This morning I woke up and saw that i have a new ThriveCart order notification. I'm not promoting anything new, I have no current deadlines, and this was not simply a rebill notification for a Daily Email Habit subscriber. What could this order be? I opened up the email to see: DESCRIPTION: Copy Riddles AMOUNT: $997.00 I started to pat myself on the back. For one thing, it's always nice to get a $997 course sale. For another, I figured that this emails an email I wrote a few days ago, in which I promoted Copy Riddles, can now go into my "Emails that did well" file. And sure enough, the dude bought thorugh that email ("A new episode about clever product names"). Only one problem though... The dude got onto my list on May 18. He bought today, May 28. I haven't reached out yet to this guy. I don't know what he knows about me, how presold he was, or whether this email really did do magic. I suspect that ANY decent email promoting Copy Riddles might have gotten this guy to click through, at which point, maybe the sales page is what really sold him. On the flip side, had I not sent this email a few days ago, promoting Copy Riddles, odds are excellent I would NOT have made this sale. That's an argument for regularly promoting offers from your back catalog in your daily emails. It's also an argument for having a welcome sequence, in which you gradually guide new people along through the offers you have. I don't have a welcome sequence. I'm apparently losing money. Do you have a welcome sequence? Why or why not?

It's Memorial Day in the U.S. It's Whit Monday in Spain. (I'm not Catholic and I have no idea what Whit Monday is, but apparently it's cause enough for everything to work like it's Sunday.) Are you working today? If so, where? On what? I myself am working. My cleaning woman is here so I am on the roof of my building. There's a small pool here, one German girl tanning herself, a couple young Russian guys who I guess live in the building, a woman who must be the mother of one of the guys. She is drinking beer, they are not. Up above, I can hear a few seagulls shrieking and a police siren somewhere in the distance. I'm replying to emails that have built up over the past few days. And in a half hour, I have to get on a call with @Nick Bandy , to hatch evil schemes.

Hi guys: Just signed up for Daily Email Habit yesterday; got my first email puzzle today. So I wrote the email - and it pretty much flew off my fingers. And I sent it too - to my lone subscriber, me! (It's a new list.) What a great prompt! Looking forward to tomorrow....

Yesterday I wrote a post about unwritten rules that strengthen groups. That post got... 10 likes and 5 people to comment, in a group of 483 members. Maybe it was a particularly bad or irrelevant post. In any case it seems like a good time to talk about written rules. I recently joined a Facebook group. The group is about the same size as Daily Email House, but it's much more engaged. People are enthusiastically introducing themselves in the group as soon as they join (as did I)... ... spontaneously writing up new posts and starting new discussions all the time... ... commenting on others' posts all the time. How? Simple. The group has written rules stating that you have to introduce yourself when you join, and participate once you're inside, or you will get kicked out. And the moderators follow through on these rules. What do you think about that? Please comment below. Or don't. But I've decided to start doing the same: Periodically and randomly and brutally removing people who don't participate inside Daily Email House. Your choice.

I think there’s a big advantage to being the newsletter that readers open as soon as it lands in their inbox. Especially given how many distractions there are in the world today. I don’t have any stats to back this up, but gut feel says that if someone doesn’t open my newsletter when they see it, the chances of them opening it *at all* go down drastically. I know this is true for me for the newsletters I read. Which prompts the question: how to be the newsletter which readers simply can’t wait to open? A few thoughts: *** Subject lines: I used to think that the more curiosity or intrigue (i.e. old school direct response style subject lines), the better. I might’ve changed my mind on this though. A striking subject line might get someone to open that specific email then and there, but I’m not sure it does much to encourage instant opens in the long term – and long term is what I’m after *** First come, first serve offers. I’ve seen @John Bejakovic do this. Part of the reason I always open John’s email as soon as it lands in my inbox is in case there’s some great-priced special offer which John is only opening up to 3 people. I want to be one of those 3 people! *** Write great emails. Maybe this is the key to it all. When I care about what someone is writing, when I know I’m going to enjoy reading that email and maybe even discover a hidden nugget or get a peek behind the curtain, I literally can’t wait to hit open I’m sure there’s a lot more that goes into the mix here though and I’d love to get everyone else’s thoughts