I lost 58% of my subscribers
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Hey Reader Let me start by saying how much I love Dolly. What a phenomenal woman. She's inspired me in so many ways, but this week, it's to keep showing up as myself and doing what I do. She never watered herself down to be easier to swallow. They told her the hair was too much, the outfits were too much, the whole thing was too much. She kept every bit of it. "Find out who you are and do it on purpose," she said, and then went and did exactly that for sixty years. Dolly was never trying to be for everyone. She knew exactly who she was for, and she went and found them. I've been thinking about that for the last two days, because a few weeks ago I did something that scared me. I cleaned up my email list and lost 58% of my subscribers. It actually freaked me out for a moment. More than half, gone in an afternoon, and I sat there looking at the new number feeling slightly sick. Then it passed, and what was underneath it was relief. That old list had been growing for years. Yoga students from my teaching days. Other yoga teachers. Friends. Family. All of them lovely, most of them collected in a completely different chapter of my life, and a lot of them not opening a thing. Here's the thing: I don't want people on my list who aren't opening my emails or finding them useful. That isn't a reader. That's just a number I was carrying around to make myself feel better. So, it was time for a spring clean. What's left is a list of people who are actually here. I can talk straight to you now, because I know you're here for the right reasons. And what happened next genuinely surprised me. Here it is 👇
3 reasons to spring clean your email listI put this off for over a year because it felt like going backwards. It really wasn't. 1. You get to write to the people who are actually thereThis is the one I underestimated. When you know that everyone left is opening because they want to, the writing changes. You stop writing for the people who might be confused, or offended, or were only ever here because they came to your Tuesday yoga class in 2019. You write to one woman who chose this. It's a smaller room and it's a much better one. → Try this: open your last email's stats and ignore the percentage completely. Look only at how many actual humans opened it. That's your real list, and it's the number worth writing to. 2. The dead weight was making it all look bigger than it wasMy open rate had been sitting around 20% for a year, and I'd been reading that as a verdict on my writing. My subject lines. My ideas. My fault. It wasn't any of those things. It was simply a numbers problem. The week after the clean, my open rate went from about 20% to nearly 50%, and it's been over 55% ever since. Nothing about my writing changed. The numbers just got honest. And here's the part I didn't expect: the number of actual people opening it didn't drop at all. It went slightly up. → Try this: in your email tool, filter for anyone with no opens in the last six months. Don't delete a thing yet. Just look at how big that group is and let yourself sit with it. 3. You can finally see what's workingWith honest numbers underneath it, the data started telling the truth. I sorted my last fifteen emails by clicks instead of opens, and found something uncomfortable. My two best-opening emails were my two worst-clicking ones. The one that got the most action from you was the plainest thing I've sent all year, the one about what I actually spend my money on. A real receipt, with real detail. Clever subject lines get opened out of curiosity and then go nowhere. Concrete ones get opened and acted on. I could not see any of that through a 20% open rate. It was all noise. → Try this: sort your last ten emails or posts by the thing you actually want, replies, clicks, saves, rather than by views. The order will not be the one you expected. A smaller room. Honest numbers. And something I can finally see. If you want to grow, then you need to read the real data.
2 things i'm loving✦ Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, JoleneIn honour of Dolly, I invite you to revisit her endless hits on Spotify. Then hit reply and let me know which one is your favourite. It's hard because there's just so many!
✦ What the Brand & Bloom beta testers are actually buildingI'm midway through two beta builds and this feedback came through: "How to connect apps to Claude, how to run a skill in Claude, and market insights from Claude will make my life so much easier when it comes to social media and my newsletter. Major uplevel." That's the bit I underestimated when I started building this. It isn't the branding people end up most relieved by. It's the systems sitting underneath it, the ones that mean you're not staring at a blank page every Monday morning. → The founding group is small on purpose. Come and join the waitlist
1 affirmationFor the woman looking at a subscriber count she's quietly disappointed by: I am building a life that reflects who I really am… so the right people can find me. I lost 58% of my list and I couldn’t be happier. That smaller number isn't a shortfall. It's a room full of all the right people I get to serve. When did you last properly look at your own numbers? Hit reply and tell me. I read every one. That's your 3-2-1 for this week. See you next Thursday! With love & creativity xo, Louise P.S. If you do your own spring clean this week, hit reply and tell me what percentage you lost. And celebrate all the right people who’ve stayed. P.P.S. How I make this: every opinion in here is mine. I use AI to gather the market insights, kick ideas around, and help me edit. The time it saves goes back into my family, my mat and my garden. Interested to learn how I do it? It’s Brand & Bloom. |