Lately, we've been receiving a number of emails asking, "I haven't received your newsletter in a while. I hope everything is okay."
There are a number of reasons for this: discouragement, rebellion, and busyness. Let me explain.
First, discouragement.
Sales for the first quarter of 2023 were down 40% compared to 2022. And sales for 2022 were already lower than the year before.
As an experiment, I wanted to see if the newsletter had an effect on sales.
Eight newsletters were sent in the first quarter of 2023, and none have been sent since April. Yet postcard sales averaged the same month-to-month regardless if I wrote a newsletter or not.
Second, rebellion.
On average, 70% of the people we send our newsletter to never open it.
Yes, I understand that a 30% open rate is the industry average. But I try to not write an average newsletter.
Instead, I think of each newsletter as writing a letter to a friend. But when 70% of your friends don't open your letter, that gets disheartening.
So out of rebellion, I stopped writing the newsletter for a period of time just to see what would happen.
As a result, a number of kind and caring customers wrote asking if everything was okay. It was very touching to hear from them.
Third, busyness.
Last week we put our house on the market. The past two months have been crazy getting the house ready, painting, and doing last-minute repairs.
But don't despair — I'm ready to get back to creating more amazing postcards for you and write more fun and exciting newsletters.
In fact, our next newsletter will feature a survey for us to get a sense of what's going on in the postcard world. Until then...happy postcarding!