Maybe it’s because I am on Day 9 of quarantine (feeling all cooped up and stuffy). Or maybe it’s because now is inevitably when many of us feel that bright and shiny ‘New Year, new everything!!‘ vibe… but I did a thing.
I scrapped my precious email list.
After preaching to hundreds of biz owners that they need to be thriving on and growing their email lists, I scrapped my own.
It had nearly 2000 contacts on it… and I might have needed a shot of Fireball to hit delete. But it’s done.
“Whyyyyyy?!!” you ask.
Well I LOVE the power of a good email list. There are very few times in the past when sending out an email didn’t result in some sort of new business, idea or collaboration.
But frankly, my list wasn’t good anymore.
A lot has changed over the past five years. The list was feeling old and dusty and filled with people I haven’t spoken to in years.
So I scrapped it and started fresh. Quality over quantity. Here’s how:
- I started a fresh Google sheet and password protected it.
- I went through my Inbox for the past few months. and added people who have been in active contact with me. These are obviously my most recent leads, clients, followers, colleagues, friends.
- I searched my Sent Items email folder for the past two years and added anyone I’d had quality conversations with and/or who are entrepreneurs and empire builders.
- I made sure to notate how I know them (ie. they were an exhibitor at the EntrepreneurLife Expo, or they were a Shape Shifting client, they were a colleague from a networking event, etc).
What then?
- Well, first, I had to try not to panic over the fact that my mailing list just shrunk by a bazillion percent, by reminding myself that it wasn’t serving me or the people on it.
- I could then be happy that my smaller list means paying less per month for email software. (In fact, I could just use my actual email instead of a third party sender, and reach out to a handful of people each day to reconnect with them in these complicated times.)
- The contacts in my tiny-but-mighty list are people I truly like, that I would love to work with again (or already do), and who align with my not so tiny obsession with entrepreneurship and marketing.
- To keep building the list with people I actually connect with, I plan to reach out to a handful of people each day that I speak to regularly on Insta & FB and ask permission to add them to the email list. If they’re real connections, this will me make sure no one misses an event update, podcast invite, offering, or just the odd ‘Hey, here’s what is happening’ email. There are so many social contacts that fit this criteria, I am expecting this type of growth to take a while.
The best part is that all of a sudden, I literally can’t wait to send an email to my list!!
Scrapping my list and starting over took me all day today and it felt sooo good.
Try it! You just might look forward to sending emails again.
xo
