Oh, that sounds serious, doesn’t it? Well, I’ll try to not be boring about it all.

Once upon a time, I attended a workshop about maintaining a healthy newsletter distribution list. It was pretty interesting and the speaker made a number of good points (sorry, but I forget her name!). I came home with a fistful of notes and filed them away for One Day.

That day has arrived. My newsletter subscription rate has grown (yay!) to a very nice level, but there are people who don’t ever open a newsletter. Maybe they forgot that they subscribed, or maybe they changed their mind about reading my news.

This speaker suggested that if a subscriber doesn’t open three newsletters in a row, they should be dropped from the list. Anyone can be too busy to open one (and then forget about it) but leaving three unopened—to her thinking—means the subscriber probably isn’t interested and can’t be bothered to unsubscribe. I think she’s probably right. I do that very thing – subscribe to things, never open the newsletter but never unsubscribe either.

I didn’t think much of her advice until I recently reached the threshold that I need to pay for the distribution. Oh! The cost isn’t much and I don’t mind paying it, but it will add up if there are thousands of people who don’t even open the newsletter because they don’t want it. Paying for the distribution of newsletters that people don’t want is just dumb.

So, tomorrow, my monthly newsletter will go out and I’ll begin to divide the list into those who open the newsletter and those who don’t. (Computers make this all so very easy.) If you want to stay subscribed to my newsletter, all you have to do is open it. If you want to unsubscribe, I’ll be sorry but I understand that tastes change and emailboxes get filled to bursting. There are seldom enough hours in the day to get things done. You can always resubscribe if you change your mind. 🙂