Your YouTube viewers already trust you. Most will never subscribe to your newsletter because the link is buried and the pitch is vague. Fix both.
You mention your newsletter in every video. "Link in the description." You say it fast, almost apologetically, somewhere between the sponsor read and the outro. Then you check your subscriber count and it's barely moved since last month.
The problem isn't your audience. People who watch educational content on YouTube are exactly the kind of people who read newsletters. They're actively learning. They chose to spend time on your content. They just need a clear reason and a visible link.
Three words. No value proposition. Telling someone to "join my newsletter" is like telling them to "visit my website." It's technically an instruction but it gives them zero reason to act on it.
Compare:
Join my newsletter: [link]
versus
I send one email every Tuesday with the code templates from my tutorials. No spam, unsubscribe anytime: [link]
The second version answers the two questions every potential subscriber has: what will I get, and how often will it show up? Without those answers, the signup rate stays close to zero.
Industry benchmarks put email signup conversion rates around 2-5% for a well-optimized form on a landing page. (BDOW) But that's for visitors who already clicked through to a dedicated signup page. The conversion from a YouTube description to a newsletter signup is harder because you're asking viewers to leave YouTube, visit a new page, and enter their email.
That means every piece of friction matters. A buried link kills it. A vague pitch kills it. A landing page that takes 5 seconds to load kills it (Google's data shows a 1-second page loads at 3x the conversion rate of a 5-second page). And a signup form asking for first name, last name, company, and phone number kills it dead. Ask for the email address and nothing else.
Same rule as everything else in YouTube descriptions: the first 100-150 characters are visible before "Show more" on desktop, less on mobile. If your newsletter link lives below your Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Discord, and Patreon links, nobody will ever see it.
Put the newsletter pitch and link in line one or two. Move social links below the fold. You can have both, but your newsletter link gets priority placement because email subscribers are worth more than social followers. You own the email list. You don't own your Instagram audience.
If you have proof that your newsletter is worth reading, add it on line three:
8,000 developers get this every Tuesday
or
Running for 2 years, open rate over 50%
Social proof works. The average email open rate across industries sits around 40-45% (MailerLite, 2025). If your open rate is above that, it's worth mentioning. It tells potential subscribers that people actually read the thing.
A generic newsletter ask on every video ignores the fact that different videos attract different viewers. Someone watching your beginner Python tutorial has different needs than someone watching your system design deep-dive.
If you organize your channel into playlists, you can tailor the newsletter pitch per playlist:
This takes more effort than a one-size-fits-all line, but the conversion rate will be higher because the offer is specific to what the viewer was already looking for.
If you don't have a newsletter yet, the tooling choice matters less than starting. But here's a quick lay of the land:
Substack is free to use. Substack takes 10% of revenue if you turn on paid subscriptions. No technical setup, built-in audience discovery, but limited design control and no automations. Good for writers who want to start publishing today.
Kit (formerly ConvertKit, free up to 10,000 subscribers) is built for creators. Landing pages, signup forms, automations, and tagging. The free plan lets you sell digital products and subscriptions, which most free plans don't. Popular with course creators and educators.
Beehiiv (free up to 2,500 subscribers) is newer but growing fast. Built-in referral programs, ad monetization, and a recommendation network. Paid plans start at $49/month. Good if you plan to monetize the newsletter through ads or growth loops.
MailerLite (free up to 1,000 subscribers) is the budget option with solid fundamentals. Automations, landing pages, and an email editor that works well. Paid plans start at $15/month. Available globally with good deliverability.
All of these work internationally. Email is email. Your subscribers can be anywhere. The main thing to check is whether the platform supports double opt-in for regions that require it (GDPR in Europe, for example), and all four do.
Newsletter subscribers compound in a way social followers don't. A YouTube subscriber might see 10% of your uploads depending on the algorithm. An email subscriber sees every email you send, directly in their inbox, with no algorithm deciding whether to show it.
Over 12 months, even modest weekly growth adds up. If your YouTube channel sends 20 new newsletter subscribers per week, that's 1,000 subscribers in a year. At a 45% open rate, that's 450 people reading every issue. At a 2-3% click rate, that's 10-15 people taking action on every email, whether that's buying a course, clicking an affiliate link, or signing up for a workshop.
The math is small per week but the asset is permanent. You own the list. No platform change, algorithm shift, or policy update can take it away.
If you have dozens or hundreds of videos, updating each description manually to add your newsletter link is a grind. Sendari lets you push a newsletter pitch to every video in a playlist at once, tailor different pitches for different playlists, and track which videos drive the most signups.
