Issue #262 All About Email

Hi, {{first_name|friend}}. 👋

Welcome to Issue #262 of All About Email!

Last week, we wrapped up our two-part special by covering the final two skills in “Five Skills That Separate Good Email Practitioners from Great Ones”.

This week, 

Let’s go! 👇

Sometimes we sit and stare at a blank screen, then stare some more… kind of like what I'm doing now, though, to be fair, it's not completely blank.

I am using Beehiiv's “newish” visual editor, which is still considered beta. Since they're going to shut down the classic editor in one of the next releases, I thought I’d check it out.

It looks fairly similar to the old builder, but there are a few good changes under the hood.

It's not necessarily a learning curve, but it has a few quirks I'm not used to, and that's kind of put me off. To be fair, this has been putting me off for months, so I finally got around to checking it out and switching.

🤷‍♂️ Whether I stay with this or not, or switch back to the old editor while I can, we'll see.

Normally, I come well prepared for a weekly topic. However, this week is not one of those weeks, and it’s currently half-term for schools, so I’ll be taking some time off to be with the kids (which means I only have so much capacity for work).

🎬 I am excited, and we are going to check out “The Beast of Mossy Bottom” tomorrow.

Last week was a big one. We had parent-teacher interviews with my kids and had a hospital appointment with my daughter (she's fine, nothing to worry about).

All these things added up:

A couple of clients reached out to thank me for the communication and for handling things, and brought a smile to my face. 😀

Some of you might be wondering what on earth I'm talking about; if you don't know, I don't just write newsletters. I also build WooCommerce websites, Shopify websites, and a lot of other things. 😂

To be honest, sometimes you come at things (like today’s newsletter) and feel completely overwhelmed. 🫠

Then I want to get into deeper topics and thoughts. 👇

I've also decided to shut down my other newsletter, Loop WP, instead of putting it on hiatus. I'm just trying to figure out how to shut that down properly.

🤔 I know that sounds strange, but it's actually an important topic: how do you shut down a newsletter?

That's definitely something I'm going to talk about and share, because there are ways to do it, and ways not to. (It depends on what you want to do with the domain and your brand going forward).

Another thing is that, instead of writing this email by hand, I'm currently dictating it with Wispr Flow. Then I'll use Grammarly to check spelling, punctuation, and grammar as normal.

💡 It got me thinking: how am I using AI to “help me” write my newsletters?

One thing that has dominated LinkedIn this week is the Gemini AI inbox, which is now rolling out to US English speakers.

🚨 Many newsletters, as we've talked about before in this newsletter, are no longer being read by humans (or humans alone). 👉 They're being read by AI. 👈

And you’ve probably heard a lot of noise about “Newsletters are dead”, or maybe “only the boring newsletters are dead”, which makes me wonder: is my newsletter one of the boring ones? 🤣

Safe to say, you can see from my ramblings, and it's been a very, very, very long time since I've done a thought piece, that I have a lot to think about, as I'm sure you do.

You may have learned a little something new about me. And, if you've read this far, you have seen some hints about what may come in future newsletters.

We all know that, as email marketers and anyone who codes, develops, or builds websites like me, Q4 is unbelievably busy (and Q3 is busy with preparation) for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas sales, Boxing Day sales, and January sales. 😮‍💨

This really is “the thick of it” right now, and sometimes you just have to dump your thoughts and go with it, {{first_name|friend}}.

That’s it for this week. 👋

Simon

NB: Correction from last week: I shared a link from Filip Bisp and Jay Oram about their work on a Taxi for Email converter. The link was correct, but the description wasn’t; it should have been: SO COOL! - “Taxi for email” converter (sorry guys).

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! 👋