Issue #250 All About Email

Hi, {{first_name|friend}}. 👋

Welcome to Issue #250 of All About Email!

Last week, my fourth guest in our summer series was Nikki Elbaz, as we explored what SaaS and e-commerce can learn from each other when it comes to email.

This week I’m celebrating a huge milestone for this newsletter, and one that I never thought would even be possible. Join me as I celebrate, reflect and make some predictions after 250 issues!!! 🎉

Let’s go! 👇

So, where do you go after 250 issues?…

I guess the next ambitious step is 500 issues. 💪

A huge amount. 😂

Have I made mistakes?… Absolutely!

Probably a lot more mistakes than I’d like. Although I’ve learned from my mistakes, so that’s a positive. 😉

250 issues is over five years of writing (I've taken a couple of very short breaks over the Christmas period each year). It's a number that I honestly couldn't even fathom when I started this newsletter.

Wow! 🎉

I started three other newsletters in that space of time, and every single one of those has fallen by the wayside:

💡 I think being that consistent for over five years is something that is rarely seen, but I think one of the biggest bits of learning has been how this newsletter has changed since it started over five years ago.

Is it hyper-niched?… No, and maybe to its detriment. 🤔

(A generalist newsletter can be hard to grow.)

🚨 If I were starting this newsletter now, it would be done completely differently than when I started over five years ago.

In the last two years, I've seen this newsletter be transformed, and a lot of that is down to me actually practising what I preach/teach.

I think that's something we're often guilty of: we spend so much time helping others and helping our clients that we don't actually invest that time in ourselves.

💡 If I were to start this newsletter again now, I would give it a much better foundation than I did at the beginning. I would:

🤷‍♂️ Even when things are really good, there are still times when you're just, "Oh, this is a bit of a slog."

Thankfully, those times are few and far between, and we're in the middle of one of my favourite periods of the year: the guest summer series.

💡 It's wonderful because we get to mix up guest authors with my own issues. And whenever I have the guest authors on, I also take those opportunities to add my own voice to their issues.

❤️ I think it's been one of the most joyful things: building out a community around this newsletter, even though I've been talking about building an actual online community for what must be 18 months now, maybe even longer.

(That's certainly something that I'll be looking at in a lot more detail, and I'll be revealing more on that soon.)

🧠 I think it's never been easier to start a newsletter, and it's never been easier to get involved in email marketing. However, I also don't think it's ever been harder to reach the inbox and, more importantly, engage our audience.

Now we have this advent of a new audience type that gets to your content first, and that's the AI inbox. That's a very different audience to address, and it's whether we embrace that in the future or we ignore it.

🚨 I think those who ignore the AI inbox and those who ignore AI are going to struggle in the future.

I'm not going to go into that in more detail in this issue of the newsletter. But I will stress that:

AI is definitely not as awesome as a lot of people think it is. Maybe one day we'll get there; the future is both exciting and daunting in the newsletter space.

🤔 I think we're going to see a lot of SaaS products, businesses, and newsletter tools come and go, and there will be casualties, but I also think the industry's going to come out stronger.

I just hope that as newsletters change and become more AI-assisted, and more content is written by AI, we recognise that we have to strike a fine balance between human writing and AI assistance, and not just producing AI slop.

🚨 We can’t lose ourselves, our opinions and our ability to think critically for the sake of convenience.

Email is a wonderful channel where we can build a unique and authentic relationship and a real connection.

For a long time, we've been seeing open rates, click rates, and so much more become unreliable.

We must now look towards more accurate and representative engagement signals that allow us to strengthen those connections.

🚨 We’ve had this wonderful piece of technology for decades, and I think it's going to be here for decades to come, but we are in a new era of email marketing that comes with even greater responsibility than the period before.

I do have some exciting plans for the future, and I hope to reveal those soon. 🤫

I want to thank all of you who have been along for the ride.

❤️ It's certainly a pleasure to write this newsletter every week and to talk with you via replies in the inbox and on social media.

I look at my subscriber base and see so many people who have come across from the original Mailchimp days back at the start (there's still a good proportion of you here).

And to all who joined more recently or have been around for the last couple of years on Beehiiv, I appreciate you just as much.

It's been an absolute blessing. Thank you very much.

Thank you for five years, and here's to the next five! 🎉

🎶 Enjoy this week’s song; it’s an absolute banger and very apt!

That's it for this week, {{first_name|friend}}. 👋

Every week, as I write this newsletter, I'll share the track of the moment to create an unbelievably eclectic playlist just for your inbox.

🚨 If you’re interested in sponsoring the “All About Email” newsletter, you can find all the details in this Google Doc.

This week's excellent and insightful email news & tips:

If you have any questions about this email or email marketing, please reply, and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

I hope you have a great week! 👋