Why Deleting Over 100 Email Subscribers Helped My List
Why Deleting Over 100 Email Subscribers Helped My List
That is such a scary thought, isn’t it? Deleting people off your email list. Why would you possibly want to do that? You worked so hard for those subscribers!
I am going to tell you why. Because it actually helps your list!
I checked my cold subscribers and I had 150 on my list. That is 150 people that don’t open my emails. That is 150 people that make my numbers go way down on clicks and open rates. That is 150 people that if they have a Gmail account it shows Google that people aren’t opening my emails.
That is 150 people that I could be getting charged extra for being on my list that doesn’t even open my emails. Most email providers will charge you based on the number of subscribers.
If you have so many that you fall into a different category that costs more but yet some of those folks are cold and don’t even open your emails then you are paying for them for nothing!
Those are all things that I learn in Suzi’s List by Number Course. Things that I wasn’t fully aware of and made me go into action on deleting those cold subscribers.
The Course
First, let me tell you a little bit about this course because I really think you will like!
Suzi has so many awesome courses and it’s no secret from me. I talk about it all the time. This one is the latest that I have tried out and I wanted to share with you just how awesome this one is! She is getting ready to up the price so you may want to check here to see if it’s still at its original price.
If it isn’t then don’t worry because a) she always is running a sale! b) whatever it is priced at is worth it! She never let’s down.
Convertkit and Mailerlite
She walks you through how to use both of these email marketing companies. She, and of course I do too, use Converkit. Her husband uses Mailerlite so he walks you through how to use it.
There are SO MANY modules full of awesome detail on how to use these two companies.
She includes:
- Email templates
- Resources
- A breakdown comparison of the two companies
- Ideas to grow your email list
- How to make freebies
- How to make money while growing your email list
- Additional help and Bonus Material – How to set up your professional email address and how to create easy to remember and professional links fast
Then for both companies, they go through:
- Importing and Uploading subscribers
- Building Landing Pages
- High-converting pop-up forms
- How to create Opt-ins
- Email campaigning
- Automations and email sequences
- Send broadcasts
- Ideas to grow your list
- Funnels
I was very happy with this course! Suzi is great about holding your hand and giving you a birds-eye view as she walks you through step by step in her videos. I think you will really like it! You can check it out here with my referral link – List by Number!
Now on to deleting my cold subscribers!
How I deleted them
Now, let me tell you how I went about deleting them. I will walk you through how to find them in Convertkit and what I did before just completely deleting them. I wanted to give them a chance before I just wiped them out. Because truth be told I haven’t been the best with keeping in touch with my subscribers. I wasn’t doing a very good job keeping them warm.
My blogging journey isn’t different than everyone else’s. I don’t have a huge overnight success story and that is because I struggled to be consistent. I am just being completely honest here! I have always been fascinated with the idea of having a blog and there are many blogs out there that will help teach you to blog…but none of them clicked with me.
I either had to read a hundred blog posts to figure it out or pay a lot of money for it all to still be over my head.
I did find a blogger who has been amazing at leaving no stone unturned in helping explain how to start and grow your blog. That inspired me to also help moms out there learn how to start a blog too!
The Course That Helped Me the Most
The course I took that changed it all was Suzi’s Blog by Number Course. It helped me so much! That is the reason I actually have a blog finally after years on the sidelines.
After I started my blog in the summer of 2017, I officially launched it in September of 2017. Then the holidays hit, two birthdays, and a trip to Disney later it was already January of 2018. I hadn’t worked very much on my blog. Then in January I buckled down and started working on it again and implemented this Tailwind and Pinterest strategy and I was blown away with the results!
I had gained over 7,000 page views in 30 days! WOW!
I also gained a bunched of subscribers too! Then in February my daughter and I both got very sick with the flu for 10 days. After what felt like death, we were finally healed and a local church I used to work at needed a lead teacher immediately due to the first one being in a bad accident. A little girl I used to watch (a very good friend’s little one) was in that class and Kayla asked me if I could help out.
I thought sure I could use the extra money and I need to help out my little Riley girl too! Well, that meant I had to put my blog on the back burner.
I was the lead teacher for 13 one-year-olds and when I got home I was so tired and still had all my mommy duties to do. All you working momma’s, you are amazing!!
Gaining Traction Again
I tried to pick my blog back up after school got out but it was hard gaining that traction again. Once school started in August and my daughter was back in school full time that has made it much easier to find time to work on my blog.
I do help out some of the moms in the neighborhood put their kids on and off the bus and throughout the day as well. But I have drawn a line in the sand and said no this is a priority.
I love working on my blog, I love helping other moms find the answers they are looking for, so my blog is being moved back up to the top of the priority list.
It is easy as moms to put ourselves last. It is our instincts to take care of everyone else first. However, if momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy!
If you want to be the best mom and wife you can be then you have to move yourself up on your priority list!
That all being said. My number of subscribers is not huge. It is a little embarrassing actually. To think about how long my blog has been launched. But hey, things happen, life happens, and it’s my fault.
So I am starting fresh. Cleaning out those that don’t open my emails anymore and moving forward!
Email one
I sent everyone an email letting them all know that I was deleting 150 subscribers. I sent this email out to my list so they could see what I was doing as well as give them a chance to become warm subscribers again.
You can see the email I wrote right here.
I explained why I was going to be cleaning out my list and how they could stay on my list as well as how they could unsubscribe if they didn’t want to stay on my list.
This way if they did open the email because curiosity got to them (which now made them a warm subscriber again) but they truly didn’t want to continue to receive my emails they could just unsubscribe.
By doing that I was able to keep 24 subscribers! That is pretty good I think! So now my cold subscribers’ number was 126.
Since they were cold I honestly did not expect any of them to open my email at all so that made me very happy seeing that! I didn’t just send that email to the cold folks though.
Like I said I sent it to most of my list (except folks in a sequence, I didn’t want to bother them) so this showed all my readers what I was up to as a learning experience for them as well as me!
Second Email
A few days later I sent out another email confirming that they would, in fact, be deleted. I did this for a couple of reasons.
- To give them one last chance
- Because maybe they missed the first email
- To give me one last chance
I just don’t want to go deleting people willy-nilly so I wanted to make sure! Again I sent this email out to everyone again. So those that didn’t open the first one had another chance to open this one. Those that were already warm throughout this all saw what I was doing and that I was following through, and then to give myself one last chance to win them back!
You can see the second email I wrote right here.
I felt like this email would also catch some interest from my subscriber’s because if they saw the first email that said I am deleting 150 subscriber’s but didn’t open it they may be interested when I say that I now was only deleting 120 subscribers! Well, 126 to be exact.
That may have caught their attention and think wow I wonder how she did that? Or I wonder what is going on? Or maybe they missed the first one and now needed to read the second one.
Need a walkthrough?
This is how you can find your cold subscriber’s within Convertkit.
First, log into your Convertkit account and go over to the top left corner and click on subscribers.
Then click on the filter button that looks like a funnel.
Use the drop-down menu to select that you want to filter all your subscribers to only view the cold subscribers.
Hit Add Filter and then bam! There is your cold subscriber number!
Final Number
Here it is almost a week after sending the first email and the number is now 121! I was able to retain 29 subscribers! It might not be a huge number but hey I worked hard for those folks I want to keep them!
I haven’t decided exactly when I will rip the band-aid off and delete them. I will probably wait until the end of the week. Then I will most likely create a cold subscriber’s email sequence similar to what I did this time and once a month go through and clean out the cold ones.
This will seem like a much smaller loss and still keep my list growing and filling up with folks that want to hear from me! I don’t want to bother the ones that don’t. We all sign up for freebies and then get annoyed with all the emails that follow so I don’t blame anyone!
Have you ever checked out your cold subscriber’s? How many did you have and did you delete them?
Happy blogging!
Vanessa
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