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Matiklava Goes Partying

Weekly newsletter · 2026 · Claude Code · Python · Web crawling · LLM extraction · Cloudflare Workers · Telegram bots · MailerLite

Copywriting & StorytellingCreative Strategy & TestingPaid SocialGrowth MarketingAI Workflows & AutomationCreative Technology

Matiklava Goes Partying is a weekly guide to underground parties in Taiwan, started in August 2024 for 30 people. Every issue used to take three to four hours of copying flyers into MailerLite. In April 2026 I rebuilt it using Claude Code.

Issue 27 of the newsletter, top of the email
Email example.

April 2026Pipeline

A script reads 55 Instagram accounts and Resident Advisor, checks the dates and links, writes a draft issue and asks for a manual review.

01 meKickoff“Let's start issue #27.” Eight questions, then it works alone.
02 scrape55 Instagram accountsVenues, collectives, promoters. Resident Advisor cross-check.
03 extractLLM reads every postCaption and flyer become an event: date, venue, lineup, price, links.
04 checkValidatorsWrong dates, dead links, missed posts, Gmail's 102 KB clip limit.
05 buildEmail + archive draftFlyers to Cloudinary, MailerLite draft, archive page, IG carousel.
06 meReview and sendRead the rendered issue, cut what doesn't belong, hit send.
out800+ inboxesand the Telegram bot pings its subscribers
outArchive pagearchive.matiklava.com, a week later
outInstagram carouselfive slides from the same data

Every weekAI-assisted direction

  • "Let's start issue #27."

  • It asks me eight questions about the current issue.

  • It builds the issue and checks it against the original posts.

  • It hands it to me to read.

  • Every correction I make becomes a rule, so the same mistake doesn't come back.

Pythonthe pipeline
Instagram + RA55 accounts, cross-checked
LLMcaption and flyer to event
MailerLitedrafts and sending
Cloudinaryflyers that never expire
Cloudflare Workersboth Telegram bots

Around the emailArchive

archive.matiklava.com, optimized SEO and GEO for search engines and LLMs.

The archive index.

24/7Two Telegram bots

Both on Cloudflare Workers: one reports to me, one serves readers.

triggerA pipeline step finishesScrape, cross-check, generate, link check, publish.
cloudflare workerOperator botReports each step. Answers /subs, /trends, /burn.
meMy phoneI stopped watching the terminal.
triggerAn issue goes outOr a reader types /weekend, /next, /venue.
cloudflare worker · launching soon@MGPguideBotParties by day, a card per party, tickets and map.
readersIts subscribersPinged when a new issue is out.

Same dataGrowth and partners

Everything else runs off the same data:

Subscribe pagetracks which ad, post or bot brought each reader
Meta adssubscribers at NT$10.90 each
Partners pagesells placements, live numbers
Click reportwhat people opened, after each send
Trends reportgrowth and open rate across issues
Instagram carouselfive slides from each issue

2024 to 2026Paid growth on Meta

I run the newsletter's Meta ads myself: strategy, creative, copy, setup and tracking. Over two years that's 9 campaigns, 22 ads and five rounds of creative, for NT$12,476 in total (about US$390).

2024 and 2025The first rounds sold the wrong thing. Traffic campaigns with a mockup of the email, "Your ultimate party guide in Taiwan" and a Learn More button got 553 link clicks at about NT$4 each. But a click isn't a subscriber, and nothing told me how many of those people signed up.

2024 ad: a mockup of the email under "Your ultimate party guide in Taiwan"

April 2026The relaunch rebuilt everything around one number: cost per subscriber. The objective changed to Leads, the button to Subscribe, and the pixel on the subscribe page started reporting each signup back to Meta. The message became the newsletter's own promise:

  • English: "Every party in Taiwan. One email."

  • Chinese: 「這封信,就是你的週末派對」, "this email is your weekend party", written for a local reader rather than translated.

Each language got its own campaign, static and 14-second video for Stories and Reels. Every ad carries a tag that the subscribe page writes onto the reader in MailerLite, so I can see which ad each real reader came from.

What it returnedFrom April to June 2026 the lead campaigns spent NT$9,224.

848signups from the lead campaigns
NT$10.90per subscriber (US$0.34), against my ceiling of NT$50
72%of today's list came in through these ads

The Chinese campaign did best: 616 signups at NT$8.10 each, against 232 at NT$18.30 in English. A first test with both languages in one campaign got 1 signup for NT$191. I split them the next day, and the split is what made the Chinese numbers possible.

27 issuesResults

800+subscribers (30 at issue 1)
52%average open rate, twice the 25% benchmark
67.5%best open rate
19issues in six months since the relaunch
NT$10.90per subscriber from Meta ads, NT$8.10 on the Chinese campaign
19Klines of code, built solo with Claude Code