logged
Guess who just unsubscribed from my email list?
So I was on a zoom call the other day in my office (walking on my walking pad, as I like to do during coaching calls).
And a client asked me if I feel bad when people unsubscribe from my email list.
Honestly, I used to…
When I started my first email list 6 or 7 years ago, I was already nervous about showing up in someone’s inbox and taking up their time, let alone finding out they hated my guts and never wanted to see my emails anywhere near their inbox again.
But when you send daily emails, that fear fades pretty fast.
So recently the opposite happened.
If you don’t already know (I didn’t)… Chase Buckner is the director of product marketing at Go High Level. I didn’t think to google him when he joined my email list, I just immediately new someone legit at GHL joined my email list based on the email address.
I even reached out personally (as I often do with all new subscribers… yet most people seem ignore it… maybe they think it’s automated?… no I do that manually).
Anyway, when he joined the list I got excited.
I was like wow, somehow someway whatever I’m doing on my email list is interesting enough to someone who’s built their own 7-figure agency, and is now director of marketing at a 9-figure brand that’s taking over the internet.
(And a brand I use personally for several of my clients, and increasingly I’ll be using more for myself asl well).
So it was cool to see him join.
But recently he unsubscribed, and what surprised me most wasn’t that he left but that I felt nothing.
I smirked a bit, laughed, and thought if I was him I’d do the same.
Because now I understand something that I didn’t understand early on.
Curiosity will bring a lot of people to your door on the internet.
But relevance is what will make them stay.
People join your email list for all kinds of reasons. A headline caught their eye. Someone mentioned you. They’re just curious what you’re about. But that doesn’t mean they’re a good fit for what you’re building right now.
And that’s okay.
I’m not writing these emails to impress the most successful marketers in the world should they stumble across them.
I’m writing for the people who are building something mindful right now.
For people who are figuring things out in real time. People looking for clarity, momentum, and a clear path forward as they get their businesses up off the ground. And if someone unsubscribes, that just means it’s not for them.
It’s a healthy part of email marketing, and often times a clear and useful signal.
If nobody ever leaves, you’re probably too vague and (easy to ignore… that’s how I feel about Justin Welsh’s emails… no offense to him personally… but most of the time his content is irrelevant to me… and yet I stay subscribed while deleting them on sight… I should probably just unsubscribe now that I think about it).
Unsubscribes are a sign that your message has edges. That you’re choosing who you’re for instead of trying to be for everyone.
And that’s usually when your email marketing starts to work.
Which we’ll be talking a lot more about next week inside The Nature of Marketing Community:
Talk soon,
Kevin