How a Newsletter for Senior IT Pros Hit a 52% Open Rate and 2× Ad Revenue in One Quarter

A Newsletter Built for a Demanding Technical Audience

Experts Exchange has spent decades as a trusted home for technology professionals. Its weekly newsletter, ByteSize, exists to serve a specific and demanding audience: senior IT professionals with seven or more years in the field, including engineers, systems administrators, and IT managers.

Reaching them consistently took two things working together: a content strategy sharp enough to earn a spot in a crowded inbox, and a platform capable of publishing, growing, and monetizing at scale.

Experts Exchange found the first in storyarb, a content studio that builds and operates newsletters for brands. It found the second in beehiiv.

Experts Exchange (EE) had a sleeping giant on their hands: a historic list of 500,000+ IT professionals who had never received anything beyond basic platform prompts. They needed to:

- Transform a dormant subscriber base into an engaged audience

- Create compelling content for highly technical readers

- Develop a distinctive voice that resonates with IT pros from entry-level to senior

- Build a scalable content system that could maintain quality while growing

- Convert platform users into newsletter enthusiasts

Why Reaching Senior IT Pros Is So Hard

Experts Exchange wanted ByteSize to do more than land in inboxes. The goal was a newsletter that could:

• Earn attention from a senior technical audience with content credible enough to hold their interest week after week
• Grow a large, high-quality subscriber base without diluting engagement
• Turn that audience into real revenue through advertising and sponsorships
• Sustain the cadence and quality bar that the internal team could not staff alone

Reaching a technical, senior audience is hard. Growing it past six figures while keeping engagement high is harder. Monetizing it without burning reader trust is where most newsletters stall. Experts Exchange needed a content partner who understood the audience and a platform built to grow and monetize a newsletter at the same time.

How storyarb and beehiiv Built ByteSize Together

Experts Exchange paired storyarb’s editorial strategy with beehiiv’s platform and Ad Network. The combination gave ByteSize a content engine and a growth-and-revenue engine working in tandem.

A Content Strategy Tuned to Senior IT Professionals

storyarb designed and operated ByteSize around a clear editorial voice tuned to senior IT professionals. Rather than chasing broad tech headlines, the newsletter focused on the depth and signal this audience actually reads.

That focus showed up in the numbers. When ByteSize surveyed readers in April, 81.8% said they stay for the voice, and one in four said ByteSize is the only tech newsletter in their inbox. For an audience this selective, that is the strongest possible signal that the content strategy is working.

“With ByteSize we didn’t set out to compete on breaking news or daily round-ups. Content in this industry (tech) is usually pretty dry, and we wanted to bring humor and sarcasm to our audience while also getting them the insights they need, fast. Experts Exchange is an online forum, a community, and the newsletter was meant to capture that same banter--and drop it in the inbox.”
— Morgan Gelber, Manager of Content Strategy at storyarb

Growing Past 100K Subscribers Without Losing Engagement

beehiiv gave Experts Exchange the infrastructure to grow ByteSize past 100,000 subscribers in eight months while keeping performance high. Open rates averaged 52.7% across Q1, close to double the typical benchmark for the category, and click-through rates climbed every month of the quarter, from 1.55% to 1.78% to 1.94%.

Growth and engagement usually move in opposite directions. Adding subscribers tends to drag open rates down. ByteSize grew and got more engaged at the same time, which is exactly what a platform built for growth is supposed to enable.

Turning Audience Quality Into Ad Revenue With the beehiiv Ad Network

Monetization is where ByteSize’s audience quality turned into revenue. Using the beehiiv Ad Network alongside direct sponsorships sourced by their own growth team, ByteSize generated roughly $32,000 in ad placements in Q1, double the prior quarter.

The more telling detail is retention. Advertisers came back. T-Mobile, Auvik, and Shift each ran multiple placements within Q1 alone. Repeat advertisers are the clearest proof that a list converts, and contextual placements inside content readers already trust keep sponsor visibility high without pushing unsubscribes up.

Extending Engagement Beyond the Inbox

ByteSize’s audience did not stay in email. The newsletter’s LinkedIn content averaged a 6.87% engagement rate, well above the 2% to 5% range typical for the platform, giving Experts Exchange another channel to grow and reinforce the brand.

What ByteSize Achieved in Under a Year

In roughly eight months on beehiiv, with storyarb driving content strategy, ByteSize delivered:

• 52.7% average open rate across Q1, near double the category benchmark
• Click-through rate up every month of the quarter: 1.55%, 1.78%, 1.94%
• ~$32,000 in Q1 ad placements, 2× quarter over quarter
• Repeat advertisers including T-Mobile, Auvik, and Shift within a single quarter
• 6.87% average LinkedIn engagement rate

The reader survey backed up the metrics. Of 417 respondents, the survey email itself earned a 77.6% open rate, 74.8% said they click through to read full articles, and 81.8% said they stay for the voice.

"The thing that surprised us most was how much the writing mattered. storyarb figured out how to make tech news genuinely fun to read without dumbing it down, and that's what drove ByteSize past 150K subscribers and made advertisers want in. beehiiv made the rest simple: the platform is easy to run, and it let us sell ads directly ourselves instead of building any of that infrastructure. It's put Experts Exchange in a category of one for how we reach IT pros."

-Thomas Bernal, Chief Revenue Officer at Experts Exchange

Why the storyarb and beehiiv Pairing Works

ByteSize is a clear example of what happens when a strong content strategy meets a platform built for growth and monetization. storyarb brought the editorial judgment to earn attention from a hard-to-reach audience. beehiiv brought the tools to grow that audience past 100,000 and turn it into a repeatable revenue channel through the Ad Network.

For any brand trying to build a newsletter that senior professionals actually read, and that pays for itself, the pairing of a content partner like storyarb and a platform like beehiiv is a model worth studying.

Where ByteSize Goes Next

With a six-figure, highly engaged audience and a proven ad business, ByteSize has room to expand sponsorship inventory, deepen its reader research, and extend the brand across channels like LinkedIn, where engagement is already outperforming.

Start using beehiiv

ByteSize grew to 100,000 engaged subscribers and a repeatable ad business because it ran on a platform built for exactly that. beehiiv powers more than 75,000 publishers and has helped newsletters earn over $25 million, bringing publishing, growth, and monetization together, including the Ad Network that helped ByteSize double ad revenue in a quarter. Whether you are launching a newsletter or scaling one to enterprise size, beehiiv is where you build it.

Start your free trial