Case Study: Salty grows 1,500+ paid members with MailerLite

How this media founder grew to 1,500+ paid members (without writing any articles)

Salty, a 100% independent membership-supported newsletter founded by Claire Fitzsimmons, wanted to turn free subscribers into paid members while keeping content creation sustainable for a small team. Using MailerLite, Salty built its audience around email, automated onboarding, and reader-submitted stories rather than articles written by the founder.

MailerLite helped Salty implement automated welcome sequences, segmentation, A/B testing, and reusable email templates to promote paid offers and encourage submissions. The results were strong: Salty grew to more than 1,500 paid members, saw an open rate of over 40%, and found that subscribers were 40 times more likely to become paying customers.

Salty

Claire Fitzsimmons

Founder