Making Some Tough Decisions

Times Are Tough - Decisions IllustrationI’ve been working on the upcoming (October 2, 2012) issue of myConnections Newsletter Logo newsletter and as I was examining the MailChimp statistics I came to some conclusions. They’ll be announced in the newsletter itself next week but I thought I’d share them now with those of you who might not have been opening the newsletter regularly or who would like to be informed a little in advance.

The upcoming issue will be the 10th issue of my newsletter and I really enjoy writing it for everyone who reads it. I am always pleased when someone makes it a point to tell me at a networking event how much they enjoy it. I do try to keep it fresh with great content culled from all over the web that I think you’ll actually be able to use.

It is also a lot of work to put that missive together every three weeks. I save links to articles, groups, organizations and resources that I think will be helpful to you as I find them between issues and then curate the best into each new issue.

This newsletter is currently being mailed to 993 email addresses. All are people who I have met and who have shown interest in receiving information from me. Yet the average open rate for this newsletter is only 20.2%.  That’s better than the industry average of 18.1% for my kind of newsletter, but it is still very disappointing. So I’m going to raise my open rate by a whole bunch over the next few issues.

How will I do such a thing? There are really only two ways to do that. I can contine to try to get more of you to open this newsletter, read it and click through on things of interest to you. Or I can begin removing the 770+ people who don’t ever open it from my email list. I’m going to do some of both, of course, and it won’t be an abrupt change, but it is going to happen.

I want to make sure that my efforts reach people who care about growing their businesses through better marketing strategies and, frankly, who will begin to spend some money with me on doing that. An Instant Strategy Session is only $125. The Marketing Plan Seminar online course is only $79. You can sign up for monthly mentoring for as little as $100 per month. There’s only so much I can do without revenue from the product and service packages I offer to support the ongoing freely supplied calendar, resource and newsletter efforts.

If you and I can’t figure out some ways for you to do some better marketing to grow your business with my help then neither of us is worth our salt and I, at least, should stop my current activities and get a “real” job!

So please don’t be one of the 770+ who will lose access to what many consider a very valuable resource. Open each issue and make use of the materials contained in it. And please see if you can’t figure out how best to support my ongoing efforts on your behalf by sending some business my way. That way we’ll both win!