Marketing & Growth

How to send a weekly marketing report as Solo Media and Creator Founders

Marketing & GrowthFor Solo Media and Creator Founders2 apps11 steps~22 min to set up

Every Monday you're manually tabbing between YouTube Studio, Beehiiv (or Substack), your Stripe dashboard, and a Google Sheet to piece together last week's numbers before you can tell sponsors anything meaningful. It takes 90 minutes minimum and you still end up with a Frankenstein doc that mixes weeks-old screenshots with manually typed subscriber counts. Sponsor reporting is the worst part — your CPM, open rate, and revenue per issue live in three completely different places, and a brand partner asking 'how'd last week's placement do?' means another 45 minutes of your Tuesday morning.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

Marketing & GrowthFor Solo Media and Creator Founders2 apps11 steps~22 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A weekly marketing report that automatically pulls your subscriber growth, email open rates, top referrers, and sponsor revenue into one digest — emailed to you (and optionally your sponsors) every Monday morning

A Growth Analyst app that reads your traffic and conversion data and tells you the three things that actually moved last week, with specific suggestions for what to test next

A sponsor performance summary you can copy-paste or forward directly, built from real numbers — no spreadsheet assembly required

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Growth Analyst Email Agent

Data sources & config

Growth Analyst connects to PostHog via Starch's integration catalog (queried live when the weekly digest runs). Gmail is a scheduled-sync provider — Starch syncs your Gmail data on a schedule, so sponsor thread history and open-rate signals are available without manual export. Stripe is a scheduled-sync provider — Starch syncs your Stripe charges, invoices, and payouts on a schedule so sponsorship revenue is always current. If your newsletter platform (Beehiiv, Substack, ConvertKit) has a public analytics page, Starch can automate data collection through your browser — no API needed.

Prompts to copy

Every Monday at 7am, pull last week's data from PostHog — top referrers, signup trend vs. the previous week, and which content drove the most new subscribers. Write a 5-bullet digest with one specific thing I should test this week. Email it to me at [address].

After the Growth Analyst digest lands in my inbox, draft a sponsor performance summary I can forward to my two current sponsors. Pull in last week's open rate and click rate from Gmail threads where they're mentioned, and flag any sponsor whose campaign is ending in the next 14 days based on our email history.

Build me a weekly marketing report app. Connect PostHog for traffic data and Gmail for sponsor thread history. Every Monday morning, show me: new subscribers this week vs. last week, top 3 referral sources, email open rate, total Stripe revenue from sponsorships this month, and a one-paragraph 'what worked' summary.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect PostHog from Starch's integration catalog — this gives Growth Analyst live access to your traffic, referrers, and signup conversion data when the weekly report runs.

2 Connect Gmail as a scheduled-sync provider — Starch syncs your Gmail on a schedule, which means your sponsor threads, click confirmations, and partnership emails are indexed and queryable without any manual export.

3 Connect Stripe as a scheduled-sync provider — Starch syncs your Stripe charges and payouts on a schedule, giving you real sponsorship revenue numbers in the same report, not a separate tab.

4 Open the Growth Analyst starter app from the App Store and customize it for your creator business: swap generic 'conversion' language for subscriber growth, and add a section for top content by referral traffic.

5 Write your Monday morning digest prompt: tell Starch what data to pull, what comparisons to make (this week vs. last week, this month vs. last month), and what format to email it in.

6 Set up the Email Agent to run immediately after the digest: tell it to scan your Gmail for any sponsor thread where a campaign end date is within 14 days and draft a renewal pitch you can send with one click.

7 If your newsletter platform doesn't have a direct integration, tell Starch to automate collection from your Beehiiv or Substack analytics page through the browser — no API needed — and include subscriber count and open rate in the weekly report.

8 Test the full Monday run manually: trigger the workflow, review the digest output, check that Stripe revenue numbers match what you'd expect, and confirm the sponsor summary looks forwardable.

9 Set the automation to run every Monday at 7am so the report is waiting for you before you open anything else.

10 Once it's running, add a second automation: if a sponsor opens the forwarded summary email and clicks a link (tracked via Gmail), have Starch draft a follow-up message flagging strong placement performance while the numbers are fresh.

11 Each quarter, update the Growth Analyst prompt to reflect new content formats or sponsor metrics — describe the change in plain language and Starch rebuilds the relevant section.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

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Worked example

Week of March 17, 2026 — Monday 7am digest

Sample numbers from a real run

New subscribers (week)	312
New subscribers (prior week)	274
Week-over-week subscriber growth	14
Email open rate (last issue)	42
Top referrer clicks (Beehiiv referral program)	188
Stripe sponsorship revenue collected (March MTD)	4,200
Sponsor campaign ending within 14 days	1

At 7:02am Monday, the digest lands: 312 new subscribers last week, up from 274 the week before — a 14% jump Growth Analyst ties directly to a guest episode that drove 188 referral clicks through Beehiiv's program. Open rate on the last issue was 42%, above the prior 4-week average of 38%. Stripe shows $4,200 in sponsorship revenue collected so far in March across two placements. The Email Agent flags that Sponsor B's campaign ends March 28 — 11 days out — and drafts a renewal pitch referencing the 42% open rate and the referral spike as proof points. You forward it before 8am. The whole thing took you four minutes instead of ninety.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Week-over-week net new subscribers (absolute and percentage)

Email open rate and click-through rate per issue

Sponsorship revenue collected month-to-date (from Stripe)

Top referral source driving new subscriber signups

Sponsor campaign renewal rate (renewals vs. one-and-done placements)

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Manual spreadsheet (Google Sheets + copy-paste from 5 dashboards)

Free and already familiar, but takes 60-90 minutes every Monday and breaks every time a platform changes its UI — Starch runs the assembly automatically.

Beehiiv or Substack built-in analytics

Good for newsletter-specific metrics but can't see Stripe revenue, PostHog traffic, or Gmail sponsor threads in the same view — Starch connects all three.

ConvertKit (Kit) reporting

Solid for email metrics within Kit's ecosystem, but doesn't pull in ad revenue, web traffic, or sponsor thread signals — you'd still be stitching tabs together.

Notion dashboard (manually updated)

Flexible and you probably already use Notion, but someone (you) has to update it — Starch syncs and writes the narrative automatically.

Chartable or Spotify for Podcasters analytics

Strong for podcast-specific listen data, but the business layer — sponsor revenue, email performance, web traffic — still lives elsewhere and Starch is what connects it.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — growth analyst, email agent all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

My newsletter is on Beehiiv — does Starch connect to it directly?

Beehiiv isn't in Starch's scheduled-sync provider list today, but if Beehiiv has an analytics or subscriber page you can log into, Starch can automate data collection through your browser — no API needed. You'd tell Starch something like 'every Monday, log into my Beehiiv account and pull last week's subscriber count and open rate, then include it in my weekly digest.' For ConvertKit users, connect it from Starch's integration catalog and the agent queries it live when your report runs.

Will Starch actually tell me what's working, or just display numbers?

The Growth Analyst app is built to give you a narrative, not a table. You configure it to call out what changed week-over-week, name the top referrer, and suggest one specific thing to test next — not just 'here are your numbers.' The prompt you write shapes how opinionated it gets. If you want it to say 'the guest episode on March 14th drove 60% of new signups — consider booking the same guest format more often,' you tell it to reason that way.

Can I forward the report directly to my sponsors?

Yes, and that's one of the main use cases. You can tell Starch to generate a separate sponsor-facing summary — stripped of internal commentary, formatted to show placement-specific open rates and click counts — that you can forward or copy-paste. The Email Agent can draft that summary automatically after the main digest runs, pulling from the same Gmail and Stripe data.

Is my Stripe and Gmail data stored securely?

Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today — that's worth knowing if you're handling large volumes of sensitive subscriber or payment data. Starch syncs your Stripe and Gmail data on a schedule for use in your apps and automations. If your situation requires SOC 2 compliance (e.g., enterprise sponsor contracts), check Starch's current certification status before connecting financial data.

What if I want historical trend data going back 12 months?

Starch is built for live data surfaces and recent sync windows — it's not a long-horizon data warehouse. Stripe sync covers recent charges and payouts; Gmail sync covers your current message history. If you need a full 12-month sponsor performance archive, you'd want to export that to a Google Sheet or Notion database separately and reference it alongside the weekly Starch digest. Starch can connect to Google Sheets from its integration catalog and query it live as part of your report.

Can I add podcast listen data from Spotify or Apple Podcasts to the report?

If Spotify for Podcasters or Apple Podcasts Connect has an analytics page you can log into, Starch can automate data collection from it through your browser — no API needed. You'd describe it: 'every Monday, log into my Spotify for Podcasters account and pull last week's total streams and top episode, then add it to my weekly report.' It's not a one-click integration, but it's buildable without any code.