Cognition #23: Steps I took to setup, launch, and write my client's newsletter.

Jan 28, 2023

Email marketing is my new crush, and the first few dates have gone well so far.

I’ve been writing Cognition for a year, and after learning how newsletters work for me, I decided to expand the service to businesses.

In the last 90 days, I wrote a newsletter for a leading organization and onboarded a recurring client for whom I write a monthly newsletter.

Today’s issue will focus on the basic steps I took in the early stage of my client’s newsletter and why they were necessary.

LFG!!!

The backstory

I onboarded the client in November 2022, and this was the status back then:

They mentioned that the target audience is women who run small businesses, and the newsletter presents stories, tools, and strategies to help these biz owners improve their sales.
Frequency: Monthly.
The client also runs a podcast in the similar domain. Along with the resources and case studies, I must describe and curate a few episodes in each issue.
My role was to write content, but I insisted on designing the newsletter and studying the stats as I was keen on learning how these advanced tools work.
The email list has 551 subscribers already, but there is a catch. The emails were collected when their audience bought products (like sales toolkits, workbooks, etc.) from my client earlier.

These are NOT the people who signed up to consume any content from the client but the ones who provided emails in exchange for products.

Remember this, I’ll get back to it.

The Platform

I researched and asked around about the best email provider platforms for businesses and found MailerLite suitable for my client.

MailerLite is free for up to 1000 subscribers, and the plans post 1000 subscribers are affordable for businesses.

There are enough features in the free version, the dashboard is insightful, and the design is simple and easy to understand.

The Steps

I made the most of my knowledge by implementing the following steps with the inputs of my client.

ok I might be exaggerating that :p

1. First things first

Landing Page:

After importing the subscriber list, we focused on making conversion easier and simpler.

My client’s website has decent traffic (thanks to their products, podcast, and the founder’s personal brand). So we set up the newsletter’s home page on the same website to convert the customers interested in sales products to readers interested in sales content.

Welcome email:

The welcome email is the time you visit your subscriber’s inbox for the first time, and this is where I feel most businesses go wrong.

Instead of using the welcome email just to confirm subscriptions or avoid the emails falling into spam/promotions, it can also be looked at as an opportunity to create a vibe around the newsletter.

This can be with the visuals you use, the writing style you adopt, the freebies you provide, or anything that begins your subscriber’s journey with you on a positive note.

PS: Making an impact with a welcome email doesn’t mean you must draft a long one. A simple, aesthetic, and crisp email will do.

Educating myself about the tools:

Honestly, I’m only familiar with Revue (before shutting down) and Substack now. These are creator-friendly platforms that don’t include features like sequencing, automation, etc.

I have no idea about how to leverage advanced features for businesses. So I spent most of my time reading MailerLite’s blogs to understand what the product offers in a free plan.

2. Removing Subscribers

Yes, you read it right.

Remember when I told you the email list we have are not the people who are interested in the newsletter but the ones who are interested in my client’s products and podcast?

Hence, it is wise to expect repulsion if you send newsletters to these addresses right away (something they didn’t signup for).

Knowing this, our focus was on two things:

Removing the subscribers
Educating the subscribers

And here is how we moved forward with it.

Removing the subscribers

While learning about email marketing and MailerLite, I discovered two interesting terms: Soft Bounce and Hard Bounce.

MailerLite defines, and I quote:

“A hard bounce is an email that couldn’t be delivered for a permanent reason, while a soft bounce is an email that couldn't be delivered for a temporary reason.”

If the subscriber gave an address that is no longer in use now, if it is an invalid email due to a typo, or if they applied advanced spam filters or blocked you, these are considered permanent reasons which result in hard bounces.

There is nothing you can do to resolve the issue at the receiver end. Hence, to maintain a higher open rate and better stats, it is best to remove email addresses that hard bounced.

This is automated in MailerLite. The moment a hard bounce is detected, it is removed from the active subscribers.

On the other side of the coin are soft bounces due to issues like timed-out servers, inboxes being full, etc.

MailerLite won’t remove these emails immediately, but if any email soft bounces three times in a row, it is considered a hard bounce and is removed from active subscribers.

So that’s how we filtered emails initially.

But this is more of an automated process.

What did we do strategically that helped us to filter the list even more?

Educating the subscribers

Okay, I’m repeating myself but let me say this again: Subscribers didn’t sign up for the newsletter. They bought products in exchange for some money and emails.

The first issue we send will confuse the subscribers and make them think, “Where the hell did this come from?”

To avoid this, we ran a series of warm-up emails to educate and bring awareness about the newsletter we are about to launch and why they should stay subscribed.

We sent two emails before we published the first issue. One with a gist of what we are coming up with and another with a detailed overview of what’s in it for them.

The result? Well, there were four types of responses that I can recall.

A. No responses: Of course, we can’t expect responses from everyone. As we thought, there was no response from over 85% of the emails.

B. Good responses: This is the opposite. Very few people responded, saying they were excited about the newsletter. You can count the number on your fingers.

C. Unsubscribed: Personally, this is the best I hoped for. I respect audiences who understand a certain content is not for them and unsubscribe, saving their time and mine.

This improves the numbers of the newsletter. You understand the people who stayed are the ones interested in the content (at least a few of them).

And now, you can give your undivided attention to your list of active subscribers.

One day, you might even convert unsubscribed people if content thrives. But for now, the focus must be on the audience ready to listen to you.

D. Soft Bounces: This is where we won with the strategy. We had 18 soft bounces after the first warm-up email. 17 after the second. And 17 after the first issue.

One email has resolved its temporary issue, and 17 emails couldn’t find a way to get the newsletter in their inboxes.

With 17 emails being soft-bounced thrice in a row, they’re now considered hard-bounced and removed from active subscribers.

And just so you know, 30 emails hard bounced after the first warm-up email.

So between the first warm-up email and the first issue, we lowered the subscriber count from 551 to 499 (30: HB, 17: SB, Rest: Unsubscribed).

Why be happy about it?

Now we know what percentage of our audience is truly engaged.

And for the sake of numbers, open rate and CTORs showed notable improvement.

Cut to the time of writing this issue

Keeping numbers aside, we have published two issues so far that are praised by the audience. (Always a good feeling to talk to a happy client)

I’m not sure how the social media promotions of the newsletter are going—it wasn’t part of my work scope, and my client’s team is handling it.

Moving ahead, the focus will be on distribution, marketing, and making the newsletter reach more people.

So that’s my journey with one of my new clients so far. Might come up with a sequel edition after a few months if all goes well. (Or maybe with the mistakes if things don’t go well. That’s the creator's life, lol.)

But for this issue, it’s a good space to park the Technical Segment.

Let’s hop on to the fun part, shall we?

Non-Technical aka Fun Segment

Movies/Shows I loved recently

I watched Physics Wallah—the series is so well made. The six-episode series is engaging, inspiring, and is definitely worth a watch (Especially if you’re a creator.)

Originally made in Hindi. Available on Amazon Mini Tv for FREE.

Here is the trailer 👇🏻