If you have been following my newsletter, then you’ve already read what happened. Chances are most of you are following my newsletter have no idea why you didn’t get one this month. And that’s because the primary service that I was using for this has my list! And they won’t give me access to it.
The Problem
For the past two years I switched to Mailerlite for my newsletter service. I had tried so many other services and plugins before and they didn’t work. Either the mails went out late or I had no tracking. In one case, they wouldn’t let me access my account and password recovery became an issue. So I chose Mailerlite.
It was fantastic. The emails went out on time. The design was drag and drop. I loved it. It was great and when I had an issue once, the customer team helped me out immediately. Of course, things were great. I managed to get the list to up to 800+ followers in Jan 2024. I know to most people, 800 people might not be much, but too me that was a lot of people to share details with about the books and the podcast and my life.
Mailerlite sent out its email last year in December saying they would be transitioning to the new version. They encouraged people to get on the the new application by Feb 1. They also said we could have access to our old account if we needed to. In January, I seamlessly moved everything to the new version. I assumed the subscribers would also move.
Imagine my horror when I try to send my newsletter in Feb and now have no email list. So I track back to my old account and they have since suspended it with no way to access my own list.
The Other Problem
I tried reaching out to customer care. Apparently, it is only being offered to premium members so I cannot request access to my own email list. Surely, you have your own email list, some of you may ask. I do.
However my list is over a 1000+. Over the year, people have gotten off the newsletter list. I take newsletters very seriously. I personally hate when people who I have been in contact with or I do business with tack my email on to their mailing list without me subscribing. I mark all those as spam. I don’t read a single one of them. For that reason, I’m not going to email people when they have already unsubscribed. The issue is I have no idea who the unsubscribed are. I would have to sift through my emails of two years to find them.
New Newsletter
Finally, since things didn’t look too good, I have switched to Convertkit at this point. It’s been hard getting used to the new system. I sent out one email newsletter this month to less than a hundred people. And so I begin again!
Why A Newsletter?
I believe the newsletter is the best way of keeping my readers posted about all the new developments, sneak peeks, behind the scenes view of my books. I also always release pre-orders, discounts and sales to my newsletter people. They have been with me on this writing journey for a while. Some have even made recommendations of names for some of my characters which I used in my books. I remember when I moved to Pennsylvania and said I had no car, my newsletter readers offered me advice about car rentals and car dealerships.
Of late, I’ve been kind of de-transitioning from social media. I closed down Facebook and Pinterest. I’m debating getting off Twitter as well. So it’s only a matter of time where I won’t be using social media anymore. On my newsletter, I do share personal pictures and where I’m traveling. It’s a closer group of people, unlike sharing everything on social media. I’ve come to love doing the newsletter, planning my month and what’s going to go into it. Pictures like these…
Sign up
If you have been a previous follower, I apologize for the kerfuffle. I honestly hope you can just sign up to the new newsletter. As for me I have learned my lesson. As tedious as it maybe, I need to start keeping my own list and updating it every month. If anyone has any advice or solution, let me know. At this point, I’m just hoping that my readers will come across this post and understand what’s really happened.