📊 ClassNotes 011: How to win big with a small email list

There are two hurdles that come with an online audience:

Building it.
Accessing it once it’s been built.

Both are challenging, but the second one will make or break your business.

Industry newsletters typically have lower rates than individual creator emails but can still point us toward what people value most. Designed by Ilya

Open rate is a marketing term that means the percentage of an email list that opened and read the email you sent them. This simple but imperfect metric helps creators and businesses measure how well their content resonates with their audience.

High open rates mean people love your content!
Low open rates mean people are not getting what they expected from your emails.

Depending on your level of experience with marketing, the numbers in our chart might seem high or low. For context, the newsletter you’re reading right now averages a 48% open rate (which is pretty great, even by newsletter standards!)

So, with all this in mind… What should you do?

Drive your audience toward email

Email is the only platform that allows you to consistently reach 25-50% of your audience every time you publish.

For social platforms, that number is typically between 1-5%.

What do these percentages look like in real life? A person with a 100,000 Instagram following might get 1,000-5,000 people to see their posts. Another person with 1/10^th the following on email (only 10,000 subscribers) will get the same amount (2,500-5,000) to see theirs.

Email enables you to win big, even when you’re still small.

It builds trust, authority, depth, and access with the people you serve. It takes the success of your business out of the hands of algorithms and puts it back in your control.

Every email must solve a problem

The more people see your content as a necessity for their life, goals, and happiness — the greater your open rates, engagement, and success will be.

The simplest way to do this is to solve a problem with every email send.

What are you helping people do, become, escape, achieve? How can every piece of content you publish serve that?

These questions are much better filters for your content than should I send weekly or daily emails or how long should my email content be? The better you solve a real, felt problem — the less every other factor matters.

💡

Recap
1. Email is the most reliable way to access the audience you’re building.
2. Problem-solving content is the secret to successful emails.

Next week, we’ll uncover what most course creators get wrong (and why they’re leaving money on the table).

— David

📚 Extra Credit

Forward to a friend. Is there someone in your life who's trying to build an online business that you want to support? Send them this newsletter.
Start a Newsletter with Ghost. If you want to start a newsletter like this one, I recommend using Ghost. It's easy to use and affordable for new creators ($9/mo).