I just removed about 200. Pruned them for a second time and I’ve been really brutal with it. Sign up within the last 14 days zero emails opened, zero post viewed. - adios
I’m not sure if this was correlation/causation but last time I did it, I got a huge bump so I hope it’s gonna happen again, but I’m not gonna hold my breath 😂
I've been on a hiatus for only about 3 weeks. But after publishing recently, I noticed that the "reach" was 1/4 of the figure I used to have. Does that mean my newsletter has gone to the spam folder? I'm very discouraged by this and wonder if taking a break from publishing is detrimental to my readership. Or is it a general phenomenon due to other reasons? Would love to hear your take on this. Thank you for what you shared here.
That's hard to tell without looking at the details. Could be spam. But not necessarily. A break can sometimes lead to lower numbers. These usually normalize again. Give it a few more weeks, then reevaluate.
I imported an almost 8k newsletter from Mailerlite five weeks ago. I've lost 140 subscribers since I started publishing on Substack, but my open rates are still above 40%. I publish weekly, so I've decided to give them five more months on Substack until I prune them, since maybe some of those who haven't interacted here did so when I was sending emails with my former ESP. Does that make sense?
I appear to have a number of subscribers in Nigeria whose profiles do n’t appear to be Nigerian - are these bits or could they be using some kind of VPN? For the most part they don’t seem to engage with anything. Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon?
Maybe I haven’t been around long enough to have an issue with this, but as a reader, I always worry about those who say you should delete inactive readers. I usually mark the emails in my inbox as read without actually opening them (no idea how this affects the metric). I then usually read either only via the app or occasionally via the web. But more than that, I could go months without reading a thing, then binge read everything over a few days before going cold again. I’m generally of the opinion that, if someone doesn’t want to read stuff, they’ll unsubscribe themselves. At least, that’s what I do when I subscribed to someone I no longer want to read.
My take has always been, if I'm going to just clean out my list just to improve metrics, I feel like cheating. Also, that says more about my content than the reader. If the content is not engaging, they won't open.
Now, with the deliverability part, I think it makes more sense. Because potentially interested readers won't get to open my emails and see the content if it's filtered out.
Thanks for the insight, will definitely think about it.
I just removed about 200. Pruned them for a second time and I’ve been really brutal with it. Sign up within the last 14 days zero emails opened, zero post viewed. - adios
I’m not sure if this was correlation/causation but last time I did it, I got a huge bump so I hope it’s gonna happen again, but I’m not gonna hold my breath 😂
When you say "click here" in your suggested email, what should we have them click?
That doesn’t really matter that much. As long as they click. That makes them active again.
Thanks!
I've been on a hiatus for only about 3 weeks. But after publishing recently, I noticed that the "reach" was 1/4 of the figure I used to have. Does that mean my newsletter has gone to the spam folder? I'm very discouraged by this and wonder if taking a break from publishing is detrimental to my readership. Or is it a general phenomenon due to other reasons? Would love to hear your take on this. Thank you for what you shared here.
That's hard to tell without looking at the details. Could be spam. But not necessarily. A break can sometimes lead to lower numbers. These usually normalize again. Give it a few more weeks, then reevaluate.
Thank you! I will give it some time. I just hope that this dip will put my readership to a downward spiral.
Hey! Thanks for this article.
I imported an almost 8k newsletter from Mailerlite five weeks ago. I've lost 140 subscribers since I started publishing on Substack, but my open rates are still above 40%. I publish weekly, so I've decided to give them five more months on Substack until I prune them, since maybe some of those who haven't interacted here did so when I was sending emails with my former ESP. Does that make sense?
Thank you!
I appear to have a number of subscribers in Nigeria whose profiles do n’t appear to be Nigerian - are these bits or could they be using some kind of VPN? For the most part they don’t seem to engage with anything. Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon?
I haven’t noticed that.
Maybe I haven’t been around long enough to have an issue with this, but as a reader, I always worry about those who say you should delete inactive readers. I usually mark the emails in my inbox as read without actually opening them (no idea how this affects the metric). I then usually read either only via the app or occasionally via the web. But more than that, I could go months without reading a thing, then binge read everything over a few days before going cold again. I’m generally of the opinion that, if someone doesn’t want to read stuff, they’ll unsubscribe themselves. At least, that’s what I do when I subscribed to someone I no longer want to read.
That totally fine. But once open rates reach a critical low. Like < 25 the issue of spam becomes serious.
Thanks for the article.
My take has always been, if I'm going to just clean out my list just to improve metrics, I feel like cheating. Also, that says more about my content than the reader. If the content is not engaging, they won't open.
Now, with the deliverability part, I think it makes more sense. Because potentially interested readers won't get to open my emails and see the content if it's filtered out.
Thanks for the insight, will definitely think about it.
I have more productive things to spend my time on.