Double Down on Your Newsletter Fans
My “Content Corner” newsletter goes out every other Friday.
Over the past few issues, a few marketers whom I know unsubscribed. These were the same types of marketers for whom I write the newsletter. So my initial reaction was:
“Oh no!”
I wondered what it was that caused them to unsubscribe. Was it something I wrote?
After thinking about it, I felt more relaxed. Maybe their inbox is out of control and they need to trim back their subscriptions. Or maybe the newsletter doesn’t connect with them.
That’s fine. It’s better, after all, for someone to unsubscribe, rather than stay subscribed but never open it.
Understand what people like
At the same time people were unsubscribing, others were providing positive feedback.
The purpose of my newsletter is to share my perspective on things, what (and how) I think. For that, open rate and unsubscribe rate are important — however, I don’t pay too much attention to clickthrough rate on the links I share. I do check which links get more clicks than others, but that’s about it.
The main metric I track isn’t really a metric at all. It’s REPLIES!
I love receiving replies from readers. A one-line reply saying they enjoyed the issue is good. A few-line reply saying why is even better.
Some examples:
- Readers enjoyed my story about an intranet project I worked on.
- Readers applauded my plea to flip our perspectives.
- Readers liked my method for consuming gobs of content. In fact, friend (and reader) Scott Ingram asked me to record my method on his Daily Sales Tips podcast 🙌
- Readers enjoyed my 2021 advice for marketers.
- Going a bit further back, readers loved the interview I did with my dad.
Compiling this list was a good exercise for my newsletter fitness. It helps me look back and see what readers liked. It’s quite a mix of things — but going forward, I’m encouraged to keep doing more of those things.
The lesson?
Worry less about unsubscribes and focus more on giving your newsletter fans more of what they want.
Read past issues and subscribe here:
https://us16.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=016564b34de5c9577c2ab2f47&id=363cda5b86
