Congratulations on the fourth Conor and cheers to many more. We truly enjoy your thoughtful writing. It's surprising to learn about the happenings at your previous employer, but in hindsight, it seems like you made the right decision by joining your new one. :)
Congrats Conor! I’m curious about the pruning. How did you go about it? Substack doesn’t really have tools for that. Did you just do a search for people with zero open rate? Did you just remove them out email them first to warn them about it? Curious about the process. Thanks
Thank you! A little bit of everything really. For some batches I did send a preemptive email, and checked that same filter a week or two later, and excluded the ones who replied to the email (they were asked to if they wanted to avoid being removed).
I mostly searched for a mixture of; low activity, low clicks, low opens, last email opened ages ago, zero opens, low opens, zero comments, zero deliveries,. Not a perfect science, but I tried my best to avoid kicking people who may simply have private protocols set up to circumnavigate tracking too.
Thanks. And after you did it, did you notice a big difference? Open rate better by ratio you removed, or did it someone have a bigger than expected effect via maybe some filters liking your sending address better?
I know about the "email health" of sending to higher open rate individuals, but haven't noticed too much change there. The overall open rate did improve by between 6% to 8% though. It had been slipping, so I wanted to do something to fix that.
Overall, as much as subscribers is a vanity metric, open rates might be in some respects too. It hasn't improved any aspect of the newsletter apart from open rates, as far as I can tell.
I’ve considered it too, but I’m always afraid of booting out some people who have a zero open rate just because they have tracking blockers but they’re actually reading…
Congrats on four years!
Thank you kindly!
I really enjoy your writing. Always thoughtful and clear.
Thanks David, that’s the best kind of feedback I could hope for. Glad it resonates.
Great one and cheers for the many more coming! All the best!
Thank you Mav!
Congratulations on the anniversary Conor, I always enjoy spending time with your work. Here is to many more, cheers 🍻
Thank you Michael, much appreciated :)
Congratulations on the fourth Conor and cheers to many more. We truly enjoy your thoughtful writing. It's surprising to learn about the happenings at your previous employer, but in hindsight, it seems like you made the right decision by joining your new one. :)
I think so, wouldn't change the experience for the world though. Thanks S.O!
Great post. Loved the learnings, in particular!
Thank you CSC!
Congrats brother!
Thank you!
Conor - As expected, another great one. Congrats on four!
Thanks Alex! Let's keep it going until we both celebrate double digits :)
That was a super read Conor. Fascinating insights into what it was like to work at a start up during one of the severest bear markets in decades.
Thank you good sir, glad you got something from it.
I think it'll be very powerful to look back on those notes in 20 or 30 years time
That's the hope! The brain has a habit of altering memories over time, so i want to crystallise a few while I am still young :)
Congrats Conor! I’m curious about the pruning. How did you go about it? Substack doesn’t really have tools for that. Did you just do a search for people with zero open rate? Did you just remove them out email them first to warn them about it? Curious about the process. Thanks
Thank you! A little bit of everything really. For some batches I did send a preemptive email, and checked that same filter a week or two later, and excluded the ones who replied to the email (they were asked to if they wanted to avoid being removed).
I mostly searched for a mixture of; low activity, low clicks, low opens, last email opened ages ago, zero opens, low opens, zero comments, zero deliveries,. Not a perfect science, but I tried my best to avoid kicking people who may simply have private protocols set up to circumnavigate tracking too.
Thanks. And after you did it, did you notice a big difference? Open rate better by ratio you removed, or did it someone have a bigger than expected effect via maybe some filters liking your sending address better?
I know about the "email health" of sending to higher open rate individuals, but haven't noticed too much change there. The overall open rate did improve by between 6% to 8% though. It had been slipping, so I wanted to do something to fix that.
Overall, as much as subscribers is a vanity metric, open rates might be in some respects too. It hasn't improved any aspect of the newsletter apart from open rates, as far as I can tell.
I’ve considered it too, but I’m always afraid of booting out some people who have a zero open rate just because they have tracking blockers but they’re actually reading…
Thank you!