David Gaughran is an author and I’m on his email list. His latest newsletter issues a warning to those of us who write a newsletter, and those who want to.

He tells how he made a pact with his readers, telling them that if they signed up for his list, he would promise not to email them until he had a new book coming out.

“I thought I being considerate. I thought it would attract more people to my list. . . I thought most readers wouldn’t really care to hear from me in-between releases, and that I’d run out of things to say. . . I was wrong–so very, very wrong.”

What happened?

“People forgot who I was. Open rates fell. . . fewer and fewer were clicking and less again were buying. Reviews were dropping. Sales were increasingly tepid. It was a cascading clusterfudge of exponential fail.”

Emailing your list occasionally, e.g, only when you have an announcement or something “important” to say, is not the way to build a responsive list.

What is a responsive list?

A list that looks forward to hearing from you and reading what you write.

A list that comes to know, like, and trust you because of what you write, and then hires you or re-hires you.

A list of people who may never need your services (or need them again) but know people who do and refer them to you.

A list of people who tell others about your events, your videos, your articles, and your newsletter, and thus help you build your list.

Not a list of people who forget who you are or that they signed up on your list.

Gaughran has seen the error of his ways and is changing his approach. If your list isn’t responsive, or isn’t as responsive as you’d like, you might do the same.

It’s not difficult. Write something your list wants to read and send it to them often.

If you’d like to learn how to do that effectively, and why it’s a lot easier than you might think, head on over to this page to learn more.