#5 The Real Newsletter Update

The Clique on LinkedIn is the sister version of my main newsletter - The Clique.

I used to the lazy one, always saying that I would start and that it would be amazing.. You saw it first hand, I started this newsletter on Linkedin as a way to communicate some of my thoughts.

Until one day, I realised I was creating a newsletter on borrowed land - at any moment, LinkedIn could take away the ability to produce newsletters and then I'd be back to square one.

I learned that if I needed to create a newsletter, I needed to create it from nothing and so The Clique was born.

I'm creating a newsletter from nothing, no pre-existing audience, no bought in lists and if you want to know how it's going then it's here on Linkedin where I’ll be documenting the journey - it’s in infancy and I’m still finding my feet but I’ll be building everything in public and I want to share what I’m doing with you, if thats ok?

Here it is - Newsletter Update One -

The Clique (you too can subscribe here) launched July 18th with it’s first issue.

The issue focused on what I’ve struggled with over the last 12 months, the inability to create and the lack of motivation to get started.

Today I sent out Issue No#6 and it's starting to find it's feet - the subject of today's newsletter was centred around my 15 rules for life.

The email platform I'm using is a part of my Squarespace subscribtion - I am not using any other platform to create my emails. (No Mailchimp or Mailerlite etc) - it’s native to my site so I can easily link my blog posts and pages to my website.

The thinking behind this is to make my website the hub of my content - whilst my vlogs are hosted on Youtube, you can access them all from my website.

Whilst my podcasts are all on Anchor, you can access them all from my website.

I wanted my newsletter to be the same - I didn’t want to have to navigate to different platforms to create something, that was one frustration that I had with Mailerlite when I ran a newsletter previously. (That was called the SalesChange Snippet - were you in that one?)

As I said at the start, my newsletter started as a Linkedin Newsletter when they first launched and I focused around similar topics so I had some kind of enjoyment/knowledge of what writing every week felt like and thats the habit that I wanted to get back into.

The two reasons my Linkedin Newsletter didn’t take off -

1. The Newsletter was separate from all my other content - I’m lazy and I don’t want to navigate to lots of places to publish lots of content.
2. I wasn’t consistent (read lazy) - I initially wanted to publish every fortnight but then it slipped to once every 3-4 weeks and then never. I needed to set myself some goals and stick to them.

So, it took a while to understand/learn the fundamentals of my site but now I’m up and running and I don’t intend to stop.

One thing you’re all thinking - yeah, but how many people have subscribed to your newsletter so far? So here are the raw numbers (I’m not shy about showing you what I’ve got).

Day One - I launched a week before the first edition went live and began pointing people to sign up - I had one subscriber on day one (myself) - it was to test the newsletter and to make sure the links worked etc.

Day Two - 6 people signed up - I can officially say that Julio (if you don’t know Julio, he’s in my vlogs) was my first real subscriber. I didn’t have a ‘thankyou’ sign up page for the first few people as the link wasn’t working but I changed that and it’s all up and running now - I also didn’t have a note about ‘confirming your subscription’ which I think was essential - I edited that on the fly and got it added in there.

Week One - First edition published to 20 people. I spent around 1-2 hours creating my first newsletter and it went out to 20 people. Why? Because this isn’t about how many but how consistent. The devil is in the detail, in order to grow I need to remain consistent and push people to sign up, if they don’t know about the newsletter - they won’t sign up.

One point to note here - of my 20 initial subscribers, I have found that people who I haven’t spoken to for years have signed up. One person I haven’t seen in real life for nearly 9 years signed up (and read the first/second edition). You’ll be surprised at who’s watching you and wants to know more.

Week Two - Second Edition was published to 22 people. Only two further sign ups in the last week but I’m not swayed by this.. I should be promoting it more and pushing the fact that I have a newsletter (like this post) - if you haven’t signed up - do it here.

Week Six - We're up to the heady heights of 36 people. Slowly and surely, I'm starting to spread the news around.

I'm hoping that the publishing of this 'sister' newsletter will lead to some more of you signing up (you can do that here).

Some more numbers -

• So far, I've got a 100% delivery rate.
• The average 'open' rate for the newsletter over the last 6 weeks has been 87% (tainted by this week as it was only published this morning)
• The Click Through Rate (those who have clicked onto a link on my email) is at 40% so far.

Further points to note -

1. The second edition was harder than the first to create - all the creativity and ideas went into the first one and I had a large amount of enthusiasm for the first - I wrote the article for the second edition at the same time as the first one (that's how much enthusiasm I had) so the work needed to create the article which forms the basis of my newsletter was already done.
2. The second edition was easier to edit and they continue to be fairly easy to edit - the structure of the newsletter was already there. I’d done the hard work in creating a newsletter structure and all the initial ‘Unsubscribe’ links are already done.
3. This Linkedin Newsletter will still exist and I’m switching it to a monthly ‘Newsletter Journey’ update to give updates in public about how it’s going - think of it as my notebook to creating a proper newsletter.
4. It’s not about the subscriber numbers - I don’t care how many people I’m writing to, I just want to write at the moment and when that dial tips over the first 100, then I can start understanding the metrics a little more. I’ll be able to understand what resonated and what didn’t and see what works and what doesn’t.
5. I need to promote it more - the content is there and I am getting into a rhythm with some social posts. Friday - reveal the title of the newsletter. Monday - reveal whats in the newsletter. Both of these posts will lead people to sign up.

Finally - if you want to know anything about the building process or what I’m trying to do - feel free to drop a comment.

I’d love to hear if you’re doing something similar and whether any of what I’m doing resonates with you?

Heres to many more episodes of The Clique (sign up for it here)