Creative Business – Understanding the Newsletters
I’m writing this post to answer a few questions that I’ve been getting and to have a place to direct people to without repeating myself over and over. While I’m intending this post to help my audience understand my newsletters. I realize that if you have a creative business of your own, this may help you a little with that too.
Let’s get started…
My Emails
I have a standard of only two different email lists, but when I’m running a quilt along, there are three. These three email lists are completely separate, but all are written by me and sent out of my Mailchimp account. As a reader you can be signed up on just one list or all three. That’s really up to you and your interests. I’ll go through them all, so you can better understand.
The Meander + Make email is one I send the most. I try to send an email out every time there is a new bundle. If I look at my routines, it looks like I’m sending this one out every five days or so. Not always. Sometimes there is a week between them, but every five days is pretty standard. This email is just for the Meander + Make shop (my fabric shop) and it’s meant to advertise new bundles, new fabrics, tools, basically whatever the shop gets in new.
Here is an example of an email from this list.
If you are feeling that you are hearing from me a bit too much, you prob would want to unsubscribe from this one. If you feel like you are constantly missing the new bundles before they go out of stock or any sales we have, you probably would want to subscribe. They’ll pretty much be a new ping in your inbox every time I’ve got something new to show you.
Again, this email is just about FABRIC. It’s an advertisement. I don’t mean to repeat myself, but I want to be very transparent. I own a fabric shop and I need to sell fabric. 🙂
This is the only email with multiple ways of getting your name and email address signed up to receive the emails. The first is you signed yourself up for it. In my shop there is an embedded signup form at the very bottom of the home page and there is also a pop up that should show up on the home page every 30 days or so (this depends on cookies). The second way to be signed up for it is by making a purchase from the shop. At checkout there is a little box that you can check or uncheck that asks you if you want to be signed up for this email. By default it is checked to sign you up. You will have to manually uncheck the box to keep your name off the list.
Once you are signed up (doesn’t matter which way you signed up), you’ll have to confirm that you do indeed want to be on this list. It’s the ONLY WAY. By confirming you will start a drip campaign. A drip campaign is a sequence of emails that will send on a schedule that are not written by me on the spot, but instead written some time ago (although I do update them). There are two emails in this drip campaign. The first one just welcomes you to the email list and gives you an immediate coupon for you to use in the shop. Many people sign up for the list just for this coupon. It can only be used by you one time, so make it count.
The second email in the drip is automatically sent to you four days after you open the WELCOME email. It goes into a very short detail about what we specialize in at Meander + Make.
There is one more automatic email that is a part of Meander + Make, but kind of a side email and not connected to the drip and that is the THANK YOU email. This email triggers when you make your first purchase at Meander + Make. Within an hour from your purchase, you’ll be sent an email that will include a coupon for $5 off your next purchase. This email has nothing to do with you subscribing, but only with you making a purchase. It does NOT add you to the email list. It’s just a thank you.
At anytime you can unsubscribe from this email list at the very bottom by clicking the UNSUBSCRIBE button.
If you are interested in being on this email list, you can subscribe here.
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My main email is the Southern Charm Quilt email. The ONLY way to be on this email list is to have not only signed yourself up for it, but also confirmed by email that you do indeed want to be on the list as according to GDPR rules. No purchases or other ways will get you on this list, you have to manually subscribe. I have the embedded subscription forms and pop ups for this email in many different places on my blog (the site you are on now).
I send this email out twice a month, the 1st and the 15th, with the exception of special announcements such as new patterns or quilt along announcements.
You can see an example of this email here.
This email is usually my ramblings. It’s a bit more personal and meant to feel like a chat. I usually talk about what I’ve been up to, new things I’m learning, or things I find and occasionally I’ll crowdsource answers to questions I sometimes get. If you want to read my weekly blog posts (usually three times a week), but can’t or don’t remember to pop onto this site this is a good reminder in your inbox of what I’ve posted recently. There’s also a Community section in the email where I share things I’ve found like new products or fabrics or cool quilty people. This email is not an advertisement (though I will tell you about new quilt patterns releasing), it’s more of “I like you and want to stay in touch” sort of email. If you find me annoying, you should most definitely not be subscribed to this email list. 🙂
Once you’ve signed yourself to the list and also confirmed that you want to be part of the list, it will trigger a drip campaign (discussed this above) with three emails. The drip will begin automatically and immediately send you the Welcome email and the page where I keep all of my free quilt patterns. This page is the reason most people sign up to be on this list.
Four days after you open the WELCOME email, you’ll be sent another email that is a GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER email. Its short and sweet and list a few things about myself and what I do and tells you a bit about my quilt patterns.
Four days after you open the GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER EMAIL, you’ll be sent the final drip email, THE ONE WITH THE COUPON. In this email, you are sent a coupon for $5 at Meander + Make. The email is intended to let you know that I also have a fabric shop that would love to help you find the fabrics you are looking for. 🙂
After the drip ends, you’ll just hear from me twice a month as mentioned above.
Again, you can unsubscribe at anytime at the bottom of any of the emails. I promise I won’t care at all and I’ll tell you more about why below.
You can subscribe the Southern Charm Quilt email list here.
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All of my quilt alongs that I run, I run on an email list. The purpose of having you “sign up” for the quilt along is so I can send you a email with the next part of the pattern we are making, kinda like a little nudge. Having an email list for the quilt along also helps me know how many people are participating. I can use this info to help gather prizes.
To be signed up for this list, you have to manually sign yourself up and then confirm the subscription via email. Once you do, you’ll receive a WELCOME email that will tell you the details of the quilt along.
After the quilt along, the email list is deleted and is no more. You’ll no longer receive emails about it.
Unsubscribing
At the bottom of every email, there is an “unsubscribe” button. This is true for almost every email subscription out there. It’s per GDPR rules that it is there. Anytime you no longer want to receive the emails, just click it and get your name off the list.
If you want to continue getting some emails from one list, but not the other, unsubscribe from the one you no longer want to receive. This will not affect your other subscription. For example, you might want to continue getting my Southern Charm Quilt emails, but don’t want the Meander + Make emails. No problem! Just unsubscribe on the email you don’t want.
I also manually keep my lists cleaned up. Mailchimp charges me per subscriber, and if you are on all three lists, you count as three subscriptions. So once a month, I go through all my email lists and clean them up by deleting any subscriber who hasn’t opened the last 10 or so emails or hasn’t opened an email in three months. The Mailchimp service has a pretty substantial cost to me and it doesn’t do me any good to have subscribers that are no longer interested. For this reason, please don’t feel you are hurting my feelings by unsubscribing. Go in peace, lovely.
Blog Post Emails
One last thing I wanted to mention, I run my blog (this site) with WordPress and there is an additional email that you can sign up for. This isn’t something I manually send off, but instead is sent through the Jetpack program through WordPress automatically. The only way to be signed for this is to subscribe to this blog. You can do so within any post. If you are on a desktop, you’ll see the above image in the side panel. If you are on a mobile device, you might have to scroll down past the post and find it there.
This subscription signs you up for blog posts. You’ll receive a notification every time I post something new on the blog.
This one can be quite annoying if you don’t want an email two to three days a week. I just want to mention that. In my Southern Charm Quilts email list I usually do a recap of any blog post that went live since my last email, so you don’t necessarily need this blog post subscription to keep in touch, but it does help the website rate better, so I don’t want to discourage you either.
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So that is all today. I hope that answered some questions. For most of you I know you are not interested in the back end of running a website and quilty shops, so I hope this didn’t bore you too badly, but I know some of you are very interested and this post was for you. I’ll be back to quilty goodness for the foreseeable future. Please let me know if there is ever a topic you’d like me to cover.
