About Your Email List

The Why Part

When I started the Sunday Newsletter, I wanted to reconnect and hold closer to the folks I had known long before life was interrupted by my minor medical miracle. Sunday morning seemed like a good time for a leisurely read. And so it began.

As time passed and my business grew, I thought long and hard about introducing offers through my newsletter. I knew I needed to get the word out about what I was doing, BUT I also knew it went entirely against the grain of everything I originally intended. And on the few times I did share an offer, the take-up was equivalent to the energy I put into the offers. Extremely low.

However, my email list has grown, and sadly, some decent people who could use my services today have yet to learn what I do and could be missing an opportunity for more prosperity.

I decided I needed to change things up.

I am not messing with the Sunday Newsletter. One-third of you immediately replied and said keep me on the list. I hear you, and it is your comments I have taken to heart. The Sunday opinion piece has proven its weight in gold and will continue.

I am going to start a second email stream.   It will come out on Wednesdays and will be specifically devoted to offers. It will look slightly different from the Sunday piece to help you identify it.

Heads Up:  I do not have an overly sophisticated email system that allows you to opt out of each type of correspondence. So the best I can do is if you reply to the Wednesday email with “remove,” I will do exactly that for the Wednesday side only.  Naturally, if you get tired of reading me, you can hit the unsubscribe button at the bottom of every email and never hear from me again.

The How This Might Help You Part

You may have heard that the world seems to run in thirds – the third that loves you to pieces, the third that ignores you and the third that sits in the middle. (Sidebar: Your bestest ROI ever always comes from trying to move those in the middle to the love you to pieces side.)

Many of us have email marketing programs, and unfortunately, in the race to chase metrics,  there is far too much attention placed on the number of names and not nearly enough on the quality of those names.

One thing I repeatedly get when I talk to clients and prospects about segmenting their customer list is a throwing up of hands – my list is soooo big and unwieldy that I can’t do anything special with my marketing.

It took me almost an entire day to give you these two nuggets of wisdom:

1. You are left with two buckets after you identify (and mark safe/protected) all those on your email list who love you. The two buckets are
   1. Those you can delete
   2. Those you can market to in more focused ways
2. A quick way to identify which names you can safely delete is
   1. Look for all names who have read 20% or less of everything you ever sent to them. Delete them.
   2. Then look for all names of those who have read 21% to 35% of all the things you ever sent to them
      1. Delete them if they have not read anything over the last six months.
      2. If they HAVE read something, flag them to be reviewed in another six months.

Your email marketing list really does have so much gold in it. And we are fooling ourselves by believing everyone in the audience hangs on to our every word. Those who read 50% or more are the keepers. Those who read 21%-50% are culled carefully. And those below 20% can safely be removed.

Help your best self-identify, eliminate the ones who ignore you and refocus your efforts on the ones you have left. It really IS that simple.

To your 2023 Success!