How Rally Rd. Turned a Newsletter Into a 3X Conversion Engine

Overview

Rally Rd. is a marketplace where investors buy shares in rare, culturally significant assets, from sports memorabilia to dinosaur skeletons. In a two-sided marketplace, trust and repeat participation are everything. That means communication isn’t a “nice-to-have.” It’s infrastructure.

That’s why Rally built Shiny Things, a weekly newsletter on beehiiv. What started as a way to start Sunday mornings with the community became Rally’s most powerful passive growth channel. It drives higher conversion, stronger retention, and even new supply-side partnerships.

The Challenge: Trust, Storytelling, and Repeat Investing

Marketplaces don’t just need demand. They need belief.

Rally’s customers aren’t buying a product. They’re committing capital to an asset thesis. That decision gets easier when the brand can build context, conviction, and emotional resonance over time.

Inside the app, messaging around specific offerings and IPOs is necessarily structured and compliance-driven. The newsletter creates space to do what product UX can’t:

• Explore culture, nostalgia, and market themes adjacent to the platform
• Build anticipation across multiple weeks
• Earn trust before capital is deployed
• Communicate with personality and perspective

Why Sunday Mornings Became Rally’s Highest-Leverage Moment

Rally learned that Sunday morning is their highest-engagement window. Instead of using that attention to push users into the app or sell directly, the newsletter opens the week with long-form storytelling.

The result: Rally meets readers when they’re receptive, then lets the story do the selling over time.

Results: What Changed When Shiny Things Became Infrastructure

Newsletter Subscribers Convert 3X Higher

Rally reports a 3X increase in conversion among newsletter subscribers compared to standard users. The lift is even higher among desktop web users who read the newsletter before investing.

But conversion is only the beginning.

Subscribers Show 20%+ Stronger Investment Behavior

Newsletter subscribers show a 20%+ lift in investment behavior versus non-subscribers, including:

• Higher first-investment rates
• Larger investment size
• More frequent participation

Among users who open the newsletter:

• ~80% download the app
• ~75% make a first investment

Many users first discover Rally through onboarding or earned media. But the newsletter becomes the first consistent, direct channel from the brand, moving readers from curiosity to conviction.

The Newsletter Turns One-Time Investors Into Multi-Session Investors

Rally found that long-form storytelling increases investment frequency. When a new asset is featured across multiple weeks, investors often return and increase allocation before an offering closes.

The loop looks like this:

1. An investor participates
2. The newsletter deepens context and meaning
3. The investor returns and adds to their position

For assets that benefit from layered storytelling, this compounding effect is especially pronounced.

Newsletter-Driven Investors Are More Likely to Hold 10+ Assets

Rally also sees stronger retention quality. Newsletter subscribers who invest are significantly more likely to hold 10+ assets in their portfolio than non-newsletter users.

Over time, Rally leaned further into single-story, long-form essays instead of price-focused updates. That shift strengthened trust on both sides of the marketplace.

Why Rally Rd. Chose beehiiv

Rally has used nearly every major newsletter and website-building tool available. For Shiny Things, beehiiv became the long-term home.

Rob Petrozzo, cofounder of Rally Rd., explains it this way:

“Choosing beehiiv was a no-brainer for us… it genuinely feels like a platform designed by real people who understand how modern communication should work. It’s intuitive, easy for our entire team to use, and incredibly flexible when it comes to design and layout.”

Three advantages mattered most.

1) SEO-Friendly Publishing That Makes Each Issue Shareable

Every issue publishes as a standalone, indexable article. That makes each edition easier to share across social platforms and easier to find later through search, without losing the newsletter experience.

This became critical once specific issues started generating investor inflows through resharing.

2) Custom Formatting for Editorial-Quality Long-Form

Rally publishes opinion-driven essays in the 1,200–2,500 word range. beehiiv’s layout and formatting flexibility helped the newsletter feel editorial, not transactional.

That formatting shift supported a bigger strategy shift: deeper stories, fewer “updates.”

3) Clear Analytics and Optional Monetization

beehiiv analytics helped Rally refine what resonates. And while Rally has reduced ad placements to preserve editorial focus, the option to activate monetization through the beehiiv Ad Network remains available when it fits.

The Editorial Shift That Unlocked Growth

Six months ago, Rally pivoted away from routine collectible and price commentary. The team began publishing conceptual, opinion-driven essays.

In August, Rally published an article titled “Every Hobby Is About Money.” The piece resonated with millennial investors, drove resharing, and generated a meaningful influx of new investors via newsletter discovery.

Just as importantly, it reactivated dormant readers and turned casual subscribers into weekly readers.

Because beehiiv publishes each issue as a shareable, standalone article, the distribution effect is amplified.

That moment reframed Shiny Things from a marketing channel into a media asset.

Institutional Impact: Two Major Partners Attributed to the Newsletter

Shiny Things doesn’t only influence retail investors.

Between Q4 2025 and Q1 2026, Rally added two major institutional partners directly attributed to the newsletter. Those partnerships opened tens of millions of dollars in tier-one supply through upcoming IPOs and platform partnerships.

For a marketplace, supply-side expansion matters as much as demand-side growth. The newsletter contributed meaningfully to both.

Why Trust Us

beehiiv powers newsletters for creators, startups, and media brands that rely on owned distribution to drive measurable growth. We built beehiiv for teams who care about deliverability, publishing, analytics, and long-term audience ownership, not short-term hacks.

This case study is based on Rally Rd.’s first-hand reporting of performance metrics and outcomes from operating Shiny Things on beehiiv.

Why the Newsletter Outperformed Paid Media

Rally doesn’t run consistent paid acquisition. Historically, growth has relied heavily on word of mouth.

Internally, the difference between paid channels and newsletter-driven investors is described as “night and day.” Owned communication builds:

• Deeper engagement
• More meaningful conversation
• Higher-frequency participation
• Stronger trust

The newsletter helped convert daily users into weekly users, and IPO investors into active secondary-market traders.

It’s now Rally’s strongest internal growth lever.

Key Takeaways for Startup Teams Using Newsletters

If you’re a startup using a newsletter for lead nurturing or top-of-funnel, Rally’s playbook is simple:

1. Pick a high-intent moment (Rally chose Sunday mornings)
2. Write for belief, not clicks (long-form beats constant promos)
3. Publish in a format built for sharing (each issue should travel)
4. Let stories compound (repeat participation grows when context grows

Final Thoughts

Turn attention into conversion.
With beehiiv, Rally Rd. built a newsletter that delivered:

• 3X higher conversion
• 20%+ lift in investment behavior
• Stronger retention and larger portfolios
• New institutional partnerships

When your newsletter becomes infrastructure, growth compounds. Launch your media engine with beehiiv.