Welcome your readers in person 😱

Using technology, I mean. View in browser Hey, I implemented a cool trick with my mailing list this morning and I wanted to share it with you, because so few people are doing it and it's a lot of fun. (Warning: my definition of fun might be different to yours – this… has been an issue in the past.) Say Hello In Person In short, I have added a video message to my welcome sequence. If you want to see what it looks like you can simply visit this page on my site – which is where new subscribers are immediately whisked to once they click Confirm to join my list. I will probably tweak that page a fair bit, but I just wanted to show you what it looks like. I'm sure some of you have your minds whirring with possibilities here, and I'll discuss those in a moment. But for everyone else, you might wonder why you would bother. How Do You Welcome Readers? Well, consider this: your relationship with your subscribers is at a delicate stage before they start receiving all your exciting content. Most newsletters will see some subscribers drop off during the confirmation process, and then after the first email, and then after the second, and so on. This is normal and natural. But that doesn't mean you can't improve those numbers. The smoother and more welcoming that your onboarding is, the more readers that will stick around and be won over by your content – and that goes equally for fiction and non-fiction. Most newsletters waste the subscription-confirmation opportunity. But let me just explain what that is quickly before showing you how to make the most of yours. Double Opt In – Costs and Opportunities If you are with any reputable email marketing service (like my choice – MailerLite) then you will probably either be forced to use double opt-in, or very strongly advised to use it. Double opt-in adds an extra step to the onboarding process. It's where you get that "confirmation email" asking if you really do want to sign up to the list in question, and you usually have a confirm button in the email, or a link to click on. While this isn't strictly a GDPR requirement, it is a great way of proving you satisfy one of the core requirements of GDPR: proving informed consent, i.e. that someone willingly and knowingly signed up to receive marketing communications from you. (I am not a lawyer, and this isn't legal advice – just a layperson's interpretation.) Some marketers are quite vociferous in their objections to double opt-in, as it does cost you some subscribers. However, they tend to be the very most flaky ones overall and for everyone else it begins the training process of following your instructions, checking their inbox, opening your messages, and acting on the contents. Plus you can optimize the process considerably and lose far less potential subscribers anyway. One thing you should definitely do: customize these generic emails so that they are a little less impersonal. Be careful about what you add to these, you definitely don't want to be inserting many spam words (or any when it comes to the subject line) and you should test the emails to make sure they avoid the dreaded Promotions tab in Gmail, as with any important sendings. That goes for all the generic emails that MailerLite (or the company of your choice) sends on your behalf, by the way. Customizing Your Welcome Now, if you don't customize this, readers will just see a generic page to which MailerLite sends people, which says something like "Thank you for subscribing." It does the job, I guess, but it's pretty cold and impersonal. Worse, it's a missed opportunity to strengthen your relationship with readers when it is at that delicate, larval stage. That generic page also doesn't mention your reader magnet, so you will probably end up getting lots of emails from readers demanding to know where their freebie is, particularly if they haven't refreshed their inbox to see the email delivering their download link, and doubly so if that email is a little delayed for whatever reason, as happens now and then when the internet tubes get clogged. You have two choices here. First, you can just customize that generic confirmation page. This is what I used to do. I just tweaked the generic MailerLite one a little to: Make it a bit more personal Mention that the reader magnet was on the way Invite them to do some whitelisting (I do this twice during onboarding) Give them my email address in case they have any issues. Second, you can go the extra mile and direct readers to a custom page on your website instead. Like this one I just made today. As you can see, the video welcome is much warmer and it still does all the other housekeeping bits and bobs as well.  Let me quickly explain how you can do something similar – yes, I'll be doing a version of this with my fiction lists as well – and then wrap up with a warning about what you should not do with this opportunity. Building A Video Welcome Here are the steps involved in welcoming readers to your newsletter with a video: Record your welcome video. I just use the built-in video recording software in Windows; it does a great job and Mac users have even better free tools. You don't need expensive equipment. A crappy webcam can do a great job here if your lighting is good. Quick tip: light sources should be facing you more or less head-on, not too much on the side, and definitely not behind. Upload the video to YouTube and make it unlisted on YouTube. Not public, not private. Unlisted will make it only viewable to those who have the direct link and allow you to embed it on your site. Build a Welcome page on your site and embed the video - it's really easy to do on Wordpress. Edit your Welcome sequence so that readers get sent to this page as soon as they click Confirm in the double opt-in email. (In short: go to the Forms section on MailerLite, click on the relevant form, click on the Double Opt-In Thank You Page, scroll down to the bottom and input your link). If you just want to edit that MailerLite generic page, keep in mind that customization options are limited – you don't get the full suite of blocks that you do when creating an email. You can add images and links, but no video. For that, you'll need to redirect to a page on your site instead. Really important: I don't recommend actually hosting the video yourself on your site – this is a huge mistake that will slow down your site and eat up your hosting bandwidth, and probably break your site, smash through the data allowance of your hosting package, and cost money to remedy. YouTube solves all those problems at once. You don't have to use video if that's not desirable, a photo can be very welcoming too, or you can use some branded graphics if that is more to your taste. Whatever you decide, bringing people to your website instead of a generic third-party page also has the advantage of, well, bringing people to your website. And there are then free to explore your site further. Maybe pick up another book too. I wouldn't recommend forcing that angle though. Some of you are probably thinking this is a potential sales opportunity. But I suggest holding off. Remember, you are at an early stage in your relationship with these readers. This is the time to give rather than ask – whatever you write. Dave P.S. Writing music this week is Rockwell with Somebody's Watching Me. DavidGaughran.com Broomfield Business Park, Malahide, Co. Dublin, Ireland You received this email because you signed up at DavidGaughran.com. Unsubscribe