We should write about this too. Lots of people want to know where to start. For me it begins with - the three C's curious + crowd + cash. What am I curious about that I'd like to write about? Where is another crowd of humans intrigued as well? How can I make them make cash or have a group that is already spending on this. For Grow Getters it started because I wrote out how I got my first 10k subscribers and people loved it, but it didn't fit with my scope on my other newsletter which is all about contrarian thinking so I thought, there's something here - who do I know who knows more than I do on this... enter Ilona and Olman... and I think Olman came up with the name and Ilona the logo :)
This would be illegal in the EU, and for good reason. If "spamming everyone who's ever emailed you" is a thing to learn from, I'm out. No. No, no, no, no, no. Bad. No.
I would think extremely badly of "a friend" who did this to me. It's why I'm proud that my own email newsletter (15,500 subscribers) has grown by positive, non-spammy means.
Thanks for the feedback James. My other newsletter is called contrarian thinking and the motto is Question Everything. So I'm into a little constructive criticism. I guess it depends on what you consider spamming. If us sending 1 email notification to people sharing our new business baby is spam to you then ya you probably wouldn't like that email. The interesting part is we did this both for my other newsletter 40k+ subscribers and this one, and what I think will surprise you is that people WANT to know about cool things people start. It shows them it's possible for us all. Now if I auto opted you in that would be ANNOYING. But we don't do that. Just a virtual wave to say - wanna join the convo? What do you think?
You're absolutely right. I'm very familiar. There is nothing in GDPR regulations that says you cannot email your personal contacts an email. Because that would be crazy :).
How about you take a hike and go take out your insecurities Somewhere else like a martial arts gym you succubus. Codie is song some valuable work here.
Bahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahaha LOSER!!!!!!!!! Oh no the internet Police that doesn’t exist is going to do absolutely nothing. Have fun waisting your time thinking you are helping anything. How the ignorant are Jealous of others evolution.
Really great advice. I started The Business Inquirer - a newsletter highlighting interesting businesses for sale and how I would grow them. https://thebusinessinquirer.substack.com
Codie, this is great. Inspired by your post, I scraped the list of my LinkedIn connections and emailed most of them. 30 signups at 4% conversion rate, and some really good convos emerging from this, with a few not even related to the newsletter.
Like an ex-uni friend who works at a boutique fund and wanted to pick my brains on his IT investments. We have not spoken in 11 years, and probably would not have spoken if I didn't send that email.
I too was concerned about people complaining about spam (although I know everyone I emailed personally, and most I have worked with, so they know me from a good professional side). None of those materialized and I now have execs of large corporates reading my newsletter.
Great post. Imperfect action ≥ perfect inaction. Love these results, too! Great motivation to do a blast to my own contacts to try to cull some of them into my existing list. Thanks, y'all!
Nowadays, blogs & newsletters seem to be defined interchangeably but to me - a blog is more of a living, breathing site that provides content around a specific product or brand - and a newsletter may be your actual product or brand, that's lives specifically in a target audience's inbox rather than on a site, and can become a premium subscription at some point.
How do you not overwhelm your email list? I like to work on a lot of things and want my friends/family to join. How often do you hit up your email list to have them join your ventures?
Love both these questions. We only send one email a week. And typically we only email our network when we start entirely new businesses. It's crucial to be selective!
1) Not sure about Codie - but I did some very light pre-filtering (ex-gf's, etc) but wasn't tooo worried about it being weird. People get hundreds of emails from random businesses & people they don't know... at least they know me somewhat and it's only one email.
2) So funny enough Codie didn't but we're all learning from each other (she taught me the "other contacts" hack). I set up a drip sequence with Snovio (lemlist & Mailshack are great too) which is sending emails 400/per day 10 seconds apart.
3) For my sequence, openers don't get a second email, non-openers will get a 2nd follow up email.
4) We sent the substack link for them to subscribe.
5) We're actually planning on doing a referral system with SendFox + Viral Loops soon (we're thinking maybe Grow Getters stickers once we have logo we like). We're investing very little into this and trying to do this as lean as possible.
Given that... and that it doesn't sound like you intend to monetize the newsletter itself (i.e. charging for new issues), what is the advantage of using Substack over just doing the whole newsletter with/in Sendfox or any other ESP?
SO FUNNY! We had a whole convo on this... "What if my ex get's it?" .. "What if my boss does?"
So we did a control f search for people we'd be worried if they got it. Then Olman and I said F it and sent it #salespeople. We both had zero issues. Ilona is more cautious so she didn't mass blast #shessmart. I'd blast if it was up to me.
Olman is going to do a follow-up for unopens using a tech tool and we'll talk about it next one of these issues.
I sent them the substack link, manual not fun.
We haven't done referral YET but we are going to! And going to use some AppSumo products to do it!
Love the idea! Started my account, wrote my first post. Just gotta name my newsletter.
How did you come up with Grow-Getters?
We should write about this too. Lots of people want to know where to start. For me it begins with - the three C's curious + crowd + cash. What am I curious about that I'd like to write about? Where is another crowd of humans intrigued as well? How can I make them make cash or have a group that is already spending on this. For Grow Getters it started because I wrote out how I got my first 10k subscribers and people loved it, but it didn't fit with my scope on my other newsletter which is all about contrarian thinking so I thought, there's something here - who do I know who knows more than I do on this... enter Ilona and Olman... and I think Olman came up with the name and Ilona the logo :)
Thanks for the insight, Codie...
This would be illegal in the EU, and for good reason. If "spamming everyone who's ever emailed you" is a thing to learn from, I'm out. No. No, no, no, no, no. Bad. No.
I would think extremely badly of "a friend" who did this to me. It's why I'm proud that my own email newsletter (15,500 subscribers) has grown by positive, non-spammy means.
Thanks for the feedback James. My other newsletter is called contrarian thinking and the motto is Question Everything. So I'm into a little constructive criticism. I guess it depends on what you consider spamming. If us sending 1 email notification to people sharing our new business baby is spam to you then ya you probably wouldn't like that email. The interesting part is we did this both for my other newsletter 40k+ subscribers and this one, and what I think will surprise you is that people WANT to know about cool things people start. It shows them it's possible for us all. Now if I auto opted you in that would be ANNOYING. But we don't do that. Just a virtual wave to say - wanna join the convo? What do you think?
Read the GDPR regulations. It is not you or James who decide what is spam, there are laws on the world to follow.
You're absolutely right. I'm very familiar. There is nothing in GDPR regulations that says you cannot email your personal contacts an email. Because that would be crazy :).
Also, I am not a friend of you or anyone involved on this, so you must be emailing other people too, not just friends.
https://brandexpublishing.co.uk/does-gdpr-apply-to-your-personal-contacts-and-address-book/
but you can probably look in google too by yourself and you are just trolling here.
How about you take a hike and go take out your insecurities Somewhere else like a martial arts gym you succubus. Codie is song some valuable work here.
And the narcissists doesn’t reply. What a loser.
Okay Karen take a hike and become obsolete like a dinosaur.
haha!
In fact I am reporting this to the UK authorities. So lets see how good is the strategy here. Please do not follow this SPAM ways.
Bahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahaha LOSER!!!!!!!!! Oh no the internet Police that doesn’t exist is going to do absolutely nothing. Have fun waisting your time thinking you are helping anything. How the ignorant are Jealous of others evolution.
hahahaha, I have to say your comment make me subscribe.
Nice article, thanks for the pointers! Have been consistently writing over here: paulkeefe.substack.com
This has been a great platform!
Love this!
Really great advice. I started The Business Inquirer - a newsletter highlighting interesting businesses for sale and how I would grow them. https://thebusinessinquirer.substack.com
oooo love this. Hit us up via email --> maybe we have you do a guest post. Codie.sanchez@gmail.com
Would love that! Sending e-mail now.
Codie, this is great. Inspired by your post, I scraped the list of my LinkedIn connections and emailed most of them. 30 signups at 4% conversion rate, and some really good convos emerging from this, with a few not even related to the newsletter.
Like an ex-uni friend who works at a boutique fund and wanted to pick my brains on his IT investments. We have not spoken in 11 years, and probably would not have spoken if I didn't send that email.
I too was concerned about people complaining about spam (although I know everyone I emailed personally, and most I have worked with, so they know me from a good professional side). None of those materialized and I now have execs of large corporates reading my newsletter.
Do > overthink - glad I read this.
Yes!! I love hearing this, good for you for ignoring the scare mongerers.
Great post. Imperfect action ≥ perfect inaction. Love these results, too! Great motivation to do a blast to my own contacts to try to cull some of them into my existing list. Thanks, y'all!
Thanks - keen to follow this great content. My stuckpoint; identifying the differences (and purposes) of blog posts v newsletter. Thanks!
Nowadays, blogs & newsletters seem to be defined interchangeably but to me - a blog is more of a living, breathing site that provides content around a specific product or brand - and a newsletter may be your actual product or brand, that's lives specifically in a target audience's inbox rather than on a site, and can become a premium subscription at some point.
Omnichannel
Love this post. Started up fancymouth.com
How do you not overwhelm your email list? I like to work on a lot of things and want my friends/family to join. How often do you hit up your email list to have them join your ventures?
Also working on the Gmail idea as I write.
Love both these questions. We only send one email a week. And typically we only email our network when we start entirely new businesses. It's crucial to be selective!
QUESTIONS!:
Did you do any pre-filtering for people who might think it's weird / been too long to hear from you?
Did you get any worries about spam — might you have done something like http://mailshake.com/ to drip feed this instead?
Any followups for unopens?
For not opting them in, did you send them the substack link or just say "reply back and I can add you" and then you'd manually type in their list?
Also been thinking about a referral system ala sendfox but feels funny to do with a personal brand, are y'all investing in this?
Great questions Michael!
1) Not sure about Codie - but I did some very light pre-filtering (ex-gf's, etc) but wasn't tooo worried about it being weird. People get hundreds of emails from random businesses & people they don't know... at least they know me somewhat and it's only one email.
2) So funny enough Codie didn't but we're all learning from each other (she taught me the "other contacts" hack). I set up a drip sequence with Snovio (lemlist & Mailshack are great too) which is sending emails 400/per day 10 seconds apart.
3) For my sequence, openers don't get a second email, non-openers will get a 2nd follow up email.
4) We sent the substack link for them to subscribe.
5) We're actually planning on doing a referral system with SendFox + Viral Loops soon (we're thinking maybe Grow Getters stickers once we have logo we like). We're investing very little into this and trying to do this as lean as possible.
Given that... and that it doesn't sound like you intend to monetize the newsletter itself (i.e. charging for new issues), what is the advantage of using Substack over just doing the whole newsletter with/in Sendfox or any other ESP?
Great question. And it will be answered in this Sunday's newsletter :)
SO FUNNY! We had a whole convo on this... "What if my ex get's it?" .. "What if my boss does?"
So we did a control f search for people we'd be worried if they got it. Then Olman and I said F it and sent it #salespeople. We both had zero issues. Ilona is more cautious so she didn't mass blast #shessmart. I'd blast if it was up to me.
Olman is going to do a follow-up for unopens using a tech tool and we'll talk about it next one of these issues.
I sent them the substack link, manual not fun.
We haven't done referral YET but we are going to! And going to use some AppSumo products to do it!
Love this. Just subscribed, can't wait for more! :)
Awesome! Thanks Mitchell anything else you want us to dive into?
This is so cool! Can't wait to see what you guys are able to do with this. 📈
Thanks Chris! Let us know anything else in particular you want covered!
Love the Gmail idea! Thank you!
Let us know if you try it out!
1ksubscribe please my youtube channel
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1ksubscribe please 🙏🙏
1ksubscribe please
Thank you