ProloguePrologue

A few weeks ago Zoom was glitchy and my all-remote team decided to meet using Slack for our video meeting.

You should have heard the groaning.

It was unbearable.

Everything was in a different place.

Like when you drive someone else’s car and you keep washing the windshield instead of using the turn signal.

We were all a little dramatic about it.

Me, especially.

I like to think I’m more funny than annoying, but I’ll leave that to my co-workers to decide.

Anyway, we pushed through the meeting, but when we next met, on Zoom, it was refreshing to have everything where it was “supposed” to be.

It’s the concept of a “lived-in digital experience.”

This is something I was introduced to by my CEO before I came on staff at Simple Focus Software.

He’d shared this video of Patrick McNeely, VP of Operations at Simple Focus—the agency is different from the software company, but we share a CEO and ideas—explaining how designers should strive to create digital experiences that mimic life experiences.

He uses a pair of well-worn jeans as an example.

You’ve lived in them.

The threads are bare in places that reflect a certain movement you’ve made in them over and over.

And it’s a great way to think about software design.

It explains my team and our Slack video meeting woes.

But it can extend to newsletters.

Are you creating a “lived-in experience” for your readers?

Does your newsletter feel familiar?

Are your sections, your voice, your tone, and your style of delivering information becoming part of their lives?

Or could they replace you with a different newsletter and not really notice?

Today’s issue is a little thought-provoking. I read some articles this week that sent my head spinning in a “what is the meaning of (newsletter) life, anyway?” sort of way.

Let me know what you think.

Ashley Guttuso  

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Curated News Curated News

You Can Now Filter To See Unengaged Subscribers

Apple’s upcoming changes, and this smart strategy prompted us to add an activity filter to help Curated users find, reconfirm, or unsubscribe unengaged subscribers on your lists.

Recap:

Apple Mail’s next update will default users to choose not to be tracked and inflate open rates. Why? Because almost all Apple Mail users will appear as opens unless they tell Apple they want to be tracked.

The problems this causes:

Beyond skewing open rates (big bummer!), cleaning your list (aka getting rid of the subscribers who never open it) will be harder. But doing so is still important because your sender reputation relies in part on being a sender whose emails are opened.

Our latest response:

We’ve made it possible for you to filter your subscribers beyond just Status and Source (those have been there all along) and added Activity. In this case, Activity equals how recently the subscriber has clicked a link in your newsletter.

Now you can find a cadence that fits your send schedule and choose to either send a reconfirmation message or unsubscribe people who appear to be unengaged.

I’d recommend first filtering by people who haven’t clicked a link in a year and sending reconfirmation messages to them. You can use our default message or customize it.

Then, you can decide how long not clicking on any links in your newsletter indicates the recipient is no longer interested and either send reconfirmation messages or choose to unsubscribe them.

Help content for this is coming soon, but if you navigate to Subscribers > Email Subscribers, a little clicking around should get you started.

 

ICYMI: You can always check our Curated Public Product Roadmap to catch up on recent releases and find out what’s up next.

 

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Like this newsletter?

Let me know. Reply, email me at Ashley[at]optinweekly.com, or find me on LinkedIn to hit me with some feedback. I’d love to know what you think.

Also, I’d appreciate it if you shared it with fellow email newsletter creators. All archived issues will be available on OptInWeekly.com, so you can send them the link to check it out.

Have a great week sending, y’all.

Ashley Guttuso