How Morning Brew Turned Referral Swag Into 75,000 New Subscribers

About Morning Brew

Morning Brew is a daily business newsletter that delivers the latest news in an engaging, conversational format to millions of subscribers. What started as a college dorm room project has grown into one of the most recognizable media brands in business news, known for making complex topics accessible and entertaining.

The Challenge

Morning Brew’s newsletter referral program was working — but scaling it was a different story. Behind every pair of joggers shipped to a loyal reader, there was a manual, people-heavy operation: coordinating vendors, managing inventory in spreadsheets, processing redemptions by hand, and troubleshooting fulfillment issues across multiple teams. What started as a scrappy growth tactic was becoming an operational bottleneck.

As the newsletter’s subscriber base grew into the millions, the merch program needed to keep pace — without burning out the team running it.

The Solution

Stitchi stepped in as Morning Brew’s end-to-end merch partner, replacing the patchwork of manual processes with a streamlined, automated system built on three pillars:

Shopify Integration & Automation

Stitchi integrated Morning Brew’s referral redemption flow directly with Shopify, eliminating manual order processing. Readers who hit referral milestones could claim their rewards seamlessly — no internal team intervention required.

Dynamic Email Sequences

To make the program truly hands-free, Stitchi built automated email sequences triggered by referral milestones. Personalized notifications, redemption instructions, and shipping updates ran on autopilot — driving engagement while removing operational overhead.

Warehousing & Fulfillment

Stitchi took over production, warehousing, and shipping of Morning Brew’s merch. Inventory was managed in real time, orders were fulfilled at scale, and readers received their gear promptly and in perfect condition — all without Morning Brew lifting a finger.

The Results

We shipped over 8,000 pairs of Morning Brew joggers to our loyal readers, resulting in over 75,000 new subscribers. This was our largest growth campaign to date, and we love seeing pictures of our readers wearing their MB joggers on social media.

By automating what was once a manual, multi-person operation, Morning Brew turned their referral merch program into a scalable growth engine:

• 75,000 new subscribers acquired through the swag-powered referral campaign

• 29.4% reduction in customer acquisition cost compared to paid channels

• 8,000 brand evangelists walking around in Morning Brew joggers — organic, visible, ongoing brand exposure

What started as a logistics headache became Morning Brew’s highest-performing growth campaign — and they didn’t have to add a single headcount to run it.

What’s Next

With the referral merch program running on autopilot, Morning Brew continues to expand their partnership with Stitchi — exploring new product lines, seasonal drops, and additional subscriber milestone rewards. The infrastructure Stitchi built scales with them, meaning Morning Brew can launch new campaigns without rebuilding the logistics every time.