During the 12 years I’ve been publishing The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week, I’ve heard that repeatedly. And I’m hearing it more often.
Many readers tell me that if they don’t have to read my miles-long newsletter when they receive it on Tuesday afternoon, they move it into a folder in their email program. Later in the week, they return to it when they have time to read my DIY publicity tips. Or not.
That means the ezine languishes in a folder, unopened.
I “clean” my list regularly and remove email addresses from readers who haven’t opened the newsletter or other emails for several months. A few months later, a former subscriber who has been dropped from my list realizes he misses the newsletter, so he contacts me. I can’t tell you how many times that’s happened! That’s one reason I’ve decided to cut the size of the newsletter in half and publish it on Tuesday and on Saturday.
Why Saturday?
Testing has shown that more people open email that’s sent on Saturday than on any other day of the week. Because most of my subscribers are reading it at home, they aren’t as rushed as when they’re at the office. Instead of seven or eight items each week, I’ll have only three or four.
My list of blog posts, with links, will appear on Saturday when you have more time to read them. So will the Help This Hound question, so you’ll have more time to offer your best ideas. Help This Hound is the popular feature in which readers submit a question about a publicity or marketing dilemma. I post it here, and other readers comment and offer ideas. If you have a question, please to email it to me.
By popular demand, the ezine will also include a dog joke or video twice a week. My Hounds wouldn’t have it any other way.
Giving you a shorter newsletter twice a week will increase the odds that you’ll read all of it instead of moving it into a folder, never to be seen again. It will also help ensure that you don’t drop off my list.
I hope you welcome me on Saturday, too. Thousands of loyal Publicity Hounds have helped me build a large community of readers who are much more valuable to each other than if I were the only one offering advice.
So what do you think? Good idea? Bad idea? Will you read it twice a week? Comment below.
Wow! I love it when what I was just THINKING about is on someone else’s mind too. Yep. One of my new subscribers actually gave me the idea. And I too have found that for my followers, Saturday or Sunday must be, with highest open rates then, when they have time without feeling overwhelmed.
Thanks Joan!
Patricia
Courage Coach for Reluctant Marketers
Patricia, don’t you just love it when a subscriber gives you a great idea that makes you slap your forehead with your palm and ask, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Let me know how the move to weekends works for you.
Hi Joan,
I’ve been following you for probably about 10 years now, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be cleaned out of your list. I’m glad to hear you’re cutting the length of your ezine, so I can read it easier. I’m one who has been scanning it at most because it’s so long. So Joan, thanks loads for the shorter version and listening to your readers. I really appreciate it!
Glad to see you’re staying on board, Bea. See you Saturday!
Great idea, Joan. I’ve been following you for about a year now, but you were getting a bit lost in my overflowing email box. Good idea publishing on Saturdays. I’ll be interested to see how well it works out.
Marilyn
I’m grateful for your support, Marilyn. Thanks for being a loyal Publicity Hound.
I guess I’m strange, but the less I hear from someone, the more likely I am to read their newsletters when I do. However, I’m glad to see you’ve found something that works for you, and I’ll continue to read your tips and articles.
Delaney, thanks for making me the exception. I’ll do my best to earn your loyalty.
Joan,
I think you will find that you have done the right thing – once your readers get used to the new day. I have been sending my Magazine News newsletter about, what else…news from the magazine industry, to freelance writers and PR pros, on Sunday morning. And it has become part of their morning routine, they tell me. Good luck!
Meg Weaver
WoodenHorsePub.com
Meg, I love your newsletter and your content is always excellent. But I must say that one of the big reasons I usually read it all the way through is because it arrives on Sunday, when I have more time to read.
Joan,
You’d be hard put to find a more loyal and long-term reader of your newsletter than me. However, I once got dropped from your email list. Maybe it was because there was a stretch of time when I wasn’t reading any newsletters because I was too busy with an intense project. Yet that did not indicate any disinterest on my part.
And that is why I question the idea of taking someone off your list when they haven’t opened anything from you in several months.
Heck, if my best friends (of 20+ years) shut me out because they hadn’t heard from me in a few months, I would have no friends at all.
To me, a meaningful relationship does not require constant attention in order to keep it going.
And I would never assume that someone who did not wish to hear from me over a stretch of time never wanted to hear from me again – unless they told me so.
And haven’t you ever let magazines pile up in your house for months – and then go through them with great delight when you finally have time? How would you like it if those magazines just unilaterally cut you off?
I wonder how many experts whose messages I would still welcome just quietly crept out of my business life the way you described.
Marcia Yudkin
You raise good points, Marcia. I didn’t feel the need to go into more detail than was necessary in this post, but from one Internet marketer to another, here are the reasons I clean my list:
–A certain percentage of people just will not open my emails, period. Perhaps the emails go into their spam folder. Their ISP might put them into a spam folder. The subscriber might have created a process so that my email automatically goes into their “junk” folder because, for whatever reason, they think it’s too much trouble to unsubscribe. All those unopened emails are costing me money to send, even moreso now that I’m mailing twice a week.
–But this is the more important reason: When Google sees that, say, 60 percent of the mail I am sending is not being opened, it is more likely to view what I am sending as spam. If it treats my email as spam, that means that by keeping all those people who don’t open email on my list, I am decreasing the chances that the people who really want to see it will even receive it. In other words, a clean list increases the deliverability.
Bragging rights to a list of 10,000 subscribers is really nice to have. And to be honest, I can tell you that it almost kills me when I see my list whittled away every three months when we clean it and a couple hundred more people fall off of it. But I’ve increased my deliverability rate and my open rate, and I’ve made it easier for people who do want to read the newsletter to get it.
How can Google see your email open rate ?? I don’t understand this.
Also, do you take into account that some subscribers never download the images in your email? This can drastically affect open rates.
I’m with Marcia on this. I just don’t trust open-rate statistics.
Google knows everything. Absolutely everything. Seriously, I don’t know how Google knows, but “list cleaning” is a common practice among the top Internet marketers, and this is what I was taught.
Hubspot, a well-respected website that shows businesses how to grow by, among other things, Internet marketing, has an interesting article on other ways to clean your list:
http://tinyurl.com/7m3ljok
Dear Joan…my husband & I are advid followers & readers, like everyone else we get many emails & lots of things to read, but you pop up on my phone with a nice ring tone, & I say its Joan its time to learn & grow…your tips are awesome & it has helped us grow, I change my mindset that this one is a learning tool so it needs to be opened & read! Don’t ever drop us because we will hunt you down 🙂 Thank you so much for your service you offer to all.
Your comment made my day, Luisa. Please keep the ring tone! Thanks for stopping by and weighing in.
If an email subscription is routinely of value to me, I’ll open it no matter what. Therefore, I’ll open your emails whether they come once a week or once a day.
That said, I subscribe to both your ezine and your blog. So when your ezine arrives, I have usually read at least one of the articles already on your blog. So the ezine doesn’t seem that long to me!
And if I’m not mistaken, when you talk about Google knowing your open rate, you’re referring to Gmail – not other email clients hosted on your personal computer (e.g. Outlook).
Hi Joan
Though the years your newsletter and Brian Juds are the only two I never miss. Great content. I not only save them in a folder but I print them. Reading your newsletter is so
informative I can’t afford to miss it. I’ve always wanted to thank you for your time, now is my chance. Thank You !!!!
Nancy Claus
Nancy, loyal Publicity Hounds like you are the reason I do what I do. I really appreciate your comments. Thanks for reading and for being part of my community.