My fiancé and I had 300+ people on the first draft of our wedding guest list.

I know. We’re insane.

It gets worse: two of those 300 were people we met once at another wedding. We thought they were cool, so… onto the list they went. No second thought. Just pure vibes.

That’s exactly how a lot of people build their email lists.

Every customer, coworker, business contact, and second cousin? Add 'em — the more the merrier, right?

But then comes the quote from the caterer.

You know what came next: Time to make some cuts.

The same goes for your email list. Cleaning your list doesn’t hurt your business — it makes it stronger.

Like many things in life, quality > quantity.

Sure. But stickiness comes from value, not vanity. If your list trusts you, and your content is consistently relevant, you’ll see it in your metrics.

Metrics that indicate your audience likes and trusts you.

Email metrics are more straight forward than social media metrics, but what they mean can still be unclear. Here are the key metrics to watch and how to read them:

• Open Rate: Measures how many people opened your email out of those who received it.
  • What it tells you: Your sender reputation is in decent standing and if your subject line is pulling its weight (does it inspire people to open your email?).
• Click-Thru Rate (CTR): Measures how many people clicked out of the people who opened it.
  • What it tells you: Who’s actually invested in what you're saying?
• Click Rate: Measures how many people clicked out of the total number of delivered emails (regardless of if they opened). *
  • What it tells you: I've never met anyone who actually uses Click Rate over Click-Thru Rate — if you do, hit reply and tell me why.
• Unsubscribes: The number of unsubscribes an email sparked.
  • What it tells you: If this number is high ask yourself: What did the content discuss? Was there a controversial target? Did you oversell to the wrong audience? If the number is low, keep moving.

Email List Hygiene is Business Hygiene

Cleaning your list is about being respectful of everyone’s inbox and attention.

Your cold subscribers aren’t trash leads, they’re just not your audience right now. By letting them go, you can be confident you’re serving real value to the people who are showing up.

(And yes, your open and click-thru rates will thank you.)

HOW I CLEAN MY EMAIL LIST

I regularly send a “Still want to hear from me?” email to cold subscribers. If they don’t open it, and their status hasn’t changed in 30 days, I remove them myself.

What if that email does trigger unsubscribes?

That means it worked.

My list gets healthier by keeping my audience curated full of engaged, people who want to hear what I'm talking about. Email marketing is about serving the people who are aligned with and want to hear from you.

We cut our guest list, so you can cut your email list.

When we started trimming our massive wedding guest list, it wasn’t because we didn’t like those people...We just realized we wanted to share our big day with the people who were part of our lives now.

Email works the same way.

If someone hasn’t opened your emails in, say, six months, chances are they’ve tuned out. Keeping them on your list actually hurts your email deliverability, your metrics, and your momentum. Let them go.

If/when they’re ready, they’ll make their way back.

🔦 Throwback Project Spotlight 🔦

• 💼 Services: Content Writing
• 👤 Client: CREATOR Podcast
• 📱Channels: Website
• 📦 What We Did + Why: Backstory — When Shay and Josh launched The CREATOR Podcast, they were calling in their community. CREATOR was becoming a space where vulnerability, artistry, and perseverance could all cozy up sit at the same table. To get there, they needed words that could carry the weight of that mission. That’s where I came in.
  • I had intimate conversations with each host to draw out tone, energy, and story through-lines. Then sat in on live recordings to feel the energy in the room. (For me, this is what makes good writing.)
  • Wrote soulful, skimmable episode notes that were more than a conversation recap. They needed to stick with the reader and if they weren't sure about listening, that sold them on pressing play.
  • Drew connections between their personal experiences and how that led them here: creativity was survival, art was a spiritual practice, and there was power in that.

What I'm consuming

Podcast: Acquired

WARNING: This podcast is for business nerds. If that isn't you, please retreat. If you're intrigued, I'll give you another yield sign — each episode is 3 hours long.

I'm well-known for my hatred for long podcasts. (I believe every podcast should be between 15-30 mins - an ideal is 22.) This podcast is ABSOLUTELY THE EXCEPTION.

​​The episode with Howard Schultz, the long-time (and now retired) CEO of Starbucks is a MUST LISTEN​. It's fascinating to listen to the conversation about how this massive brand started really meagerly and how 1-person changed America's coffee culture forever.

Great for a long car ride or a day of house cleaning.

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See you in the inbox!