🤔 Can you send too many newsletters?
We all subscribe to email lists to get the free offer on the call to action. But unfortunately, many of us are awful at unsubscribing when we have what we want. So what is left is an inbox full of emails that you delete.Â
As a reader and writer of newsletters, there is always one question that has bothered me. Can you send someone too many emails?
Don't send too few
I have two email lists; the first is this one for my every day updates and tips and tricks. My second is for my crime magazine, Murder Mayhem UK.
It is the second list that I wonder if I send too many. As a prolific crime writer, everything I produce gets sent to my subscribers; this can be as many as four a week. Is this too many?
The statistics say that people are still reading and opening my newsletters with few unsubscribes, so maybe it isn't too many.
This, however, is one of the questions anyone writing a newsletter should ask. It is a challenging balancing game; send too few and people will forget who you are and lose interest in you. But, on the other hand, you will also discover that it is far harder to build an audience if you do not send enough.Â
Building an audience should be your primary goal with anything you write. My favourite part of my emails is when someone takes the time to hit reply and start a chat. I have made some everlasting friends that way. If you are all about selling, then you miss out on this.
On the opposite side, though, if you send too many emails, people can not keep up with what you write and delete the backlog, never reading anything.Â
Substack
One way around sending too many emails is to use a feature that few know about on Substack. You can write an article or email in precisely the same way you always do, but choose at the end not to send it to anyone but publish it to your site.Â
Substack for those that don't know is more of a portfolio of your work than just an email client. It allows all your emails to be stored on your website for people to browse at a later date.Â
This keeps a permanent record of what you have written and allows you to build your website and personal brand. This is one of many features that people do not know about; you can find more of them here.
I have used this technique several times to publish work and not send an email when I have sent numerous in the same week.Â
For the readers amongst you
If you enjoy consuming email content but don't want an inbox bursting to capacity, I have a couple of workarounds that might interest you.Â
The first is for Gmail users. You can set up a folder named something simple; mine is called reading. I have set up a filter that sends all my emails from those I subscribe to, into the folder. It never touches my inbox. Then when I have five minutes, I have a folder of content to consume.
Consumerism was one of the topics for a post I wrote this week. Click here if you want to read it.
The second workaround you might want to use is to have a completely different email address than you use to subscribe to newsletters. This might take time because you will have to change your email address with those you read, but it is worth it.
Again you end up with a dedicated space to read from when you have the time and free up your personal inbox.
Can you send too many emails?
For this newsletter, I keep it to the same day and time every week. I like to chat with you all on a Sunday.
My question remains, though, can you send too many emails and annoy those who subscribe to you?
What do you think? Hit reply and tell me.
Also from Sam H Arnold
Christine Edmunds, the Beautiful Woman Known as the Chocolate Cream Killer | by Sam H Arnold | CrimeBeat | Oct, 2022 | Medium — medium.com Christine Edmunds was one of the first famous killers to walk the corridors of Broadmoor. She was called the Chocolate Cream Poisoner, but she never considered herself one of the Broadmoor prisoners.