You’re invited to Unsubscribe
Ain’t no space for ghosts.
Another unsubscribed and you feel utterly depleted. You don’t care, but you still do. The imposter especially, who feeds off of misery.
Truth sucks sometimes. And truth is (if you have big ambitions for your art) that at some point you’ll reach the number of readers that to have daily un-subscribers becomes a fact, not an hypothesis.
Does it make it easier? In general yes. But not on your low days. That’s when you need to keep an unsub-reminder-letter in the back of your notebook.
It could say something like this:
“Hi Ghost,
Thank you for unsubscribing. I hate you and I love you, for you make me see who I’m really writing for. I no longer have to lose energy to fake hope that you’d stick around longer.
You wanted to sneak around a bit and that’s cool. I’m grateful you chose to break-up instead of leaving me hanging.
Your un-subscription means that I will not have a list of ghost followers that lowers my open rate or tricks my ego. You were respectful enough to show me straight instead of pretending to read.
I appreciate you for leaving space for new energy. Though, graces us with free address hosting, otherwise I would’ve taken you off the list soon enough anyway. So, it was probably for the best for everyone involved anyhow.”
Signed, Yours truthfully.
I’ve spoken to many artists through the years who rather send fewer emails to keep more subscribers than to send more to those who care and assume the unsubscribes that come with each letter. This is a starving artist mindset, if you ask me (and
, the bestselling author of the book with the same name).Whatever email platform you use to host your folks’ addresses, it will keep track of how many opens, clicks and unsubscribes that each newsletter received. It’s depleting, yes. But only if you check that metric.
I’m at the stage, having sent about 2 millions of emails for my art business through 7 years, that it truly doesn’t bother me. (Don’t stress, each letter got sent to thousands every time so it quickly adds up… Not me clicking send 2 million times…)
You want to know something even crazier?
I’ve deleted tens of thousands of emails through the years too. Because ghosts, on most platforms, will cost you money.
Some email marketers who work for big companies and who most likely never sold anything they did themselves will tell you; “OMG are you crazy?! Those are untapped potential clients. You just have to send a re-nurturing sequence to get the cold leads warm again and then…”
Yeah sure. Will you pay the hundreds of dollars every month to hold their space until the day they do grace me with opening an email, not to mention purchases anything?
As I said in my recent piece “the honeymoon phase is over…”, several years in the online art-business space make you inevitably a bit cynical. But I’m happy for that.
I much rather keep a smaller list of true gems, who by the way can bring you through your most trying times (this is the case for my beloved list for my embroidery art business), than a list of key-hole-peakers who would never buy from you anyway.
We can’t keep people just because it feels good for the ego to have a big email list. Equally, we need to say goodbye gracefully when they choose to leave us and without attachment to our self-worth.
An unsubscribe has rarely anything to do with you. Sure, if everyone unsubscribes from one day to the next, maybe it’s actually you. You f*d up. But hey, you’ll survive that too. Statistics are still in your favour, it’s extremely RARE (if it has ever happened at all?!) that your whole list would unsubscribe at the same time.
Look at it like this: Your list is an ebb and flow of wonderful people who happen to stumble upon your work at a certain time in their life when what you provide is what they need. As they stay with you for a while, depending on your offer, your reader’s status will most likely change. And so, he or she will move on to the next phase or season without you.
This is a healthy process. This is GOOD.
It allows you to have a continuous flow of readers and customers whom you have a chance to make a positive impact on without boring those whom you’ve done your work for already.
What about going viral?
Before ending today’s somewhat unusual letter, I just want to touch upon the desire to go viral (and get a huge surge of new subscribers) that most online creatives inhibit (whether admittedly or not).
To go viral, means that you get big number of eyeballs on your stuff within a short period of time.
However, it’s one thing to go viral and another to do so for the right thing.
hosted a workshop about going viral, in which she outlines general characteristics and commonalities among writings that do very well (and go viral).But what easily gets forgotten in the process, is to ask yourself: What do you want to get viral for?
If the piece that made you viral is not in line with your authentic intuitive work, you’ll most likely never be able to utilize those new leads* in a productive manner. Because they came to you for something that you won’t be able to deliver on.
A concrete example; If you write a piece about
growth in a way that is not in line with your regular work, that may very well backfire down the road.It’s way more mentally challenging to manage a big drop off after a huge upsurge than to deal with impatience for slow steady growth.
Heck, even if you would get viral for something you want, there’s still a big chance that you will notice a more significant drop in the short aftermath.
It’s the natural cycle of the curious impulsive who realise that they actually don’t care enough. Again… This has nothing to do with you, nor the quality of your work.
Instead I’d like to say: You’re invited to unsubscribe as much as you’re invited to stay! As long it comes from a place of honesty, then we’re all set.
Thank you for reading!
Elin, x
I’d love to hear your experience of how it feels like when someone unsubscribes to your work? Let’s open a safe space in the comments.
And if you think someone would need to write an unsub-reminder-letter to put at the back of their notebook too, then you’re warmly invited to send this to them.
Disclaimer: I wrote this full piece in one breathe this evening. There may be typos, there may be grammar mistakes, but if you made it this far I hope it wasn’t too cumbersome.
The words came flowing in response to the always lingering unsubscribe discussion that goes on in any writer’s forum. Here on Substack I was particularly inspired tonight by
‘s last note to which I re-shared my reflections in this note and the conversation took off from there.What made the cup tip over and which brought me the last bit of courage needed to hit publish, was the discovery of two new blurbs (testimonials) to my writing:
This is what
said:“Fast intuition; writing characterized by both intensity and range. Sometimes it's all about growing and monetizing your craft, at other times it's about the healing power of writing. Elin is ambitious and is not shy to reveal her dreams. You'll be invited on a journey to wonder and imagine. Either way, every piece will leave you thinking and reflecting. Subscribe for continuous persuasion to always follow your gut.”
And aforementioned
:“Elin is a tireless source of motivation and inspiration, likely possessing enough energy to power an entire country.”
Thank you guys, this rocked my world tonight. I truly appreciate you both.
Hi there, new here?
I’m Elin, Swedish (expat) artist and mother of two who have plunged into the unknown of Substack as a new writing home. Despite having 500k+ across mainstream social media platforms for my embroidery art, I decided to start afresh here. It’s hard, thrilling, heavy and joyful all in ones. Come and join me for the ride if you haven’t done so already!
You can also check out the how, why, who and what in the post below:
* A lead in this context is a potential new customer, in the context of Substack it means a potential new paid reader.
I swear when that showed up I thought for a moment "holy sh*t" she kicked me off her list!" On a more serious note, I love the way you put things in perspective. A great reminder that this is a marathon, not a sprint. Appreciate you!
Your words are pure gold Elin and you always seem to write exactly what I need to read ✨
I’ve been growing steadily for a few months now and am so close to the 100 mark, however, last week I lost 4 subscribers in one day, why I have no idea. But again you have reminded me that slow and steady growth is much more valuable, so thank you! 🤍