I deleted one third of my email list

I started an email list in 2023.

My first newsletter went to 16 people, all of them family and friends.

Since then the list has grown to over 1,000 recipients.

I have sent 18 newsletters which comes to a total of 11,546 emails.

Today, I deleted nearly one third of my entire list. Here's why.

Cold subscribers

The first reason for deleting so many people from my email list is the simplest and most important. These people were not interacting with my messages.

I only want to send emails to people who want to hear from me. Many of these people hadn't opened a single message since subscribing, so the only impact my messages were having on them was to clog up their inbox. I'm pretty sure removing them from my list was doing them a favor.

I discovered who I'm writing to

The second reason I felt good about reducing my list has to do with the journey of discovering my audience.

I started my list as a way to market my fledgling money coaching practice.

But to whom, exactly, was I writing?

It took me a long time to figure this out. I was nervous about how long it was taking, but having conversations like this one with Juliana Weiss-Roessler, a marketing agency owner, encouraged me to keep going. According to her, it commonly takes several years of testing and iteration for a business to understand who responds well to what it's offering.

"I think that for the first three years ... you're figuring out and defining this is who we are, this is what we do best, this is who we want to be, this is who is connecting with us."

So after experimenting with different approaches, frequencies, and formats of emails, and more importantly after speaking with nearly 100 people about their money, I feel confident that I know who I'm talking to, and I can apply that to my email list going forward. This won't be for everyone, but that's the point. It's for people I can actually help.

I'm now clear on the role I expect email to play

There has been a lot of hype around email lists for a long time, especially in the solopreneur and small-business space. A lot of people make a lot of content about how to "monetize your list." Entire companies have sprung up around the idea of rapidly building and monetizing a list of email addresses.

And I just don't know. It feels unsavory to me.

Fortunately, I'm not in the email marketing business. I don't have any digital products or courses to sell. I'm a coach.

I don't expect many people, (or any, actually) to read my emails and hire me to coach them. In fact, an increasing number of people on my list are people that I have already coached.

So if I'm not selling to my email list, what am I doing, exactly?

Ok, maybe this is a little naive, but I like to think I'm building relationships.

One-to-one coaching, I'm learning, is a business that grows almost entirely through referrals. Referrals come from people who know, like, and trust me.

Emailing my list reminds people that I exist, gives me a chance to demonstrate my expertise, highlight my clients' success, and hopefully help people get to know me, like me, and trust me.

And I have some indication that this is working, because sometimes people reply to the emails. And it's very rewarding.

What's next for the email list?

I think I'll always keep experimenting, but I am zeroing in on an approach I think will work for the next while.

I'll send short emails to my list every first and third Thursday. (Short emails are very important to me...they must be short!)

Each message will have two parts.

First, a simple and [hopefully] compelling insight illustrated by a story from me or one of my clients.

Second, a brief personal message or update about something I've enjoyed or found interesting lately.

My working hypothesis is that if I can deliver this type of message consistently, people will come to know, like, and trust me. If this happens, they will be more likely to think of me next time someone complains to them about feeling broke. And maybe, just maybe, I'll get referrals.

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