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The Story of Guday, MyNewsletter, and How beehiiv Powered 2× ROI
Inside the Partnership Between Creator-Led Brands, Agencies, and beehiiv
Kanishka & Taylor Cromwell
October 15, 2025
In just two months, the wellness brand Guday turned a brand-new weekly newsletter into a channel that generated more than 2× the cost of producing and running it.
Behind that success is MyNewsletter, the first boutique agency in Brazil dedicated entirely to building newsletters for brands, founded by Fernando Kaloustian.
And powering the whole effort is beehiiv.
This is the story of how a creator-led brand partnered with a specialized agency to make email a core part of their growth strategy — and why the results show the untapped potential of newsletters for E-commerce and DNVBs.
What makes this case so compelling to me is that it shows several important trends:
How startups can partner with creator-led brands like Manuela Cit, who co-founded Guday and brings a built-in, highly engaged audience.
How newsletters can serve as meaningful sales channels.
And how founders like Kaloustian are building new types of businesses around the demand for high-quality, owned media.
In this article, I’ll share how Guday approached their newsletter strategy, how Kaloustian has shaped MyNewsletter into a niche agency business, and how beehiiv sits at the center- powering it all.
Why Trust Me
Taylor Cromwell is a writer and strategist focused on the creator economy and solo entrepreneurship. Through her newsletter Creator Diaries and client work with companies like beehiiv, HubSpot, and Stan, she shares insights, case studies, and interviews that show how creators build sustainable businesses.
When Fernando Kaloustian launched MyNewsletter in early 2024, he had a simple goal: to teach creators and entrepreneurs everything about building and growing a newsletter.
But soon, the market spoke back. Many readers didn’t want a crash course; they wanted someone to take the work off their plate and build the newsletter for them.
By 2025, MyNewsletter had evolved into a high-demand boutique agency — the first in Brazil dedicated exclusively to producing newsletters for companies.
Today, the agency works primarily with digitally native vertical brands (DNVBs) and E-commerce companies, helping them turn email into a strategic growth channel.
One of those clients is Guday, a fast-growing wellness brand co-founded by fitness influencer Manuela Cit and three of Kaloustian’s former classmates from the Link School of Business.
From Classroom Connections to Client Collaboration
Kaloustian’s connection to Guday started years before the agency-client relationship. He studied alongside co-founders Enzo, Gabriel, and João in Brazil’s first course dedicated to entrepreneurship. He had followed the brand’s early journey closely, often discussing the newsletter market with Enzo.
So when Guday’s founders wanted to launch a newsletter but weren’t sure where to begin — what content to create, which platform to use — they naturally reached out to Kaloustian.
That collaboration led to Guday Talks, a weekly newsletter designed to strengthen customer relationships, distribute brand content, and subtly but effectively drive sales.
Guday’s Goals: Beyond Conversions
From the start, Guday approached email with a dual focus:
Branding & Relationship-Building
Deepen customer understanding for the CRM
Strengthen brand loyalty and share of mind
Distribute content like Guday’s podcast
Conversion & Growth
Increase LTV through repeat purchases
Educate customers about existing products
Validate and create demand for new products
Share promotions and news with first access
The team wanted to avoid the hard-sell approach of some DTC companies. Instead, they leaned on education and storytelling to nurture the brand’s community while subtly driving demand.
Why Email, Why beehiiv
Kaloustian had experience with nearly every major platform, like Substack, Campaign Monitor, and others. But by 2023, after testing the bizness, the business newsletter he ran at the news, on beehiiv, the choice was obvious.
“Since then, it became clear to me that it was the best option on the market for newsletters. And that was before the platform was even as complete as it is today.” — Fernando Kaloustian
beehiiv offered the intuitive design tools, a comprehensive dashboard, and integrated features (referral programs, recommendations, earning) that allowed MyNewsletter to launch and scale campaigns quickly.
For Guday, two features stood out:
Robust analytics that fed directly into the CRM
Easy design customization to create professional, on-brand newsletters without code
The Strategy: 80/20 Content + Weekly Cadence
The Guday Talks newsletter launched with a ready-made audience — more than 100,000 emails from Guday’s E-commerce customers who had already opted in to receive communications (heavily influenced by Manuela’s engaged audience).
From there, the content mix followed an 80/20 approach:
80% educational: fitness, nutrition, and wellness insights, often extending influencer Manuela Cit’s popular Instagram posts
20% promotional: product mentions and offers, always framed in a value-first way
Here’s an example of what the newsletter looks like:
Instead of pushing “Buy now!” messaging, each edition focuses on education, explaining the science behind supplements or sharing practical fitness tips, before introducing a subtle call-to-action for Guday products.
The team chose a weekly cadence to balance consistent touchpoints without overwhelming readers.
Results: High Engagement and Surprising Conversions
The early results exceeded expectations:
45% average open rate
Strong community feedback and engagement
Conversions that “surprised both [Kaloustian] and the company’s founders”
By the second month, newsletter-driven sales were more than 2× the combined cost of beehiiv and MyNewsletter’s boutique service.
For Guday — a brand projecting R$80 million (~US$15 million) in revenue in 2025 — the newsletter quickly became a high-ROI growth channel.
Lessons and “Aha” Moments
For Kaloustian, the biggest revelation was how strong the newsletter could be as a conversion channel, even when sales weren’t the primary goal.
He also credits the success to three factors working in harmony:
A validated product and brand with strong momentum
An engaged influencer with a loyal community
A newsletter strategy built around value-first content
What’s Next for Guday Talks
The program is just beginning. The team’s next focus includes:
Launching a referral program to expand subscribers
Integrating beehiiv with Shopify to onboard new buyers
Running more audience research for deeper insights
Using the newsletter as a customer acquisition channel, not just a retention tool
For Kaloustian, Guday’s success is proof that DNVBs and E-commerce companies are sitting on a powerful, underutilized asset: their email list.
And for agencies considering expanding into email? Kaloustian is unequivocal:
If you want to see for yourself how you can use beehiiv to level up your email marketing game, try it for free here.
MyNewsletter is the first boutique newsletter agency in Brazil, founded by Fernando Kaloustian. With a focus on DNVBs and E-commerce brands, the agency helps companies turn email into a high-impact growth and relationship channel.
