and said "this is broken" and completely changed how millions of people consume business content.
Two University of Michigan students sending newsletters to their classmates in 2015 and it turned into a media empire that sold to Business Insider for $75 million in 2020.
All they did was make business news feel like texts from your smartest friend rather than lectures from your economics professor.
Morning Brew cracked the code on newsletter media and created a playbook that spawned an entire industry of imitators.
Today's Treasure Trove
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What is Morning Brew
Quick Stats:
Morning Brew delivers business news that’s way easy to understand.
The flagship daily newsletter hits your inbox at 6 AM Eastern with a 5-minute rundown of what happened in business yesterday.
From that core product, they've expanded into verticals: Marketing Brew for marketers, Retail Brew for retail professionals, HR Brew for human resources, and Emerging Tech Brew for people tracking AI developments.
Then there are podcasts like Business Casual which go deeper on stories and feature interviews with founders.
These are strategic ways to own more of their audience's attention across different formats.
Target Demographics & Positioning
Morning Brew's core audience is 25-40 year olds who work in business or want to understand business better.
These are college-educated, upwardly mobile professionals who would consume content on their phones during commutes.
The positioning is built on contrast.
Morning Brew isn't the Wall Street Journal (that's for your dad). It's not Bloomberg (that's for traders with six monitors). It's specifically for people who need business news but refuse to suffer through boring delivery.
Millions of people avoid business news despite needing it for their careers because the experience is painful. Morning Brew recognized that gap and built an entire company around fixing it.
The key is they're not dumbing down the news. They're just making it accessible.
Morning Brew’s Marketing Strategies
The Referral Program That Actually Worked
Morning Brew's referral program is what they're famous for.
The mechanics are simple: every subscriber gets a unique referral link.
Share it, get your friends to subscribe, earn rewards. Refer 5 people, get a Morning Brew mug. Refer 25, get a t-shirt. Refer 100, get exclusive event access.
At peak effectiveness, referrals drove about 30% of new subscriptions. That's one in three new readers coming from existing ones at essentially zero acquisition cost. Compared to paid ads, the economics are insane.
Voice as a Moat
The second pillar is the writing itself. And this is harder to copy than it looks because it requires real editorial discipline.
Morning Brew simply asked: what if we wrote business news the way people actually talk about business news?
So instead of "The Federal Reserve announced a 25 basis point increase in the federal funds rate," you get "The Fed raised interest rates again, which means your savings account might finally earn more than $3 per year." Same information, completely different accessibility.
They use "we" and "you." They make jokes. They reference pop culture. They use short paragraphs designed for people reading on phones while half-distracted.
Every sentence is working to keep you reading rather than assuming you'll stick around because you need the information.
But what separates good voice from gimmicky voice is consistency and authenticity. Morning Brew's tone isn't "trying to be funny." It's just how they communicate. The jokes land because they're not forced.
Native Advertising That People Read
Morning Brew figured out something obvious that many companies might resist: if your audience is there for your voice, they don't abandon that voice when you get to the ads.
So a Morning Brew ad for some HR software doesn't read like a press release. It reads like Morning Brew explaining why this software is essential for HR professionals. It feels seamless. The only difference is a small "Sponsored by" label.
This approach makes the ads actually effective. Advertisers pay Morning Brew premium rates - ~50,000 for a primary ad - because their ads work. When you write in the same voice people are already engaged with, they don't automatically skip it.
And it makes the ads less annoying for readers. Nobody likes ads, but we tolerate ads that are at least trying to be useful. Morning Brew's native ads sometimes get positive replies or get discussed on social media.
That's basically unheard of for advertising.
Building an Ecosystem
Morning Brew recognized early they needed to be a media brand, not just an email sender.
The vertical newsletters let them target specific professional audiences with tailored content and sell more focused advertising.
The podcasts serve a similar function. Some people prefer audio over reading. And the podcasts provide different revenue streams while deepening relationships that make newsletter sponsorships more valuable.
Social media works as the top of the funnel. A business news snippet on Instagram or TikTok isn't trying to be comprehensive. It's trying to be interesting enough that you want more. And the call to action is always to subscribe to the newsletter.
It creates authentic, relatable content around news that almost feels like entertainment. That’s the formula for high engagement rates.
On YouTube, they also have longer videos that go in depth of specific and relevant topics.
This ecosystem approach means Morning Brew isn't dependent on any single platform or revenue stream.
They don’t have to worry about email deliverability changes or social algorithms. They've built multiple paths to the same audience.
Wrap Up
Morning Brew, in the process of building a newsletter, also built a blueprint. They proved business news could have personality without sacrificing credibility.
They showed email newsletters could be a growth engine. And they demonstrated native advertising could work for everyone involved.
As traditional media continues fragmenting, Morning Brew's model looks increasingly smart.
They built direct relationships with millions of readers, proved the economics work, and created a playbook countless others now follow.
The question isn't whether the Morning Brew model works anymore. (In some way, this newsletter is also based on the same model!)
It's whether anyone can replicate their execution, especially with more competition for attention now.
✌️,
Tom from Marketer Gems
