Discover how founder Domonkos Eross helps professors, authors, and public intellectuals grow newsletters, launch books, and build lasting audience relationships using Kit.
Domonkos Eross never intended to run a creative agency. He set out to work with people whose ideas could change the world and discovered that email was the most powerful tool for getting those ideas heard. Today, Doma is the founder of Flowin, a creative agency helping thought leaders build newsletters, grow audiences, and launch books, podcasts and other content across channels. His clients include some of the world’s leading professors, authors, and public intellectuals.
But how he got here isn’t linear.
Doma has an unusual origin story for someone in the newsletter business. His background is McKinsey consulting and an MBA from Harvard, not digital marketing. He doesn’t have his own newsletter. And by his own admission, he doesn’t love marketing.
What he does love is ideas, specifically the kind of deep, rigorous, life-changing thinking that comes out of decades of academic research and lived experience. The kind his clients have in abundance.
I’m doing this because I’m interested in the content of these people,which is deeply philosophical and altruistic content, most of the time.
Those clients include Harvard professors, Stanford professors, and some of the most recognizable names in the intellectual creator space. Through his agency, Flowin, Doma helps them do something they’ve rarely had to think about before: build and own a direct relationship with their audience.
And increasingly, that means email.
Why thought leaders need an email strategy
When a Harvard professor or an artist wants to have a bigger impact, their instinct is rarely to launch a newsletter. They have books, lectures, maybe speaking engagements. Marketing isn’t their job. Thinking is.
But Doma has spent years making the case for why email is different, and why it matters specifically for creators whose work requires depth.
“Unlike social media, which has that kind of power to create a world of crazy attention span deficit, you still need to kind of read an email,” he says. “It does require some attention, some depth. And primarily for these thought leaders who have deeper thoughts, you need to go into a deeper thought in that email.”
The regularity of email is just as important as the depth, he argues. Behavior change (the ultimate goal of most of his clients’ work) doesn’t happen from a single encounter with an idea. It requires repetition.
“Email has two factors,” he says. “One is the depth of it and the second is the frequency, both of which are required for a human to change. It’s the same with a daily meditation. If you don’t do it every day, it could be helpful, but it’s not quite the same effect.”
The business case is equally clear. Doma cites a figure from book publishing expert Tim Grahl: email is 20 times more effective at converting readers to book buyers than social media. For a thought leader with a book to sell, a course to launch, or a movement to build, that math matters.
“What that means practically is if you have 100,000 followers on social media versus 10,000 newsletter subscribers—10,000 people might see a social post, versus 5,000 who read an email,” he says. “But it’s not really about bigger. It’s more about deeper and more direct communication.”
How Flowin helps authors, professors, and experts build newsletters
When Doma’s clients arrive, they’re usually in one of two places: they see the value of email and want to do it right, or they need convincing. Harvard professors Arthur Brooks and Bob Waldinger already had email lists when Doma came on board. They just wanted to do it better. Others have needed the full picture.
The time objection is the most common barrier. Doma’s answer is direct: “If you hire me, then you don’t need to worry about it.” For most clients, that means no more than 30 minutes of their time per week, regardless of the newsletter format.
That’s made possible by something that sets his clients apart from most newsletter creators: they have decades of existing content to draw from.
“There’s a lot of content to work from,” Doma says. “There’s never any creative pressure to create something new. Part of what we’re doing is building out this big content library for them and then figuring out how do we build the content arcs from that library.”
A thought leader’s body of work (research papers, books, lectures, interviews accumulated over 20 or 30 years) becomes the raw material for a newsletter that feels fresh and relevant without requiring the creator to generate something new from scratch every week.
How Flowin uses Kit to grow newsletter audiences
When Doma was first setting up newsletters for his clients, he went through a platform evaluation process. Someone recommended Kit. He had a conversation with Nathan Barry. He ran the analysis.
“He just seemed like a very nice guy,” Doma says of Nathan. “So I was like, okay, let’s do Kit as the platform.“
That might sound like a casual decision, but what’s kept him and continued to bring his clients to Kit is more substantive.
Two things come up every time Doma talks to a prospective client about platform choice: Creator Network and the Kit team.
Creator Network, he says, is “the number one reason why I’m bringing my clients to Kit.” The growth mechanism is particularly well-suited to thought leaders, who are allergic to anything that feels like self-promotion.
From a growth perspective, it’s a very elegant way to grow.You don’t need to market yourself all the time. Somebody else is recommending you. For a thought leader, that’s very important—we never want to feel too sales-y. But if someone else says, ‘Hey, sign up here,’ then we’re not self-marketing.
The results have been concrete. For Arthur Brooks, Doma used Creator Network as a central pillar of his list growth strategy. “We basically doubled his subscriber count in like five months,” he says. “And around 50% of that came from the Creator Network.”
Beyond the product, Doma returns repeatedly to the Kit team as a differentiator. Having access to Kit experts, their responsiveness, and a level of hands-on support is something he hasn’t found elsewhere.
Working with Kit experts regularly ( a benefit his clients receive as a Pro customer), as well as deliverability specialist and migration expert, has given Flowin a genuine operational backstop. For thought leaders whose reputation is their business, that combination of growth tools and expert support isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the whole point.
That’s mattered in real, high-stakes moments. For one high-profile client’s newsletter, the Kit team twice jumped in to help resolve issues with emails after they’d been sent. “Someone jumped in right away and they helped us out to save some face,” Doma says.
He’s also used Kit’s subscriber data for Meta ad targeting, running book launch campaigns for clients by building audiences from their newsletter lists. “We did use the subscriber data for Meta ads on How to Live a Meaningful Life for Bill and Dave,” he says, referring to Stanford professors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. “So the book targeting. All of that is also very helpful.”
Helping thought leaders build long-term audience relationships
What Doma has built is, in its own way, a new model for how established experts enter the creator economy. Not with viral moments or growth hacking, but with the same methodical, relationship-driven approach they’ve applied to everything else in their careers.
“We’re really focused on preserving the voice, protecting the brand—really translating the presence of a thought leader to audiences in a way that has the impact they want to have on them,” he says.
Kit is the platform that makes that possible at scale: peer recommendation for growth, a team that responds like partners rather than a support desk, and tools built for creators who are in it for the long game.
“Nathan sometimes went into the account and started editing stuff,” Doma says. “Very few other CEOs would do this. I know that’s not a feature, but in that sense, it is a feature of Kit.”
FAQ
Why should thought leaders build an email list?
An email list gives thought leaders a direct line to the people who follow their ideas, with no algorithm deciding who sees each post. You own the list, so if a platform changes its rules or shuts down, your audience stays with you. It’s also the most direct place to sell what grows out of your ideas, from books and courses to speaking and consulting.
How do professors and authors grow newsletter subscribers?
Professors and authors grow newsletter subscribers by adding a sign-up link everywhere readers already find their work. Put it in the back of your book, on your author or faculty page, in your talk slides, and in your podcast interview bios. A free resource, like a chapter preview or a reading guide, gives people a reason to join today. In Kit, Recommendations adds another source: other writers in your field recommend your newsletter to their subscribers.
Why is email more effective than social media for long-form ideas?
Email works better than social media for long-form ideas because it delivers your whole argument to someone who chose to read it. There’s no character limit and no feed pulling readers toward the next post, so a 2,000-word essay gets read the way you wrote it. Because you own your list, an algorithm change can’t cut you off from the people who asked to hear from you.
How does the Kit Creator Network help grow a newsletter?
The Kit Creator Network helps you grow a newsletter through Recommendations. Other creators promote your newsletter in their sign-up forms and emails, and you promote theirs. You can find partners in your niche through the Discover tab, or let Smart Recommendations match you automatically. Creators who use Recommendations see 2× list growth, and top creators get 1 in 3 new subscribers this way. People who join because a creator they trust recommended you are more likely to open, engage, and buy.
What role does deliverability play in newsletter growth?
Email deliverability decides whether your newsletter lands in the inbox or the spam folder, so every new subscriber only counts if your emails reach them. Kit handles the technical setup for you and has a 99.8% delivery rate. You can also get free deliverability audits and personalized recommendations to keep your list healthy as it grows.
Can agencies manage multiple client newsletters in Kit?
Yes. Agencies manage multiple client newsletters in Kit by creating a separate Kit account for each client and joining each account as a team member. Kit recommends a separate account for every distinct audience, so each client’s subscribers, sender details, and reporting stay apart. Pro includes unlimited team seats, so your whole team and your client can work in the same account. Request a demo today.
How do email newsletters support book launches?
Email newsletters support book launches by giving authors an audience they can reach directly, before and after release day. You can share the writing process, offer preorder bonuses, and send a launch sequence that tells readers exactly when and where to buy. With Kit automations, buyers get tagged when they purchase, so they stop getting sales emails and start getting what comes next. After launch, the same list is ready for your events, your next book, and everything in between.
How long does it take to launch a newsletter?
You can start a newsletter in Kit in an afternoon. Create a free account, set up a sign-up form or landing page, and write a welcome email so new subscribers know what to expect. Kit’s free Newsletter plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers. Most of the time goes into deciding what you’ll write about and how often you’ll send. If you’re moving from another platform, Kit’s migration team can move your list for free.
