If you’ve ever hesitated to hit send – or overthought what happens after – you’re not alone.
This episode gets into the emotional side of email that no one really talks about, but almost everyone feels.
- What unsubscribes actually mean (and why they’re not a problem)
- Why open rates fluctuate more than we expect
- How easy it is to tie numbers to how we feel about ourselves
- Why silence doesn’t mean rejection
- What changes when you keep showing up anyway
RESOURCES MENTIONED
- This Week’s Free Action Guide: The “Just Hit Send” Checklist
- The Smart Soulful Business Facebook Community
SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW
If you loved this episode, please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Your support helps us reach more Christian women who need to hear this.
🎙 Thanks for tuning in to Smart Soulful Business Podcast! See you next week!
LISTEN ON
029: Email Anxiety — Unsubscribes, Open Rates & the Fear of Sending
Becky Brown 0:01
If you’re a Christian woman, building a business and want it to be purposeful and profitable, we’ve got you covered. I’m Becky and I’m Laurie.
Laurie Graham 0:09
We have both built successful businesses that we love without losing our faith, humor or our sanity. This is Smart Soulful Business.
Becky Brown 0:17
Real conversations to help your business fit your life and not the other way around.
Laurie Graham 0:26
Hey, hey, welcome back to Smart Soulful Business with Becky and Laurie. We are trucking along here as we help women build businesses that are profitable and purposeful and taking it out of the dream state, or the spinning state or the overthinking state and like, let’s put some feet to it all. So we are wrapping up the last couple episodes in our email series. We would love to know how you’re thinking and feeling and what you’re getting out of it. So please be sure to leave comments, leave some reviews in the podcast as you listen. It really helps people find us. We want to help as many people as we can.
So as we wrap up this last couple episodes in our email series today, we’re getting into a part of email that honestly can mess not a little with your head, a lot, a lot with our heads and our hearts, not writing it, not even sending it, like we get stuck in those places. But what happens after and I think for me, I was so surprised how hard that was. Like you think the hard part is doing it and hitting send. There’s a lot of work to do after we hit send, and we’re gonna make that a little easy for you and take off some pressure and some of the stress with it all. So if you have ever hovered over the send button, if you’ve ever checked your stats way too fast, if you’ve ever noticed and unsubscribe and felt it a little bit in your chest, this episode is for you, because this part is way more emotional than anybody talks about. Now, I don’t know how you are necessarily, but I know how I am
Laurie Graham 2:02
when I hit an email, I send, when I hit send on an email, and then within minutes, especially early on, I was like, checking, did anybody open it? Did anyone click? Did anybody leave? Were there unsubscribes? It’s kind of wild. How fast we go from I did it to, was it okay or and I’ll even throw out there, do people like me,
Laurie Graham 2:26
like that gets in my head? So Becky, let’s just talk about this initial stuff that goes on. What do you notice in yourself right after you send something? And I think I’ll even have you contrast, because I know it’s different now when you hit send, from when you first started, so maybe from when you first started, the first couple emails, or the first year of emails, even in the middle, to now, like, what has that been like for you?
Becky Brown 2:52
Oh, very, very different. Very, very different. Okay, so I know that I’ve mentioned this phrase on other podcasts before, because it’s a very real present part of things for me, I talk about something called the ‘vulnerability hangover’, and it absolutely applies to emails as well.
So after I pressed send, actually I am not the person that runs to check data, because I’m scared of it. I ignore data. Laurie was teasing me a few episodes ago because I haven’t looked at the reviews on my Amazon book in years, and that’s kind of how I treat my email stats too. I am not the person that refreshes and refreshes, but I am the person that sends and then, like, holds my breath and waits for the first response. Because, especially in the beginning, I think I was expecting people to be mad at me. Like, I think I was expecting people to respond with, why did you even send this? What? Like, what are you doing? And I don’t know why I did that, but it was a very heavy, vulnerable thing of, like, do they like, you said, Do they like me? Did they was that valuable? Did I do it right? And I was waiting for their affirmation of, Oh, yeah. Like, this is good. This is helpful. Like, thanks for writing this. I was waiting to hear that.
Every time I would just kind of hold my breath and wait, I would say the shift over time. It’s hard to describe the middle ground because it looks so different. But I would say now it feels so much calmer, partly because I batch a lot more. And so it doesn’t feel as current present when I send things, because it’s pre-scheduled and pre-written. And so there’s a little bit more emotional and like time distance between me and my email, but it also just feels so calmer because I have experience practicing.
What is it like when nobody responds? What is it like when people do respond? What is it like when the open rates stink? What is it like when tons of people unsubscribe and nobody unsubscribes, and I just have experience navigating all of those things now that I didn’t have in the beginning. It all felt new and scary and like, Oh no, my business is going to fail if somebody unsubscribes. It’s that’s obviously me telling me that I’m doing everything wrong.
Laurie Graham 5:16
Yeah, it’s I’m just kind of nodding here and listening to you, because, you know, we have so many differences with our personalities, but there’s some of those things that we have so much in common. And I think that vulnerability hangover is really, really good to talk about, because I think it’s a real shared thing, like when we hit send, we just put something out. And there’s like that, whether we’re checking stats or not. You know that feeling is something we have in common. And I was thinking right now, as you and I started Smart Soulful Business, if you’re listening live, like just in the fall, so it’s just been about six months, I haven’t worried about unsubscribes at all. And I thought, wow, this is part of my business growth. And I realize that stats are important. And by the way, stats are important. We’re not telling you not to consider why there’s unsubscribes, but a certain amount is normal, like it’s actually normal. Now we’re going to talk more in the email course about open rates and about unsubscribes, because you should know these stats. There are some I don’t know, I guess, little standards of like, if this many people aren’t opening your email, you know, a large amount, by the way, then you might not be hitting their pain points, or you might not be offering something valuable to them, which means your audience might be misaligned. But I think what we’re really getting into is it’s not a personal reflection of who we are. It’s not a rejection. I just think this is so interesting to talk about. I’m literally learning while I was listening to you, when do you think it really shifts from neutral to emotional, right?
Becky Brown 6:53
Yeah, well, and you know now I say that I’m a lot more calm when I send emails, and not as hyped up and waiting for that reassurance. I’m not holding my breath when an email goes out anymore, but I would say that it’s never fully neutral to me, and I’m not sure that that’s the goal for it to feel fully neutral ever. Because the things that I’m sharing, I’m sharing because I’m passionate about them. I’m sharing because I care about these things, and I want these things to resonate with people and make an impact on them. That’s why I’m spending my time writing about them.
So I would say that’s the healthy side of things, checking those things, open rates and click rates. That’s helpful data. The unhelpful response that I’ve had in the past is just obsessing over the data. Its refreshing it every two seconds. Its the holding my breath is feeling terrible when people aren’t responding, and we talked about like, it can make you feel really vulnerable, especially when your list is new and you’re just feeling unsure about everything, what to say, how to say it, if people are going to find your value, and how to even measure that, because we want it to land well with people. And so it’s not just data. It does feel personal, and it is personal and like, it’s, it’s kind of like a spectrum. You can take it too far either way.
So keep it meaningful. We’re talking about soulful business here. This is purposeful and meaningful. Keep the meaning. Keep your care for your business. But what we’re trying to talk you down from is the obsession over, over these things, and you know, you had mentioned unsubscribes earlier, and I would say that’s a really common place where it just feels a little bit different. It feels harder. It feels harder than the other stats, I remember Laurie when you were just starting your email list, and we had a lot of conversations when you were experiencing your first few unsubscribes. Can you, do you remember the first time that you?
Laurie Graham 8:56
Totally do, like my face is turning red right now, because it was, it was so stressful for me, and deflating. And and Becky, if you don’t know our story, Becky had been in business years before I was so she was just teaching me everything. She’d be like, Oh, it doesn’t matter. Oh, the unsubscribes don’t matter. Don’t worry about them, that they’re gonna happen all the time. And do I remember the first time I think I obsessed over them for do you think it was a whole year, probably, maybe more like, I it got calmer each time. But, yeah, I mean, you send an email and you get unsubscribes. Like, that’s just normal now. I mean, with the size of my list, I don’t know how many unsubscribes I get on an email, I would actually have to look that up at this point. But it’s, it’s 40, it’s 60, it’s 100 like, I mean, I remember the first time one person had subscribed. I’m like, Oh my gosh. And I think it’s not just the number right.
Numbers are neutral, but what we make it mean, that’s what’s the emotion comes in. And what I was making it mean early on was that, they didn’t like me, I said something wrong. I was pushy. It feels like personal rejection, and it’s not, like, How many times have I unsubscribed from an email list? Like, I unsubscribe from Amy Porterfield all the time, and then I resubscribe. Like, I get tired of her, and then I resubscribe. You know? I mean, I do that all the time. Sometimes I just have a double email going on. Like, I, out of my two different addresses, I’m subscribed twice, and I’ve unsubscribed with this one, but I’m still following right? Like, there’s a lot of reasons we unsubscribe. Sometimes it’s timing. Sometimes you’re just clearing everything out, and then you’re gonna come back later. Sometimes people are happy following you on Facebook and they love you, and they’re still buying your stuff. They just don’t want your emails, you know, but, I mean, I was always thinking, What did I do wrong? How could I do it differently? They don’t like me, and honestly, I’ll go further, my business is going to fail.
Becky Brown 10:50
Imean, I remember you telling me that you were like, obviously this is a sign that I need to quit. This isn’t right. Nobody finds value here, that unsubscribe means I am wrong about all of this I’m done. Did I really say that to you? Like, I mean different words, but similar concept?
Laurie Graham 11:06
Yeah. I mean, I am. It’s part of one of my dysfunctional thinking patterns. It’s black and white, all or nothing. And I do, I can immediately go there. Unsubscribes, if you think about it, if we can talk about it in a healthy way, it’s a sign that you’re showing up. Yeah, if you’re not getting unsubscribes, you’re not sending emails, like, can we just say that, like, unsubscribes are a sign that we’re actually showing up a list that’s quiet and neutral and stagnant is not a healthy list? Yeah, it is natural and normal for people to come and go on an email list. And we talked in the last episode about, like, what you want your list growth to be, people who find value in you, so when they leave, it’s they’re not the people that need your stuff right now,
Laurie Graham 11:56
and I that’s really hard when you’re newer in business because you want everybody to love what you have. Like, of course, everybody wants, well, no, everybody doesn’t need a vacuum cleaner. Today, some people are gluten free. Some people are in transition. They’re moving a house or dealing with a child who just got diagnosed with something, and they just don’t have space for it right now, you know, unsubscribes don’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. Unsubscribes like, I love this thought, unsubscribes actually mean you’re doing something right.
Becky Brown 12:27
Well, and I would say there can be clarity from unsubscribes. If you get a ton of unsubscribes regularly, that that can be data for you to consider. But most of the time you’re right. It doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. It’s just a natural part of business. And this is like, this is a thought you’re gonna need as you start and grow your email list ongoing for years to come, you are going to need to remind yourself unsubscribes are normal. Just have this in to have our voices in your head with that line, unsubscribes are normal,
Laurie Graham 12:58
Yes, and they are numbers to watch. We don’t want you to ignore your stats as Becky and I talk about a lot, we’re helping women build businesses that are purposeful and profitable. One of the reasons we call this Smart Soulful Business, I’m gonna say, I’ll say, from my perspective, is I have seen way too many Christian women talk about faith and how God’s gonna do this, and God’s gonna do this, and they don’t do things. They don’t do things smart, like they think that having faith in God, or having God direct your business and Holy Spirit nudges means that we ignore numbers, or we ignore stats, or we ignore strategies, or we ignore growing in business skills. Like this is the thing we don’t want you to ignore. The numbers like we should be looking at the numbers.
We should understand our stats if you want a business that builds revenue, Becky and I make revenue, we want to make profit. We have reasons. We make profit. We are generous with our profit. We pay our bills. We live in a society where we have to pay things right, to live. Like profit is a part of this, okay, but the numbers, we need to watch them. They’re important. We go about all this in our courses and and in our Soulful Strategy Group, we talk about this. Open rates are one of those things that also sound really objective, right? So numbers are statistics. They’re important. What we’re trying to unpack in this episode, what we are unpacking is the way that what we ascribe to it right? Like this anxiety.
We don’t need anxiety over our numbers. We say, okay, numbers are information. So we talked a little bit about unsubscribes, another number that’s really important to watch and pay attention to, are open rates. Open rates. It’s very objective. What’s the percentage of people opening your emails? By the way, if you are really new in business and you’re like open rates and unsubscribes, how do I even get these numbers when you are signed up with an email platform like Kit or Flodesk, or does MailChimp do those? Do these two as well? If you have an email platform, it’s very easy. Find these rates, but that’s where you’re going to find them. And you do want to know these things, but open rates are one of those things that sounds really objective, but we can make them personal too. Like we can make open rates really personal. Becky for you. How easy is it to start reading into the numbers, like, what they what we make it mean?
Becky Brown 15:20
Yeah, I’m gonna add in a parallel. For years I was really focused on Christian Weight Loss in one of my businesses, and this is how we talked about stepping on the scale. So we have a lot of women who will have a really good day, a really good week, they will make all these healthy choices. They will be like on fire, exercising and eating well, and they step on the scale, and they see that they gained, and they think what we’re talking about on this episode, I’m doing everything wrong. I better stop those healthy choices, because obviously they’re not working. And this is a great illustration, so I am going to pull in that same logic for open rates, because, like Laurie keeps saying, there is helpful information in this data, but it often doesn’t mean what we think it means.
So can open rates tell you, oh gosh, that subject line didn’t resonate with your audience. You didn’t use the words that they needed to hear to open that. Can it give you information? Oh, yeah. But it can also mean, gosh, there was a holiday this week and everybody was out of town. Gosh, like, it’s summer vacation, and kids just got out of school. Man, there was, there was a crazy snowstorm that went across the United States and powers out in all of these places, it can mean a lot of different things. So I don’t want you to get so stuck on the number that you think that open rate dropping this week means that I am doing everything wrong. And I think one of the biggest mistakes that we can make is, and I think is it? I think it’s in this episode that I’m going to go deeper into that. Yeah, I’m actually going to save that for the next section. Okay, Laurie, all right, there’s more value. So keep listening. I’m going to talk about that part a little bit later.
Laurie Graham 17:19
You know, the truth is, like with open rates or unsubscribes or any statistics we look at in our businesses, even with you know how your your launch win, or how many people purchase your product, we never have the full story behind these numbers. We just don’t. Somebody could open your email later. They could read without clicking. They could skim quickly. They just miss it entirely. It went to their spam folder. By the way, you can’t control what goes to people’s spam folders. There are some techniques to increase your deliverability rate for sure, tons of things we should talk about that at some point. Actually, I think it’s in the course as well.
But we don’t have the whole truth behind the numbers. Because, quite honestly, and Becky, I hope I don’t hurt your feelings here, I am subscribed to Becky’s email list. Becky is pretty much my best friend on the planet. And I don’t read most of them, you know, I don’t open most of them. And every time I do, I love it, and I don’t not open it because I don’t even find value in it, or because I don’t like her or anything. It’s just, I have a lot of emails. A lot of them get lost. A lot of them don’t pop up, and then I’ll see Becky, So Very Blessed. I’m like, Oh my gosh, I need to read that, you know? And so we don’t have the whole story. And also, not everything is measurable. Not everything is measurable. When we measure things, we’ve got to look broader. Not everything is measurable. Not everything needs to be fixed. Consistency matters a lot more than any one results.
Becky Brown 18:42
Yeah, for sure, you know. And we’ve talked about the rates, the open rates, we’ve talked about some of the data that can come from your email list provider, up until now. And I want to talk about another tough part of this that I was taught, that I mentioned earlier on this episode, which was, you know, that moment when I was holding my breath waiting for the email replies, and they didn’t come. And this might be one of the hardest things, when you send something and you feel like I poured my heart into that and Oh, like this is so important, and it feels like it just disappears into space and there’s no replies, there’s no obvious response. And you start thinking to yourself, that was like the best of me, and it’s not resonating with people. What is going on, and it really shakes you. So Laurie, I want to know from you, how do you personally handle that silence, that lack of reply from your people, when you feel like you created something so good?
Laurie Graham 19:52
Okay, I’m cracking up because there’s a couple different layers here. One is, nobody’s gonna reply unless you ask them a question. Yeah. And most emails that I get from most people, just general email lists don’t ask questions. Now, the ones that I stay on do ask questions, they’ll say things like, so what’s your biggest challenge, or how do you feel about this, or things like that.
So if you do want replies, ask a question, and then I’ll just say 99% of people will never reply. Yeah. Do you ever see the people like doing the surveys, like at the mall, or I had a friend who actually worked in a survey industry, and she taught me a lot about surveys, like online surveys, Google Surveys, the ones where somebody’s standing on the street corner trying to get responses. The response rate for a survey is so incredibly low. Like, if you get, I don’t remember what it is, 5% response rate. That is a high rate. That’s like, sad. It is sad. So if you’re sending an email to 100 people and you get one response, honestly, that’s probably pretty good, you know what I mean. And it’s funny, because I do ask a lot of questions in some of my emails, not in my regular weekly ones that are sent now, like the wrap ups and stuff, but like when we do conference openings, I always have questions at the end, and yeah, it’s a really low reply.
So your question was, how do I personally handle the silence? The funny thing is, if you know the differences between Becky and I like that never bothered me. I don’t remember that bothering me. I was too obsessed with the stats. I would watch the open rates and the unsubscribes, and if somebody responded to me, I’d be super delighted with it, but I think pretty early on, I realized that that’s a really and maybe because of my friend who did surveys, I didn’t really expect a lot of responses, but the people who do respond like, those are key. Like, when people respond to me, I know this is not where we’re going. This email, I always respond back like I read my emails. I respond back because if 10 people out of 1000 respond to me, or out of honestly, sometimes 15,000, 10 people respond to me like, they are worth my responding back well and for responding, not letting it sit there.
Becky Brown 19:54
And often those responses guide my business. They guide the resources I create. They guide the posts I’m going to write. They could guide the products that you’re going to create. Oh, do you have this in blue? So now you create it in blue. You know? It just, it’s really, that’s gold when your audience does reply,
Laurie Graham 20:40
Yeah, for sure, and don’t take them for granted. Treat them like gold, because those are the ones who have the biggest chance of becoming your rating fans, purchasing from you, sharing about you, telling people about you, because that’s showing connection, that’s showing that they are connected with you. However, when you have emails and no one responds, I mean, there are times I’m like, Well, that didn’t land at all. Or, yeah, like you said, I just poured my heart out there, and nobody cares that I just went through this traumatic thing this week, and I had a solution for it that could, that could help them too, right? You know, like, you know, we don’t always see the impact real time. That’s the truth of it. Consistency builds trust quietly like it does. Just continuing to be consistently, you’re building trust no matter if there’s immediate responses or not. And I think also just keeping in mind that silence is not rejection. It’s really not. So we’ve talked about unsubscribes, we’ve talked about open rates, we’ve talked about getting replies on your emails.
So what really changes everything the shift is not, how do I get better numbers? Like I think that’s one of the things to define in your mind. We watch our stats. It’s important. We do want our stats to reflect well, right? And sometimes we do want our numbers to get up, but it’s not the main question. The main challenge that’s going to push you farther in business help you achieve your goals is the question is, how do I stay steady, no matter what the numbers do? How do I stay consistently? How do I keep showing up no matter what the numbers look like? Becky, you are the expert to help with this, because you are my friend of the most consistency of anyone I’ve ever known in my life. How do you stay grounded with things like this? How do you stay steady and consistent?
Becky Brown 23:51
Okay, so this is the part that I was alluding to earlier that feels really important. It was, it has been, and continues to be really important for me to name this goal. My goal is not to be reactive to data, to stats, to silence. My goal is to be responsive to data to say it again. My goal is not to be reactive to data. My goal is to be responsive to data. So I don’t what, I don’t want you to walk away from from this episode, and hopefully you have heard us again and again say there is value in the data. We want you to know your data. We want you to keep up with your data. We don’t want you ignoring it. Don’t minimize it, and don’t shove it aside and pretend like it doesn’t matter, it does.
So what we want you to do is engage with your data in a healthy way. So reactions are typically in the moment, spur of the moment, intense, impulsive. They’re driven by fear and stress, and they are often really quick and often harmful. Damaging reactions are, yeah, they’re intense, usually emotion-driven, not in a positive way. Like, Oh, I feel this thing like, maybe it’s feeling triggered, and I’m going to do something right now about it. And often it leads to overcorrecting, and it doesn’t lead to what Laurie and I talk about all the time when we think of ourselves as wise businesswomen, we want to be calm, we want to be attentive, we want to be willing to try new things and to learn new things, but we want to do it in a calm way, and that describes responsiveness to data.
Responding usually involves a pause to assess the situation. What does this mean? What could it mean? It’s something that’s proactive and not reactive, and it’s aiming for, yeah, it’s a calm, grounded response to the information in front of you. It’s not a fear-driven impulsive reaction that often leads to over correcting. So that is a goal I keep in mind often. Am I reacting right now? Because sometimes I still have those big emotional responses of, oh, that was such an important email, and that’s it, like 1% click rate, really, but responding, what could that mean? Could I have done a different title? Can I do a resend, can I change the link on the words on the button? Those are more responses calm and grounded.
Laurie Graham 26:27
Yeah, I think it’s really looking at numbers as information, right? You know, information, invitation, opportunity. And I just really want to talk about the importance of community in this, because if I’m freaking out, it doesn’t really help for me. Just to say I shouldn’t be freaking out, you know, and I know that our relationship has helped me so much. And if you’re building alone, please consider joining us in the Soulful Strategy Community. It’s $9 a month. You’re not going to find a cheaper coaching community anywhere that has the amount of impact that it has, like, the value we offer for $9 a month, just consider actually having people cheerleading you in just this one aspect. Like, Hey, you guys. I just had an email and nobody responded. What do I do with this? I’m crying. I am freaking out. I feel like I’m gonna lose my business. Like, that’s what community is about. Like, if you are a Jesus follower and this lands well with you. I really believe we were put on the planet to be together, to learn in community, to live in community. And I really think this is one of the most important aspects in growing your business consistently for the long haul, is being surrounded with people who not just get it, but they’re moving forward positively. It’s very easy to find people struggling with their same struggles, saying, oh my gosh, my business is awful. Nobody does this. The culture is terrible. Nobody wants what I have to offer.
It’s easy to find those people, finding people who are moving forward strategic. Come find them with us, because we’ve got them, and they’re growing all the time. Okay, so we got to wrap up here.
Today, we talked about that moment right after you hit send. What unsubscribes really mean? How open rates fluctuate? Why silence isn’t what we think it is. The free Action Guide that goes with today’s podcast. You can find it in the show notes. Is the Just Hit Send checklist. Super sweet, super simple. Hopefully we’ll keep you grounded. Moving forward, just grab it. It’s a free download. Every episode we have a free download. And I just want to thank you so much for being here with us. Next week, we are wrapping up this email series with a really important conversation. That email isn’t just for a certain kind of business, it’s for yours too. And if you have been quietly wondering, if this even fits what you do. You do not want to miss this. If you want steady support again, you want us showing up for you day after day, come join us in that Soulful Strategy Community. The link is also in the show notes, because we would love to keep walking this out with you.
All right, go team.
Becky Brown 0:01
If you’re a Christian woman, building a business and want it to be purposeful and profitable, we’ve got you covered. I’m Becky and I’m Laurie.
Laurie Graham 0:09
We have both built successful businesses that we love without losing our faith, humor or our sanity. This is Smart Soulful Business.
Becky Brown 0:17
Real conversations to help your business fit your life and not the other way around.
Laurie Graham 0:26
Hey, hey, welcome back to Smart Soulful Business with Becky and Laurie. We are trucking along here as we help women build businesses that are profitable and purposeful and taking it out of the dream state, or the spinning state or the overthinking state and like, let’s put some feet to it all. So we are wrapping up the last couple episodes in our email series. We would love to know how you’re thinking and feeling and what you’re getting out of it. So please be sure to leave comments, leave some reviews in the podcast as you listen. It really helps people find us. We want to help as many people as we can.
So as we wrap up this last couple episodes in our email series today, we’re getting into a part of email that honestly can mess not a little with your head, a lot, a lot with our heads and our hearts, not writing it, not even sending it, like we get stuck in those places. But what happens after and I think for me, I was so surprised how hard that was. Like you think the hard part is doing it and hitting send. There’s a lot of work to do after we hit send, and we’re gonna make that a little easy for you and take off some pressure and some of the stress with it all. So if you have ever hovered over the send button, if you’ve ever checked your stats way too fast, if you’ve ever noticed and unsubscribe and felt it a little bit in your chest, this episode is for you, because this part is way more emotional than anybody talks about. Now, I don’t know how you are necessarily, but I know how I am
Laurie Graham 2:02
when I hit an email, I send, when I hit send on an email, and then within minutes, especially early on, I was like, checking, did anybody open it? Did anyone click? Did anybody leave? Were there unsubscribes? It’s kind of wild. How fast we go from I did it to, was it okay or and I’ll even throw out there, do people like me,
Laurie Graham 2:26
like that gets in my head? So Becky, let’s just talk about this initial stuff that goes on. What do you notice in yourself right after you send something? And I think I’ll even have you contrast, because I know it’s different now when you hit send, from when you first started, so maybe from when you first started, the first couple emails, or the first year of emails, even in the middle, to now, like, what has that been like for you?
Becky Brown 2:52
Oh, very, very different. Very, very different. Okay, so I know that I’ve mentioned this phrase on other podcasts before, because it’s a very real present part of things for me, I talk about something called the ‘vulnerability hangover’, and it absolutely applies to emails as well.
So after I pressed send, actually I am not the person that runs to check data, because I’m scared of it. I ignore data. Laurie was teasing me a few episodes ago because I haven’t looked at the reviews on my Amazon book in years, and that’s kind of how I treat my email stats too. I am not the person that refreshes and refreshes, but I am the person that sends and then, like, holds my breath and waits for the first response. Because, especially in the beginning, I think I was expecting people to be mad at me. Like, I think I was expecting people to respond with, why did you even send this? What? Like, what are you doing? And I don’t know why I did that, but it was a very heavy, vulnerable thing of, like, do they like, you said, Do they like me? Did they was that valuable? Did I do it right? And I was waiting for their affirmation of, Oh, yeah. Like, this is good. This is helpful. Like, thanks for writing this. I was waiting to hear that.
Every time I would just kind of hold my breath and wait, I would say the shift over time. It’s hard to describe the middle ground because it looks so different. But I would say now it feels so much calmer, partly because I batch a lot more. And so it doesn’t feel as current present when I send things, because it’s pre-scheduled and pre-written. And so there’s a little bit more emotional and like time distance between me and my email, but it also just feels so calmer because I have experience practicing.
What is it like when nobody responds? What is it like when people do respond? What is it like when the open rates stink? What is it like when tons of people unsubscribe and nobody unsubscribes, and I just have experience navigating all of those things now that I didn’t have in the beginning. It all felt new and scary and like, Oh no, my business is going to fail if somebody unsubscribes. It’s that’s obviously me telling me that I’m doing everything wrong.
Laurie Graham 5:16
Yeah, it’s I’m just kind of nodding here and listening to you, because, you know, we have so many differences with our personalities, but there’s some of those things that we have so much in common. And I think that vulnerability hangover is really, really good to talk about, because I think it’s a real shared thing, like when we hit send, we just put something out. And there’s like that, whether we’re checking stats or not. You know that feeling is something we have in common. And I was thinking right now, as you and I started Smart Soulful Business, if you’re listening live, like just in the fall, so it’s just been about six months, I haven’t worried about unsubscribes at all. And I thought, wow, this is part of my business growth. And I realize that stats are important. And by the way, stats are important. We’re not telling you not to consider why there’s unsubscribes, but a certain amount is normal, like it’s actually normal. Now we’re going to talk more in the email course about open rates and about unsubscribes, because you should know these stats. There are some I don’t know, I guess, little standards of like, if this many people aren’t opening your email, you know, a large amount, by the way, then you might not be hitting their pain points, or you might not be offering something valuable to them, which means your audience might be misaligned. But I think what we’re really getting into is it’s not a personal reflection of who we are. It’s not a rejection. I just think this is so interesting to talk about. I’m literally learning while I was listening to you, when do you think it really shifts from neutral to emotional, right?
Becky Brown 6:53
Yeah, well, and you know now I say that I’m a lot more calm when I send emails, and not as hyped up and waiting for that reassurance. I’m not holding my breath when an email goes out anymore, but I would say that it’s never fully neutral to me, and I’m not sure that that’s the goal for it to feel fully neutral ever. Because the things that I’m sharing, I’m sharing because I’m passionate about them. I’m sharing because I care about these things, and I want these things to resonate with people and make an impact on them. That’s why I’m spending my time writing about them.
So I would say that’s the healthy side of things, checking those things, open rates and click rates. That’s helpful data. The unhelpful response that I’ve had in the past is just obsessing over the data. Its refreshing it every two seconds. Its the holding my breath is feeling terrible when people aren’t responding, and we talked about like, it can make you feel really vulnerable, especially when your list is new and you’re just feeling unsure about everything, what to say, how to say it, if people are going to find your value, and how to even measure that, because we want it to land well with people. And so it’s not just data. It does feel personal, and it is personal and like, it’s, it’s kind of like a spectrum. You can take it too far either way.
So keep it meaningful. We’re talking about soulful business here. This is purposeful and meaningful. Keep the meaning. Keep your care for your business. But what we’re trying to talk you down from is the obsession over, over these things, and you know, you had mentioned unsubscribes earlier, and I would say that’s a really common place where it just feels a little bit different. It feels harder. It feels harder than the other stats, I remember Laurie when you were just starting your email list, and we had a lot of conversations when you were experiencing your first few unsubscribes. Can you, do you remember the first time that you?
Laurie Graham 8:56
Totally do, like my face is turning red right now, because it was, it was so stressful for me, and deflating. And and Becky, if you don’t know our story, Becky had been in business years before I was so she was just teaching me everything. She’d be like, Oh, it doesn’t matter. Oh, the unsubscribes don’t matter. Don’t worry about them, that they’re gonna happen all the time. And do I remember the first time I think I obsessed over them for do you think it was a whole year, probably, maybe more like, I it got calmer each time. But, yeah, I mean, you send an email and you get unsubscribes. Like, that’s just normal now. I mean, with the size of my list, I don’t know how many unsubscribes I get on an email, I would actually have to look that up at this point. But it’s, it’s 40, it’s 60, it’s 100 like, I mean, I remember the first time one person had subscribed. I’m like, Oh my gosh. And I think it’s not just the number right.
Numbers are neutral, but what we make it mean, that’s what’s the emotion comes in. And what I was making it mean early on was that, they didn’t like me, I said something wrong. I was pushy. It feels like personal rejection, and it’s not, like, How many times have I unsubscribed from an email list? Like, I unsubscribe from Amy Porterfield all the time, and then I resubscribe. Like, I get tired of her, and then I resubscribe. You know? I mean, I do that all the time. Sometimes I just have a double email going on. Like, I, out of my two different addresses, I’m subscribed twice, and I’ve unsubscribed with this one, but I’m still following right? Like, there’s a lot of reasons we unsubscribe. Sometimes it’s timing. Sometimes you’re just clearing everything out, and then you’re gonna come back later. Sometimes people are happy following you on Facebook and they love you, and they’re still buying your stuff. They just don’t want your emails, you know, but, I mean, I was always thinking, What did I do wrong? How could I do it differently? They don’t like me, and honestly, I’ll go further, my business is going to fail.
Becky Brown 10:50
Imean, I remember you telling me that you were like, obviously this is a sign that I need to quit. This isn’t right. Nobody finds value here, that unsubscribe means I am wrong about all of this I’m done. Did I really say that to you? Like, I mean different words, but similar concept?
Laurie Graham 11:06
Yeah. I mean, I am. It’s part of one of my dysfunctional thinking patterns. It’s black and white, all or nothing. And I do, I can immediately go there. Unsubscribes, if you think about it, if we can talk about it in a healthy way, it’s a sign that you’re showing up. Yeah, if you’re not getting unsubscribes, you’re not sending emails, like, can we just say that, like, unsubscribes are a sign that we’re actually showing up a list that’s quiet and neutral and stagnant is not a healthy list? Yeah, it is natural and normal for people to come and go on an email list. And we talked in the last episode about, like, what you want your list growth to be, people who find value in you, so when they leave, it’s they’re not the people that need your stuff right now,
Laurie Graham 11:56
and I that’s really hard when you’re newer in business because you want everybody to love what you have. Like, of course, everybody wants, well, no, everybody doesn’t need a vacuum cleaner. Today, some people are gluten free. Some people are in transition. They’re moving a house or dealing with a child who just got diagnosed with something, and they just don’t have space for it right now, you know, unsubscribes don’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. Unsubscribes like, I love this thought, unsubscribes actually mean you’re doing something right.
Becky Brown 12:27
Well, and I would say there can be clarity from unsubscribes. If you get a ton of unsubscribes regularly, that that can be data for you to consider. But most of the time you’re right. It doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. It’s just a natural part of business. And this is like, this is a thought you’re gonna need as you start and grow your email list ongoing for years to come, you are going to need to remind yourself unsubscribes are normal. Just have this in to have our voices in your head with that line, unsubscribes are normal,
Laurie Graham 12:58
Yes, and they are numbers to watch. We don’t want you to ignore your stats as Becky and I talk about a lot, we’re helping women build businesses that are purposeful and profitable. One of the reasons we call this Smart Soulful Business, I’m gonna say, I’ll say, from my perspective, is I have seen way too many Christian women talk about faith and how God’s gonna do this, and God’s gonna do this, and they don’t do things. They don’t do things smart, like they think that having faith in God, or having God direct your business and Holy Spirit nudges means that we ignore numbers, or we ignore stats, or we ignore strategies, or we ignore growing in business skills. Like this is the thing we don’t want you to ignore. The numbers like we should be looking at the numbers.
We should understand our stats if you want a business that builds revenue, Becky and I make revenue, we want to make profit. We have reasons. We make profit. We are generous with our profit. We pay our bills. We live in a society where we have to pay things right, to live. Like profit is a part of this, okay, but the numbers, we need to watch them. They’re important. We go about all this in our courses and and in our Soulful Strategy Group, we talk about this. Open rates are one of those things that also sound really objective, right? So numbers are statistics. They’re important. What we’re trying to unpack in this episode, what we are unpacking is the way that what we ascribe to it right? Like this anxiety.
We don’t need anxiety over our numbers. We say, okay, numbers are information. So we talked a little bit about unsubscribes, another number that’s really important to watch and pay attention to, are open rates. Open rates. It’s very objective. What’s the percentage of people opening your emails? By the way, if you are really new in business and you’re like open rates and unsubscribes, how do I even get these numbers when you are signed up with an email platform like Kit or Flodesk, or does MailChimp do those? Do these two as well? If you have an email platform, it’s very easy. Find these rates, but that’s where you’re going to find them. And you do want to know these things, but open rates are one of those things that sounds really objective, but we can make them personal too. Like we can make open rates really personal. Becky for you. How easy is it to start reading into the numbers, like, what they what we make it mean?
Becky Brown 15:20
Yeah, I’m gonna add in a parallel. For years I was really focused on Christian Weight Loss in one of my businesses, and this is how we talked about stepping on the scale. So we have a lot of women who will have a really good day, a really good week, they will make all these healthy choices. They will be like on fire, exercising and eating well, and they step on the scale, and they see that they gained, and they think what we’re talking about on this episode, I’m doing everything wrong. I better stop those healthy choices, because obviously they’re not working. And this is a great illustration, so I am going to pull in that same logic for open rates, because, like Laurie keeps saying, there is helpful information in this data, but it often doesn’t mean what we think it means.
So can open rates tell you, oh gosh, that subject line didn’t resonate with your audience. You didn’t use the words that they needed to hear to open that. Can it give you information? Oh, yeah. But it can also mean, gosh, there was a holiday this week and everybody was out of town. Gosh, like, it’s summer vacation, and kids just got out of school. Man, there was, there was a crazy snowstorm that went across the United States and powers out in all of these places, it can mean a lot of different things. So I don’t want you to get so stuck on the number that you think that open rate dropping this week means that I am doing everything wrong. And I think one of the biggest mistakes that we can make is, and I think is it? I think it’s in this episode that I’m going to go deeper into that. Yeah, I’m actually going to save that for the next section. Okay, Laurie, all right, there’s more value. So keep listening. I’m going to talk about that part a little bit later.
Laurie Graham 17:19
You know, the truth is, like with open rates or unsubscribes or any statistics we look at in our businesses, even with you know how your your launch win, or how many people purchase your product, we never have the full story behind these numbers. We just don’t. Somebody could open your email later. They could read without clicking. They could skim quickly. They just miss it entirely. It went to their spam folder. By the way, you can’t control what goes to people’s spam folders. There are some techniques to increase your deliverability rate for sure, tons of things we should talk about that at some point. Actually, I think it’s in the course as well.
But we don’t have the whole truth behind the numbers. Because, quite honestly, and Becky, I hope I don’t hurt your feelings here, I am subscribed to Becky’s email list. Becky is pretty much my best friend on the planet. And I don’t read most of them, you know, I don’t open most of them. And every time I do, I love it, and I don’t not open it because I don’t even find value in it, or because I don’t like her or anything. It’s just, I have a lot of emails. A lot of them get lost. A lot of them don’t pop up, and then I’ll see Becky, So Very Blessed. I’m like, Oh my gosh, I need to read that, you know? And so we don’t have the whole story. And also, not everything is measurable. Not everything is measurable. When we measure things, we’ve got to look broader. Not everything is measurable. Not everything needs to be fixed. Consistency matters a lot more than any one results.
Becky Brown 18:42
Yeah, for sure, you know. And we’ve talked about the rates, the open rates, we’ve talked about some of the data that can come from your email list provider, up until now. And I want to talk about another tough part of this that I was taught, that I mentioned earlier on this episode, which was, you know, that moment when I was holding my breath waiting for the email replies, and they didn’t come. And this might be one of the hardest things, when you send something and you feel like I poured my heart into that and Oh, like this is so important, and it feels like it just disappears into space and there’s no replies, there’s no obvious response. And you start thinking to yourself, that was like the best of me, and it’s not resonating with people. What is going on, and it really shakes you. So Laurie, I want to know from you, how do you personally handle that silence, that lack of reply from your people, when you feel like you created something so good?
Laurie Graham 19:52
Okay, I’m cracking up because there’s a couple different layers here. One is, nobody’s gonna reply unless you ask them a question. Yeah. And most emails that I get from most people, just general email lists don’t ask questions. Now, the ones that I stay on do ask questions, they’ll say things like, so what’s your biggest challenge, or how do you feel about this, or things like that.
So if you do want replies, ask a question, and then I’ll just say 99% of people will never reply. Yeah. Do you ever see the people like doing the surveys, like at the mall, or I had a friend who actually worked in a survey industry, and she taught me a lot about surveys, like online surveys, Google Surveys, the ones where somebody’s standing on the street corner trying to get responses. The response rate for a survey is so incredibly low. Like, if you get, I don’t remember what it is, 5% response rate. That is a high rate. That’s like, sad. It is sad. So if you’re sending an email to 100 people and you get one response, honestly, that’s probably pretty good, you know what I mean. And it’s funny, because I do ask a lot of questions in some of my emails, not in my regular weekly ones that are sent now, like the wrap ups and stuff, but like when we do conference openings, I always have questions at the end, and yeah, it’s a really low reply.
So your question was, how do I personally handle the silence? The funny thing is, if you know the differences between Becky and I like that never bothered me. I don’t remember that bothering me. I was too obsessed with the stats. I would watch the open rates and the unsubscribes, and if somebody responded to me, I’d be super delighted with it, but I think pretty early on, I realized that that’s a really and maybe because of my friend who did surveys, I didn’t really expect a lot of responses, but the people who do respond like, those are key. Like, when people respond to me, I know this is not where we’re going. This email, I always respond back like I read my emails. I respond back because if 10 people out of 1000 respond to me, or out of honestly, sometimes 15,000, 10 people respond to me like, they are worth my responding back well and for responding, not letting it sit there.
Becky Brown 19:54
And often those responses guide my business. They guide the resources I create. They guide the posts I’m going to write. They could guide the products that you’re going to create. Oh, do you have this in blue? So now you create it in blue. You know? It just, it’s really, that’s gold when your audience does reply,
Laurie Graham 20:40
Yeah, for sure, and don’t take them for granted. Treat them like gold, because those are the ones who have the biggest chance of becoming your rating fans, purchasing from you, sharing about you, telling people about you, because that’s showing connection, that’s showing that they are connected with you. However, when you have emails and no one responds, I mean, there are times I’m like, Well, that didn’t land at all. Or, yeah, like you said, I just poured my heart out there, and nobody cares that I just went through this traumatic thing this week, and I had a solution for it that could, that could help them too, right? You know, like, you know, we don’t always see the impact real time. That’s the truth of it. Consistency builds trust quietly like it does. Just continuing to be consistently, you’re building trust no matter if there’s immediate responses or not. And I think also just keeping in mind that silence is not rejection. It’s really not. So we’ve talked about unsubscribes, we’ve talked about open rates, we’ve talked about getting replies on your emails.
So what really changes everything the shift is not, how do I get better numbers? Like I think that’s one of the things to define in your mind. We watch our stats. It’s important. We do want our stats to reflect well, right? And sometimes we do want our numbers to get up, but it’s not the main question. The main challenge that’s going to push you farther in business help you achieve your goals is the question is, how do I stay steady, no matter what the numbers do? How do I stay consistently? How do I keep showing up no matter what the numbers look like? Becky, you are the expert to help with this, because you are my friend of the most consistency of anyone I’ve ever known in my life. How do you stay grounded with things like this? How do you stay steady and consistent?
Becky Brown 23:51
Okay, so this is the part that I was alluding to earlier that feels really important. It was, it has been, and continues to be really important for me to name this goal. My goal is not to be reactive to data, to stats, to silence. My goal is to be responsive to data to say it again. My goal is not to be reactive to data. My goal is to be responsive to data. So I don’t what, I don’t want you to walk away from from this episode, and hopefully you have heard us again and again say there is value in the data. We want you to know your data. We want you to keep up with your data. We don’t want you ignoring it. Don’t minimize it, and don’t shove it aside and pretend like it doesn’t matter, it does.
So what we want you to do is engage with your data in a healthy way. So reactions are typically in the moment, spur of the moment, intense, impulsive. They’re driven by fear and stress, and they are often really quick and often harmful. Damaging reactions are, yeah, they’re intense, usually emotion-driven, not in a positive way. Like, Oh, I feel this thing like, maybe it’s feeling triggered, and I’m going to do something right now about it. And often it leads to overcorrecting, and it doesn’t lead to what Laurie and I talk about all the time when we think of ourselves as wise businesswomen, we want to be calm, we want to be attentive, we want to be willing to try new things and to learn new things, but we want to do it in a calm way, and that describes responsiveness to data.
Responding usually involves a pause to assess the situation. What does this mean? What could it mean? It’s something that’s proactive and not reactive, and it’s aiming for, yeah, it’s a calm, grounded response to the information in front of you. It’s not a fear-driven impulsive reaction that often leads to over correcting. So that is a goal I keep in mind often. Am I reacting right now? Because sometimes I still have those big emotional responses of, oh, that was such an important email, and that’s it, like 1% click rate, really, but responding, what could that mean? Could I have done a different title? Can I do a resend, can I change the link on the words on the button? Those are more responses calm and grounded.
Laurie Graham 26:27
Yeah, I think it’s really looking at numbers as information, right? You know, information, invitation, opportunity. And I just really want to talk about the importance of community in this, because if I’m freaking out, it doesn’t really help for me. Just to say I shouldn’t be freaking out, you know, and I know that our relationship has helped me so much. And if you’re building alone, please consider joining us in the Soulful Strategy Community. It’s $9 a month. You’re not going to find a cheaper coaching community anywhere that has the amount of impact that it has, like, the value we offer for $9 a month, just consider actually having people cheerleading you in just this one aspect. Like, Hey, you guys. I just had an email and nobody responded. What do I do with this? I’m crying. I am freaking out. I feel like I’m gonna lose my business. Like, that’s what community is about. Like, if you are a Jesus follower and this lands well with you. I really believe we were put on the planet to be together, to learn in community, to live in community. And I really think this is one of the most important aspects in growing your business consistently for the long haul, is being surrounded with people who not just get it, but they’re moving forward positively. It’s very easy to find people struggling with their same struggles, saying, oh my gosh, my business is awful. Nobody does this. The culture is terrible. Nobody wants what I have to offer.
It’s easy to find those people, finding people who are moving forward strategic. Come find them with us, because we’ve got them, and they’re growing all the time. Okay, so we got to wrap up here.
Today, we talked about that moment right after you hit send. What unsubscribes really mean? How open rates fluctuate? Why silence isn’t what we think it is. The free Action Guide that goes with today’s podcast. You can find it in the show notes. Is the Just Hit Send checklist. Super sweet, super simple. Hopefully we’ll keep you grounded. Moving forward, just grab it. It’s a free download. Every episode we have a free download. And I just want to thank you so much for being here with us. Next week, we are wrapping up this email series with a really important conversation. That email isn’t just for a certain kind of business, it’s for yours too. And if you have been quietly wondering, if this even fits what you do. You do not want to miss this. If you want steady support again, you want us showing up for you day after day, come join us in that Soulful Strategy Community. The link is also in the show notes, because we would love to keep walking this out with you.
All right, go team.
