Hello
There are two types of people in this world…
Those who keep their sock drawers nice and neat,
And those who throw everything in, and then once a year when the damn thing won’t shut they get pissed off and throw out everything that’s not in a pair.
Last year, I remember sharing a photo of my chaotic sock drawer with you.
Well, this year I can’t.
Because socks, knickers and bras are all in one drawer.
Things have gotten that bad.
The exact same can be said for my email lists.
If my email list were a TV show it would be ‘Hoarders’.
So it was time to clean it up.
I deleted 12,615 subscribers.
And then regretted it.
Here’s why…
I had good reasons for deleting 12,615 subscribers from my travel blog email list.
I wanted to improve the open rate, improve deliverability and reduce my email software bill.
So I set up a re-engagement campaign for anyone who hadn’t opened an email for 6 months.
If they didn’t open the warnings that they were to be removed, they would be removed.
And it worked great, or so I thought.
With the list reduced from 93k subs to 81k, the open rate increased from 32% to 38%.
But then, I started getting emails from people complaining.
“Hey – You deleted me off your email list but I always read your emails”
Hmm, something wasn’t right.
It turns out there are a ton of reasons why email management software like Kit can’t track opens accurately.
For example:
- Outlook blocks images, including the tracking pixel, by default. If the recipient doesn’t manually enable images, the open won’t be recorded.
- Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) preloads images and tracking pixels when an email is received, making open rates unreliable.
- Some high-security email accounts also strip out tracking pixels to prevent tracking, making it impossible to detect opens.
Damn.
The solution
I had to put all of those people back into the list, and restart my re-engagement campaign.
But this time, instead of unsubscribing people who haven’t opened,
I’m requesting that they click a link to stay on the list.
So after the re-engagement sequence of emails is all sent, anyone who has clicked will go back onto the main list.
Why am I telling you this?
I might be able to help someone else from making the same mistake and accidentally trashing valuable email subscribers.
Also,
I did exactly the same thing with my Niche Site Lady emails!
So if I temporarily unsubscribed you, I’m sorry!
I fixed it.
If you enjoy these emails and want to make sure that you keep receiving them each Tuesday…
Click here and I won’t delete you.
Thanks!
– NSL
P.S. I spotted this on Facebook just now and I wanted to address it with a few bullet points…
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- I lost 68% of my Google organic search traffic, yes
- Who didn’t?
- Some of you asked me for a top-level guide about how I replaced SEO with Facebook, so I wrote an ebook that explains it in more detail than these emails can.
- It costs $27. If that’s ‘cashing out’, it won’t get me very far LOL!
99.99% of the info I share about what’s working and not working for me is free of charge.
The 0.01% that costs you $27 is optional 😂
Next week I’ll be sharing my income report with you as I do at the start of each month.
Look out for that, or if you missed last month’s one, you can see how I made $77,000 in January here: https://www.nichesitelady.com/newsletter/