Monday Mastery: The human side of metrics
How do you know you're connecting with your writing? Your numbers may hold a clue.
Welcome to Monday Mastery, a series designed to shift your perspective, teach you new techniques, and help you become a more effective writer, one tip at a time.
In 2022, I deleted 80% of my consulting firm’s email list.
Yes, on purpose.
For many years, I had been gathering email subscribers through all of my activities — from blogs and e-books, from virtual workshops and in-person events, from social media and old-fashioned networking. Over time, though, my metrics shifted.
My open rates went from 55-60% down to 15-18%.
Now, if you’re in marketing, you’re probably wondering what the problem was. Even 15% is considered a really good open rate.
But to me, the decrease indicated a problem.
So I spent some time looking at my list — and it wasn’t hard to figure out what was going on.
Most of the people on the list were other copywriters, and most of those were perfect strangers.
That wouldn’t have been a problem if I was still selling copywriter training courses. But by that point, Horizon Peak Consulting was completely focused on delivering content services to technology companies.
So the things I was talking about in my emails didn’t apply to the copywriters.
I wasn’t addressing 80% of my audience — and I didn’t want to.
I wanted to connect with the founders and marketers on my list.
Writing for connection leads to better audience engagement — but only if you’re clear on your audience.
I knew I wasn’t going to offer courses to copywriters again anytime soon, and those folks were languishing on my email list, getting emails they didn’t care about.
So I got clear on my audience of founders and marketers, and deleted all the folks who didn’t match that profile, who I didn’t know, and/or who weren’t opening my emails.
It was scary.
After all, I’d spent years building that list!
But once it was done, I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. Now I knew I was going to be communicating with an audience who wanted to hear from me.
And sure enough, my open rates started bouncing back up. Way up.
I don’t talk about metrics a whole lot here on Substack, but they are important for one key reason: Metrics can reveal problems and opportunities.
For me, writing for connection is the only thing that matters. If I’m not connecting with my audience, I’m wasting my time and theirs.
As I said in my post on the soul of human writing, there is a time and a place for informational writing. But the writing that matters is the writing that connects.
So if you’re paying attention to your numbers — if you’re tracking subscribers, open rates, click-through, whatever — use them as a guide back to what matters.
And what matters is the connection you’re making with your readers.