​Read Online​

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One question: Turkey or Ham (or some vegan option for the sad people)?

This edition is in partnership with Kit​

I hate the YMCA for this!

This new economy has been rough on a lot of retail businesses and restaurants in our city. One of my favorite eateries was a Japanese-Hawaiian-style teriyaki restaurant. Despite having a name better suited for a sports bar or a strip club, Rascals had the best teriyaki in the city.

That comes from my Japanese-American wife, who often told others that the chicken salad reminded her of the way her grandmother made it.

Early in 2024, the restaurant put up signs announcing they would be closing their doors soon. Therefore, we made it our mission to go there as often as possible to get more than our fair share of the food before it was gone from our lives permanently.

After the closure, the building sat vacant for several months, and I wondered if anything would ever take its place, but that would not be the case.

Last week, I drove past the spot while running errands, expecting to see the post-modern diner architecture. Instead, I was staring at a vacant gravel lot fenced with barbed wire.

My curiosity piqued, I put on my investigative journalist hat, digging into local news stories and public records, but I didn’t find out much.

There is a YMCA next door to the open lot and I knew someone who had worked there up until recently. I didn’t expect them to know the answer, but I asked my friend if they knew what was happening on the Rascals lot.

“Oh yeah, that land belongs to the YMCA, and the organization decided they wanted the land back. They’re looking to expand.”

That wasn’t the answer I expected, but though that YMCA does need a major renewal project to bring it up to the 21st century, I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive them for killing my precious teriyaki plate lunches.

After hearing the story about the YMCA, I thought of you. Not because I feel superior because I got to enjoy the best teriyaki in L.A. County, and you didn’t, but because if you’re like most people trying to grow a business online, you’ve built a large portion of your promotion strategy on top of someone else’s lot.

It feels safe right now, but that could taken away from you very quickly or altered just enough to keep you active and constantly chasing that elusive engagement rate you had so many years ago.

By all means, use these platforms of rented space to bring people within the fold of your ecosystem, and then do everything you can to keep them. If you’re not using those social media and online marketplaces to drive people to your email list, you’re making a significant amount of extra work for yourself, but you could make that change today by simply adding an email sign-up on the top half of your website.

Getting people to want to join that list is a different conversation for another time, but start with the active opt-in form now, and we’ll get to that other part later.

There are many email service providers out there, and most are valid choices to help you run your business, but if you’re asking my opinion, Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is the best solution available today for creative entrepreneurs. Join Kit today for free with up to 10,000 subscribers. They've also got a killer Black Friday deal available NOW.

PARTNER

Why your email deliverability sucks!

I’m working with a friend to revitalize a long-ignored email list, and it’s been a struggle. They hadn’t sent out a message to their audience in nearly a year, and the last one that went out didn’t have great numbers. For context, they use the integrated email service in Shopify, which is not my favorite option, but they want to maintain a connection to the product and user data, which is difficult with some 3rd party services like Kit or Beehiiv.

We first discussed an email strategy of sending out broadcasts every other week, with the exception of special, time-sensitive posts like Black Friday.

First, we crafted a re-introduction message to remind people about the brand. That email was scheduled to go out to over 6,000 subscribers, except it got shut down by Shopify halfway through because of the tremendous bounce rate. We did some troubleshooting, and I advised that he clean out all of the bounced addresses from the list.

A week later, we sent another message out to the entire group and got a similar result. The list was obviously tainted by bad data, which came from implementing a pop-up form that generated weird data inputs whenever someone signed up. There were a lot of bot addresses in that list that Gmail had already flagged.

Next, they put their list through a list cleaning service, which left approximately 3,800 addresses. We resent that last message to the new group (minus anyone who did get it), which had a much higher delivery percentage but a dreadful open rate of 4%.

I knew exactly what was happening, but I tested my theory first by sending the message to my email address but I didn’t find the message in my inbox. There was only one place it could be, and it’s the last place we want it.

There at the top of my Spam folder was the email. Now, I never marked these messages as spam in the past, but Gmail has gotten very good about what they deem untrustworthy senders. My friend’s URL had been flagged by Gmail, relegating all messages to the spam folder.

Now we have the tedious task of digging this list out of the hole it’s been relegated to, but it won’t be easy. This will require a lot of dedicated attention and patience. These are the things we’re doing to change the status of future emails.

1. Make sure we’re sending from a dedicated email address that reflects the URL (e.g., dave@thehungry.art).
2. Make email titles relevant to the subject of the email and avoid click-bait and spam words.
3. Remind people who do see the messages to move the message out of the promotions tab.
4. Use questions and relevant links at the top of every email to encourage interaction with the messages. The more clicks and replies a message gets, the more Gmail will view the sender as trustworthy.
5. Reach out to some trusted, friendly addresses on the list and send one-on-one messages to them to ask if they are getting the newsletter. If they aren’t, ask them to check the spam folder. If they find the message in there, mark the note as Not Spam and also move the messages to the inbox folder.
6. Stay active, send messages consistently, and do your diligence on keeping the list as clean as possible, removing cold subscribers regularly.

Reviving a dead list is not fun, and it might make you want to burn the whole list and start from scratch but do not do that. You may have some bad addresses on that list, but Gmail is looking more at the sender’s email address than the receiver, and it won’t matter if you start from scratch with a new list because your address has been tagged.

Do the good work, be patient, and instead of waiting for engagement on social media, make the list your engagement priority.

Small Bites

🛠️ - A new resource I've just started exploring is LetterGrowth, which helps you connect with other newsletter publishers for cross-promotion.

🎥 - My good buddy, Adam of The Poster List, is moving into his storyteller phase. This Reel and the last are two of the best he's made in a long time... also, Pugs!

🎨 - Have you ever considered quitting selling your art or creative work? That's what Austin Domingo did, which might have saved his soul.

🧵 - "We are rebalancing ranking to prioritize content from people you follow, which will mean less recommended content from accounts you don’t follow and more posts from the accounts you do starting today." - Adam Mosseri, on how Threads is changing because of Bluesky's recent rapid ascension.

• Also: Threads is distancing itself from Instagram​
• Also also: Threads is bringing ads in 2025​

👾 - You thought Nintendo was a gaming company, but they're a data mining juggernaut that sells your info to other corporations.

Dessert

• ​Happy belated birthday, Jax!​