Category: Email MarketingCategory: Email Marketing

If you ever feel like sending a weekly newsletter to your subscribers is too much, Brick has sent me seven emails in 12 days.

“Don’t just tell people to subscribe to your newsletter,” is something I said on a recent Substack Live.

This sign up box in the footer of the Autonomous website caught my eye:

Workshop Notes
Drops, build logs, and what broke this week. From the workshop floor.

Getting people into your world is the first part of the journey. Them signing up for your email list? Well, that’s on them. But offering something besides “updates” goes a long way.

Words matter. Language has power. Hype your newsletters beyond “updates,” or “the latest news.”

Liz Derstine recently had a pretty exciting week, crossing Switzerland on the 242 mile Swiss via Alpina trail and nabbing a FKT (fastest known time).

My total time was 5 days, 17 hours, 40 minutes–1 day 2 hours faster than the current women’s record, and 1 day 5 hours faster than my previous time from 2023! I averaged over 43 miles (70 kilometers) per day and 12,650 feet (3,850 meters) of elevation gain per day.

Now, I had read her piece on crewing Tara Dower at this year’s Hardrock 100, where Tara finished 3rd woman, and 14th overall. She also “ran a large portion of the course over several days (aka “Softrock”)” and mentioned a particular bag she used, the Lickety Split 20L Backpack from Mountain Hardware.

Well, I go on plenty of adventures (though not as hardcore), and rarely need an excuse to buy a new bag, so I ordered one, and love it!

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Emma Gannon, in a piece titled “My honest thoughts about Substack,” wrote about being on a panel at SXSW London last year:

“I was asked a question about ‘growth’. I said I was more interested in maintaining what I have. The audience looked disappointed. They wanted me to say something about growth. They wanted hard growth statistics, a neat formula for selling to advertisers. I had no tips or hacks, apart from: I write a lot.”

Sure, you could be all, “that’s easy for Emma Gannon to say, she already has 80,000 subscribers!”

But she got there by paying attention to those first 10, 100, 1000. You aren’t gifted 80,000 subscribers without first feeling what it’s like writing to 8,000 people. There are mistakes you make and lessons you learn on your way to 10,000. I think she’s been at this for like 15 years, too. Come on, people. This takes time.

The allure is growth, of course. The rush of 100 new subscribers is real! It’s sexy! But maybe it’s a better use of your time to maintain what you have.

I dare you to write a personal email to one of your people. Not a marketing email, or an invite to an event, but a genuine note. A follow up from a conversation you had a month ago. Or kudos for a job well done.

Maintain what you have, or you might not have it for long.

As Substack co-founder Hamish KcKenzie recently said “email is an important distribution channel. It should not be your only one.”

I’m pretty he didn’t mean “if you’ve built everything on Substack and Substack goes away tomorrow, you’re fucked,” but well, the shoe fits.

Email lists are wonderful, of course, but only until Substack has an outage, or KIT suspends your account (I’ve heard that happen), or Gmail banishes your email to the promo folder (or worse).

The entirety of your work shouldn’t live on a platform you don’t own; not Substack, not Instagram, not YouTube. A website you own, on a hosting service you pay for, via files you can back up – that’s your safest bet.

Publishing your work on your own website ensures your biggest fans can find it, even when they don’t get an email from you.

​Join us later this week to talk about what a real owned presence looks like; things like your website, RSS, print, word of mouth, direct relationships, and more.

Thursday, April 30th at 2PM EST
Sign up here. https://luma.com/7asv89sv