Email List Hacking With Email Octopus
An interview with my favorite email provider
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Email List Hacking With Email Octopus
Okay, onto today’s post.
I recently did an interview with my email newsletter provider (and fave email company ever), Email Octopus. They’re the platform I use to run my non-Substack personal email list.
Some of you want to build your email list, so I’m gonna highlight some parts of that interview in today’s post.
We get into why to build a list, email growth ideas, why titling an email is similar to titling a comedy piece, and some other ideas for writers building their lists.
This is not a paid promo. Email Octopus is small business in the UK that runs email software that’s awesome for indie creators, and I just really like their platform, so I agreed to the interview, for funsies.
By the way, if you’re into this topic, don’t miss the multi-part series I wrote about building your platform as a writer:
Okay, onto the interview…
The Interview
WERONIKA: You mention yourself that you wear a lot of hats – humour writer, marketing consultant, newsletter creator, podcaster. How did you end up building a newsletter, and what role does it play across everything you do?
ALEX: I launched a monthly newsletter around 2016 at the very start of my humor writing journey. Even back then, I had enough marketing experience to know that writers need to build their audience of readers.
Algorithms are unpredictable. One day, the social media algorithm loves you and showers you with attention. The next day, it serves you papers, and you’re standing there with a broken heart, and no audience, listening to 80s breakup ballads by Journey and Air Supply.
The solution is to grow your list. For an online writer or an online business, your list is your most trustworthy direct line to your audience. If you don’t grow your list, you’re kind of hosed. Personally, my list is the primary marketing tool for all of my writing and for anything I make online.
When I launched a comedy self-help podcast with my friend Joseph Dailey, I could immediately tell my audience, “Hey, I made this new thing. Check it out.” And some of them really would check it out, because they know me.
Ditto for anything really good I write online. I can promote it to my newsletter and know that my best writing will get some eyeballs. I don’t promote every last thing I make, but knowing you have a trustworthy audience for your best work is reassuring.
As a marketing consultant, how do you think about email versus other channels for building an audience?
Email is the most intimate and personal of the online marketing channels, and it has the most longevity. It’s more intimate because you have a direct line to reach your subscribers’ eyeballs. With email, you’re not social media algorithm dependent. Everyone checks email. Everyone!
And email has more longevity because people tend to keep an email address for a while (sometimes for life). And if they like your newsletter, they could stay a subscriber for years, decades even. It’s crazy to think that when someone joins my list, that could be a relationship that lasts longer than any relationship that Leonardo DiCaprio has ever had. Think about that! But not too hard.
When someone joins your list, they’re trusting you, just a little. They’re trusting you to honor the reason why they signed up, whether that’s to entertain and amuse them, or to teach them how to be stronger and more fit through the patented VIKING POWER METHOD™! (I made up the Viking Power Method as an example. If you got excited, I apologize. See, that’s one way to break trust: overpromise. Let that be a cautionary tale.)
Email is the foundation of my audience.
You write humour for some notoriously hard-to-crack publications, e.g. The New Yorker and McSweeney’s. Comedy writing and newsletter writing are pretty different disciplines. How much does your background as a humour writer actually influence what lands in subscribers’ inboxes every month?
I think it helps a little.
As a humor writer, you have to be entertaining, obviously. But you also have to be concise. Good comedy writing is tight. So is good email writing. Tighter, punchier emails get read to the end more often. And if you can make your audience look forward to opening your emails because they know there’ll be something interesting inside, all the better.
How do you make sure each newsletter issue feels worth opening, every single time?
This is a question I ask myself quite often! But a few things:
I try to add at least one joke to every email. My emails aren’t like my prose comedy pieces. They’re kind of a mix of interesting stuff I’ve been working on or publishing, or fun things I’ve discovered. But I make sure there’s at least one funny line in the email. Maybe two if I’m feeling festive.
Second, I try to include at least one link to something interesting where my readers will think, “Oh, that’s cool. I’m glad you sent that.” Maybe it’s a link to some good writing. Maybe it’s a book recommendation. Or maybe a book that a friend wrote. I like sharing things that my readers wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.
People’s attention spans are notoriously short, so subject lines and the first few sentences of the newsletter need to captivate the audience for them to stay. Is this something you give much thought to? Is there any formula you use here, or is it more of a feeling?
I like my subject lines pretty short, with a mix of descriptive and interesting. I’m not trying to trick people, so I don’t use clickbait subject lines.
“VIKING POWER METHOD explained” would have an open rate approaching 100% (guaranteed), but unless the email actually has the viking method, it’s clickbait. So, I’ll describe what’s actually in my email, but I try to do it in a fun and light way. I’m also a fan of sticking a single fun emoji in my subject line, at the end, and if this makes me spiritually closer to a teenage girl, so be it.
For example, I published a humor piece in McSweeney’s called “Bad Kissing Techniques” and when I sent my EmailOctopus monthly newsletter linking to that piece, it felt perfect for the subject line. So I gave the email a simple subject line: “Bad kissing techniques 😬.” 62% open rate. I’ll take it!
You can read the rest of the interview here on Email Octopus’s blog.
Alex Baia: on growing a list of 15,000 subscribers, one joke at a time
Also, if you’re looking for your own non-Substack, personal email list try Email Octopus.
The free plans work for up to 2,000 contacts (very generous), and if you want a premium plan, that link gets you $15 off.
Any questions about email lists? Fire away in the comments section.