Peerlist · Marketing Manager · Apr 2022 – Oct 2023 · Full-time

Peerlist's newsletter grew from 13K to 32K readers, and its X from 3K to 7K followers

Peerlist is a professional network for people in tech, built as the alternative to LinkedIn. I was measured on shipping every week: organic traffic and social growth, blogs, social posts, customer and B2B calls, and new campaign ideas.

13K → 32K+newsletter readers
47%average open rate
3K → 7Kfollowers on Peerlist's X
46K+impressions on my best post

My role

  • Marketing Manager at Peerlist, and its sole marketer, working directly with the founders.
  • I turned the newsletter from product updates into a read for developers, designers and freshers, and owned the blog.
  • I ran the brand X account, the DEV Community ads and the influencer pilot.
  • I tracked every post's impressions, follows, audience, timing and the reason behind it.

Vertical 1

Newsletter and blog

The newsletter went from about 13K people getting product updates to 32K+ readers, with a 47% average open rate.

Newsletter readers, when I joined vs when I leftApr 2022 – Oct 2023. Opens weren't tracked before, when it only sent product updates
when I joinedwhen I leftReaders ~13K 32K+

What I saw

When I joined, the newsletter only carried product updates, so nobody tracked opens.

The bet: write about the reader's career, not the product: first salaries, side projects, feedback, case studies.

Blog

  • I owned blog.peerlist.io and wrote 20+ posts for developers, designers and freshers.
  • Some of the topics: negotiating your first salary, "Resumes are dead. Really?", where moonlighting came from, and how to write a case study as a developer.
See the blogs I wrote20+ posts
CareersYour Professional Network Needs A Verified ProfileCareersNegotiating your first salaryCareersWhat should you do when you disagree with feedback?CareersHow To Succeed At Your Software Engineering Internship?CraftYou must start a side project.CraftHow To Write A Case Study As A Developer?CraftHow To Select Fonts For The Website?ToolsAI Tools To Save Your Time

Vertical 2

X

Peerlist's X grew from about 3K to 7K followers. Relatable posts beat educational ones: my best did 46K, 35K and 34K impressions.

Followers on Peerlist's X, when I joined vs when I leftApproximate, from memory: no analytics screenshots exist
when I joinedwhen I leftFollowers ~3K ~7K

Relatable over educational

  • "Provide value" posts all sounded the same, and we were up against LinkedIn in the same feed.
  • People want something they can relate to, not something they can learn from. I wrote that "why" next to every post I tracked.
  • "Who did this? 😁" (July 2023) got 46K+ impressions, my best post. "Intern on weekend after deploying on Friday" (December 2022) got 35K+ impressions and 78 follows, the most any post brought in.

Read the room

  • When the news was full of layoffs, I posted jobs for people looking for work, with no clickbait: "For every 5 likes on this tweet, we will post a job opening in tech."
  • The first version got 7K impressions in May 2023. The July version, with a sharper hook, got 34K and brought 50+ follows.
  • Late evenings, when people skim and bookmark for later.
  • Saturday daytime for the "take a break" post, so there's no regret and still time to plan something.
  • There are at least four trends every day. I only jumped on the ones that fit the brand.

Campaigns

  • 10-day salary campaign: question posts, because people love to talk about themselves. "What did you do with your first salary? 👀" got 7K+ impressions.
  • 10-day campaign against LinkedIn: quote tweets showing the problems Peerlist solves. It got about 10K impressions and many mentions, and the community kept using the hashtag: #LinkedOut.

Giveaways

  • The swag giveaway worked. It went to the GenZ community, with 0–2 years of experience, and fewer than 1% of them owned the swag yet.

What didn't work: the books giveaway. Books suit Millennials, but I ran it the same way as the GenZ one. The prize has to match the people you design the giveaway for.

Vertical 3

Ads and influencers

The DEV Community campaign promised 1M views. I wrote 6+ ad variants, and the most successful one I also designed: a real WhatsApp chat as the ad.

DEV Community ads

  • Written for developers, designers and PMs with 2+ years of experience. Each one opens on a pain they already feel.
  • The GitHub graph: the developer's most visible vanity metric, the green squares.
  • Too many links: "Profile == Resume + Portfolio", written as an equation.
  • Recruiter overwhelm: the fear of showing too much instead of the right thing.
  • The side-project launch: "launching but no users", tied to Peerlist Spotlight.

Influencer pilot

  • The goal was awareness, not signups. A one-time partnership rarely brings signups.
  • I talked to 15 creators and led each conversation to closing. We worked with 3.

What I'd do differently

I asked the team to start making video content regularly, but I didn't push hard enough. I'd do that differently, and it's what I've done in every role since.