"Why is your email list shrinking?" Ok this one will require a few tweets to explain.
We don’t want the biggest email list, just the best email list so we regularly remove people that are not engaging with the content. Usually, if you’re inactive for 90 days and don’t respond to us telling you we’re removing you from the list, then we remove you. It’s automatic.
We do this for a few reasons. 1. To keep open rates high (we’re about 50% right now). 2. If we’re not something you want to read, we’d rather not be in your inbox. (I don’t want to be that guy knocking on your door when you’re eating dinner.)
3. I believe that higher open rates improve delivery (ie less spam). 4. We pay to send you an email. The more people on our list, the more it costs. I don’t mind a bigger list if people like the content but why throw money out the window so I can tell people I have a big list.
I’ve debated capping the list at 150k and having a wait list for people to join. If you don’t interact with the content or it’s not valuable, you come off the list and someone from the waitlist goes on.
