I’ve Started to Hate My Own Email Newsletter

“Set up an email newsletter!” all the slick marketing gurus say, the moment you go self-employed or start your own business.

“It’s so good for brand-building and customer engagement. You can tell people about everything you’re up to, and then they’ll feel hypnotically compelled to buy from you!

Don’t forget to segment your list, so people only see what they care about most. Oh, and set up a few automated responses to help them feel lovely and warm and snuggly, even when you’re not at your desk!

Make sure you personalise that header, too. Studies show that when people see THEIR OWN NAME on your message, they’re 77.1% more likely to fall on their knees and vow never to buy from any of your competitors, ever again!”

I bowed to this pressure in 2021, when I set myself a New Year’s Resolution to start my own monthly newsletter.

I’m still faithfully sending it, but if I’m honest I’ve started to hate the whole thing.

The entire process is fraught with sadistic mind-games. Especially if, like me, you’re the one who writes, sends and monitors your own newsletter.

How?

People actually start signing up to receive your news. This scares you, because you’ve never met some of them, while others are acquaintances you hardly know. A few are friends whom you suspect are just being nice.

You’ve got no idea why all these people want your news, especially in a world of over-stuffed inboxes.

But now you’re under pressure to entertain, inform, and generally be useful, because you hate the thought of wasting anybody’s precious time.

Then, somewhere along the line you inevitably do start wasting someone’s time, so they click ‘Unsubscribe’.

Again, you’re not 100% sure why. But you do know who, because those evil mailing platforms taunt you with the names.

Now you have to resist an overwhelming urge to email each one personally and beg for a proper reason, because “No longer interested” — the option most of them selected — just doesn’t cut it.

(You don’t, of course, because that would be weird. Even for you).

Then there are the messages themselves. You start eagerly typing all your news, only for your chosen platform to bark that your headline is too long.

Or that you haven’t added subheadings.

(Silly you, you haven’t broken up the text enough! Now people won’t be able to skim your carefully-chosen words while they’re doing something else).

Or you didn’t include any inbound or outbound links.

Or you forgot to insert an eye-catching image.

Suddenly, you feel like you’re trying to impress Simon Cowell at a desperate audition for Britain’s Got Talent.

You’re Susan Boyle, but without the golden voice.

You work on the suggestions, and now the platform is happy but your message doesn’t feel like you’ve written it. You’ve forced your words into a template of crappy marketing nothingness, and you’re feeling slightly embarrassed about hitting ‘Send’.

But you hit it anyway, because you don’t want to feel like you’ve been wasting your time.

Then, you get a couple of nice replies from people you like.

You think: “just one more month”.

And the vicious cycle continues to rotate.