Not Your Usual Customer Value Newsletter

Celebrating a milestone!

Hey everyone,

It’s Jens here and I’m back with your favorite newsletter Scaling Customer Value 😉

Big news - I have reached the first major milestone on Substack with 100 subscribers!

This might not sound like a lot but it really is quite significant. Visualise 100 people in the same room and it’s similar to a university lecture theatre full of students.

What’s more, writing on Substack is very different from posting on social media for example because here you’re writing long-form content and have been granted permission to send your newsletter to a someone’s email inbox and this needs to be respected with well-written and thoughtful content.

It’s taken me just over 7 months to get to this point and I’m going to dedicate today’s newsletter to briefly share some reflections about my writing journey to date.

What I’m not going to do though is to write a post about how to grow your newsletter. I don’t feel qualified to do that anyway because I am actually terrible at personal marketing!

I can instead offer a slightly different perspective on my writing journey by sharing a couple of reflections that link back to the world of customer lifecycles and [customer] portfolio management, which is more familiar ground to me.

There are five important learnings that I would like to highlight in relation to this;

1. Quality over quantity

Every business person knows the importance of offering the right solution, to the right customer, in the right way and at the right time. That’s easier said than done, but the main consideration here is that it’s not what you’re doing in this space, but how you do it.

I’ve tried to grow this newsletter organically from the very start:

• No ads

• No marketing

• No growth hacks

In addition, I’m requiring all subscribers to verify their emails on signup to ensure that there are no fake or unwanted registrations within the subscriber volumes. This also seems to have helped a lot with open-rates and email deliverability.

All of these steps were aimed at getting the subscriber acquisition tactics right first, because if you’ve done your lifecycle management homework, you’ll be very aware that what you reap is what you sow.

2. Attrition is the mirror image of acquisition

Subscription-model businesses often face high churn in their portfolios and email newsletters are not much different, as subscribers can sign up and cancel at the click of a button.

Whilst my subscriber growth has been slow and steady, what has worked really well so far is that my subscriber attrition is very low. Only a handful of people have unsubscribed so far and knowing that there is such stability in the subscriber base feels like a solid foundation.

For this I am very grateful guys 🙏 and I hope you are finding value in the content!

Always feel free to comment or reach out directly to provide me with feedback and suggestions on anything that can be improved in this publication.

I believe the trend in the chart below is a direct reflection of the steps I’ve taken in not pushing for growth for growth’s sake, but letting people find and explore my published content and notes interactions in their own time before deciding to sign up.

This is the equivalent of a ‘Pull’ technique in customer engagement, in contrast to ‘Push’ activities such as promotional campaigns to drive user acquisition and sales.

3. The timing of sending out the newsletter is important

When I first launched my newsletter, most of my subscribers were UK-based and I soon established a writing and mailing routine that led me to send out my newsletters on Sunday mornings.

Over time, the geographical spread of my audience started shifting and now roughly half of all subscribers are from North America, which means that I’ve been emailing you guys in the middle of the night. Sorry folks!

With an emerging international readership, from the US in the west and Australia in the east, I can’t please everyone on newsletter publishing timings but I believe it makes sense to revise these with regards to where the majority of readers are based, so watch this space.

4. Clicks and likes doesn’t equal customer value

As an online writer / creator, it’s easy to fall into a comparison trap and believe that the most valuable piece of content is the one who got the most likes.

Writing about a niche within a niche isn’t going to attract hundreds of likes right away, but if it attracts just one reader within the correct target audience who understands the context and can relate to what is being said and make practical use of the content that is by definition the creation of customer value.

Also, a lot of people who read and consume online content are also lurkers. They passively read, watch, observe and might enjoy the content hugely, whilst having no intention of participating in comments. This is absolutely fine and the only thing that really matters is whether the consumer finds value in the content or not.

With so much information available online, people are understandably selective with regards the content they consume, who they decide to listen to and subscribe to. who In other words, the ‘buying cycle’ can be quite long and I believe that in many cases a person might decide to follow an author for a period of time before subscribing.

This is interesting because I have 3 times more followers than subscribers. If we compare the Follower graph with the Subscriber graph, it looks like the subscriber growth cycles are preceded by increase in followers.

In other words, people are quietly watching and observing on the sidelines before converting into a newsletter subscriber. This is something that writers should be aware of as the number of followers is effectively a pipeline for future subscriber growth.

5. One does simply not sit down and write

Writing is an art and a creative process. I’ve mostly enjoyed the writing process so far, but at times creativity and energy runs dry. I have no explanation for “Writer’s Block” except for acknowledging that it’s a real thing.

Creativity and the urge to write seems to come and go quite sporadically and you need to ‘seize the moment’ when it happens. Also, I’ve found that it helps a lot to break things up and maintaining healthy habits: good sleep, healthy food, exercise and walking in nature have been doing wonders for recharging the batteries and generating new writing ideas.

Creating one weekly post might not sound much, but this requires thought and real effort particularly if you’re writing about a technical subject. Another way to think about this is that if you write a newsletter post weekly or bi-weekly during the course of a year, that is about the equivalent publishing a book or two.

In addition, the process of writing is helpful from a personal development point of view. It helps to provide clarity of thought, improve writing and communication skills, builds confidence and raising your profile within your industry.

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That’s all I wanted to say for today and thanks again being a subscriber!

Before I close, I do have a small favour to ask of you. Please help spread the word about this publication by clicking on the share button below, thank you!

Azizam 🎵 - can you share Scaling Customer Value tonight na na na 🎵

MUSICAL CODA

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