Excellent. I have published a few posts that I chose not to email (like the table of contents to my serialized memoir) so I knew that part. But I didn’t know you could then send it later. Thank you for this idea. Now you’ve got me thinking!
Another post that speaks right into my PMM heart! For a platform with an unimpressive UX, this details how users can improve their experience on their own in the absence of product-based support or options. Great tips!
"We may fall prey to haste." Yes to this feeling we writers and content creators have — the desire for completion.
I like this idea of delaying completion and finding different ways to launch before broadcasting.
It was also a useful reminder to be consider about your email recipient's inbox; how it can feeling invasive to blast frequently. And perhaps only "send to everyone" as a compilation. Thanks for the added perspective.
Thanks for sharing, Yina. My only caveat is that you must eventually publish to email when you are ready, or else you undermine your monetization path and stickiness. I'll address this in a future post.
Great idea and neatly articulated, thank you! I just checked an old post that I web posted ages ago to experiment. I can now resend it to my wider audience. Just subscribed.
Yes! I am a part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, and publish a round of all posts from the previous week. I use this web-only option, send it to the writers (about 40 of them) and they catch typos before I hit send to the entire mailing list.
@jayshree guraj @Raj menon. A small but important caveat & to check with you.
- If you publish to web and then send to everyone I'm not seeing the stats. The post is sent into inboxes but if you 'publish' to the web first that's the anchor point for the stats to kick in.
- This means, as far as I see, that even when I post today, the recipients on the post-stats page remain at 0, and therefore, the open rate is 0
- this also means, I suppose that the '30 day Open rate' on your writers dashboard is 'lowered' because there is a '0' pulling it down.
I'm not too bothered with the overarching 'open rate' because I can see and know which individual posts are being 'opened'.
Thoughts? Did I miss a step or something to enable stats?
IMPORTANT - there is a 3-4 hour delay for your stats to 'catch up', from 0 recipients and 0 open rate and views to the new emailed published post stats
Thanks for sharing, Victoria. This is a bug then, for the open rate should not be impacted by when you publish via email. Also, the open rate does not include app opens either, so the stats are all over the place as some other readers have reported. See my caveats above. I will add this as well. I would recommend opening a ticket. Since Raj uses this practice, I shall wait for him to share his view as well.
Thanks, Jayshree - TBH as I said, I'm not too bothered with my overall open rate as I have several posts that are TOCs. I was thinking more for other writers. My 'Recipients' for the post are still at 0 for the post I just sent and it's definitely in people's inboxes - so that's good. I usually have 70/75% open rates so I'll just watch 'views' and see what happens.
Ok thanks Raj....I think I'm just too eager to see the numbers and I'll wait 24hrs. I appreciate the timely feedback from you and Jayshree to reassure me!
yes, it looks like it. Since I can't see how many subs I had at the time I can only trust that the recipient number is the full list. Btw, for the post I have not yet broadcasted, I can see all the stats except for Recipients# and open rate.
Raj, Jayshree - Apologies - the stats have just updated and I can see all my subscribers have received it and views are being counted. Sorry! I've amended my comment above. Based on my publication this evening, it looks like there's a 3-4 hour delay for the stats to recount anchored to the email version. Thanks!!
Thanks, Raj - Yes you'll see I posted CM Journey - Table of contents updated today March 2, it had 46 views, 0 recipients and 0 open rate....I've already had more views and comments but the stats haven't changed ...yet. I'll close the loop with you both tomorrow ;-)
I have found the publish without emailing folks option helpful as I phase out an old Substack. I might consider using your process here going forward on my main newsletter. My current process is to write the draft by Wednesday, schedule it to go out Friday and then revisit the piece with fresh eyes as many times as I can / need to before it goes out to all on Friday!
I'm a newbie and I discovered that the recent post/photo essay that I so painstakingly put together was way too image heavy for emails to handle - so I used the "page" feature to publish it instead. Thanks so much for sharing this info - so helpful to me going forward!
Nice! You are welcome. Glad to know this. Also, I tend to ignore that warning - and it works just fine for Gmail. Users can still click to view if not. Another way to check if it does cut the email off, is to send yourself the test message (Preview, Test) and check before deciding if a page is needed.
Thanks - I really appreciate your help. I did send myself a test message and my Gmail said "I think not." But that actually helped me decide that the photo essay deserved its own page. I am thinking of doing a post version with the same text but fewer/smaller photos, then the email to subscribers could include a "click to my Substack to see more" link.
This post is great, I did know about the option from publishing a hero post! Can you elaborate more on the page you’re talking about here? I tend to have photo heavy posts!
Hi Kristen, the content organization article is what Logan is referring to where I share how to set up and use tags, Pages, and Sections. Here is the link - let me know if this helps.
Thank you 😊 super helpful and organized - nice job! I published a picture heavy “too long for email” post today and so far all seems well / folks are reading it all.
Excellent. I have published a few posts that I chose not to email (like the table of contents to my serialized memoir) so I knew that part. But I didn’t know you could then send it later. Thank you for this idea. Now you’ve got me thinking!
Great to learn, thank you for the feedback.
Yeah it’s a good option, especially to find a good finishing point, publish, move on to new works, and think about broadcasting at a later point.
This is a fantastic idea.
Since I am fairly new, there were several posts early on that were only posted to the web.
Now I know I can go back to them and launch them.
Thnaks.
Thanks for sharing!
Those are very helpful suggestions. Thanks.
Another post that speaks right into my PMM heart! For a platform with an unimpressive UX, this details how users can improve their experience on their own in the absence of product-based support or options. Great tips!
Hi Christine, thanks for sharing. Please consider leaving a comment on the UX on this post - for Substack's benefit :-).
https://open.substack.com/pub/techmadesimpleguide/p/why-substack-is-engineering-led-and?r=1si0oc&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
"We may fall prey to haste." Yes to this feeling we writers and content creators have — the desire for completion.
I like this idea of delaying completion and finding different ways to launch before broadcasting.
It was also a useful reminder to be consider about your email recipient's inbox; how it can feeling invasive to blast frequently. And perhaps only "send to everyone" as a compilation. Thanks for the added perspective.
Thanks for sharing, Yina. My only caveat is that you must eventually publish to email when you are ready, or else you undermine your monetization path and stickiness. I'll address this in a future post.
Yes, you are absolutely right. That was exactly the thinking when I wrote this.
Great idea and neatly articulated, thank you! I just checked an old post that I web posted ages ago to experiment. I can now resend it to my wider audience. Just subscribed.
Wow, so thorough. Thank you for showing us an alternative way to publishing!
You are most welcome. These are personal tricks I learned which I am glad it’s resonating well.
Thanks for the feedback, Mika!
Thank you for this piece. It was and is very helpful as I am new and still navigating my way around Substack.
Jayshree has been so very kind and I love her posts as she literally “teaches” but size and manageable ideas on Substack and she is very generous.
Thank you so much, Jayshree and Raj. Appreciate you both
Great to hear! Thanks again for sharing your feedback, and feel free to suggest topics in the chat as well, as it may be useful for others too.
Yes! I am a part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, and publish a round of all posts from the previous week. I use this web-only option, send it to the writers (about 40 of them) and they catch typos before I hit send to the entire mailing list.
@jayshree guraj @Raj menon. A small but important caveat & to check with you.
- If you publish to web and then send to everyone I'm not seeing the stats. The post is sent into inboxes but if you 'publish' to the web first that's the anchor point for the stats to kick in.
- This means, as far as I see, that even when I post today, the recipients on the post-stats page remain at 0, and therefore, the open rate is 0
- this also means, I suppose that the '30 day Open rate' on your writers dashboard is 'lowered' because there is a '0' pulling it down.
I'm not too bothered with the overarching 'open rate' because I can see and know which individual posts are being 'opened'.
Thoughts? Did I miss a step or something to enable stats?
IMPORTANT - there is a 3-4 hour delay for your stats to 'catch up', from 0 recipients and 0 open rate and views to the new emailed published post stats
Thanks for sharing, Victoria. This is a bug then, for the open rate should not be impacted by when you publish via email. Also, the open rate does not include app opens either, so the stats are all over the place as some other readers have reported. See my caveats above. I will add this as well. I would recommend opening a ticket. Since Raj uses this practice, I shall wait for him to share his view as well.
Thanks, Jayshree - TBH as I said, I'm not too bothered with my overall open rate as I have several posts that are TOCs. I was thinking more for other writers. My 'Recipients' for the post are still at 0 for the post I just sent and it's definitely in people's inboxes - so that's good. I usually have 70/75% open rates so I'll just watch 'views' and see what happens.
Thanks for the question Victoria. It’s surely a bug. I am able to see stats for all the posts that I sent to everyone after publishing to web first.
Ok thanks Raj....I think I'm just too eager to see the numbers and I'll wait 24hrs. I appreciate the timely feedback from you and Jayshree to reassure me!
yes, it looks like it. Since I can't see how many subs I had at the time I can only trust that the recipient number is the full list. Btw, for the post I have not yet broadcasted, I can see all the stats except for Recipients# and open rate.
Raj, Jayshree - Apologies - the stats have just updated and I can see all my subscribers have received it and views are being counted. Sorry! I've amended my comment above. Based on my publication this evening, it looks like there's a 3-4 hour delay for the stats to recount anchored to the email version. Thanks!!
Thanks, Raj - Yes you'll see I posted CM Journey - Table of contents updated today March 2, it had 46 views, 0 recipients and 0 open rate....I've already had more views and comments but the stats haven't changed ...yet. I'll close the loop with you both tomorrow ;-)
Insightful, intriguing ideas, all presented so simply I actually have hope that I can understand them. Thanks much for this!
lol, I am quite sure you are ahead of this post :-) Thanks for the support!
Unfortunately, I'm miles behind this post Jayshree. As usual, I'm in your debt.
I have found the publish without emailing folks option helpful as I phase out an old Substack. I might consider using your process here going forward on my main newsletter. My current process is to write the draft by Wednesday, schedule it to go out Friday and then revisit the piece with fresh eyes as many times as I can / need to before it goes out to all on Friday!
Thanks for sharing, Jessica. That works well!
I'm a newbie and I discovered that the recent post/photo essay that I so painstakingly put together was way too image heavy for emails to handle - so I used the "page" feature to publish it instead. Thanks so much for sharing this info - so helpful to me going forward!
Nice! You are welcome. Glad to know this. Also, I tend to ignore that warning - and it works just fine for Gmail. Users can still click to view if not. Another way to check if it does cut the email off, is to send yourself the test message (Preview, Test) and check before deciding if a page is needed.
Thanks - I really appreciate your help. I did send myself a test message and my Gmail said "I think not." But that actually helped me decide that the photo essay deserved its own page. I am thinking of doing a post version with the same text but fewer/smaller photos, then the email to subscribers could include a "click to my Substack to see more" link.
Got it. Thanks. Page is a good option as you can always just insert that link into your posts.
This post is great, I did know about the option from publishing a hero post! Can you elaborate more on the page you’re talking about here? I tend to have photo heavy posts!
Hi Kristen, the content organization article is what Logan is referring to where I share how to set up and use tags, Pages, and Sections. Here is the link - let me know if this helps.
https://open.substack.com/pub/techmadesimpleguide/p/organizing-your-content-on-substack?r=1si0oc&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thank you 😊 super helpful and organized - nice job! I published a picture heavy “too long for email” post today and so far all seems well / folks are reading it all.
See what I mean! This is so helpful 💝