Hit 10,000 email subscribers and now I'm second guessing everything

So last night my newsletter crossed 10,000 subscribers. That number felt like a fantasy when I started the list back in March 2023 with a basic signup form on my landing page. But here's the thing, now that I hit it, I'm realizing my email tool costs have doubled and my open rates dropped from 42% to 31% in the last two months. I thought growth would fix everything, but instead I'm staring at a list full of people who probably forgot they subscribed. I've been using the same welcome sequence since day one and it feels stale. Did any of you hit a milestone like this and suddenly feel like the tools and strategy you had were the wrong ones? How do you clean up a list without killing your numbers further?

2 comments

2 Comments

dianaanderson1mo ago

Right? That moment when the number hits big but your gut says something's off. I hit 8K last year and same thing happened, cost jumped, open rates slid to like 28%. My old welcome email felt like a stranger wrote it. I did a quick "still want this?" campaign with a dumb subject line about free pizza, got a ton of unsubscribes but the people left actually read stuff now. Way better than staring at ghost numbers.

the_emery1mo ago

Wait, 42% to 31% is still a solid open rate. I know plenty of people with lists half your size who would kill for those numbers. But I get the panic, hitting 10K feels like you should suddenly have it all figured out, and instead you're just paying more money to send emails to ghosts. And yeah, that welcome sequence from March 2023 is basically ancient history in email terms, people's attention spans changed like three times since then. Honestly, don't purge the list yet, just do a quick re-engagement campaign with a fun subject line and see who actually bites. If they don't open that, then you can clean house without feeling like you're the one killing your own growth. The cost spike is annoying, but it's the price of having a real audience, not a fantasy number.