Across my first nine articles, later posts clustered between 18% and 23% while my subscriber count continued climbing. A bigger list did not automatically create a more engaged audience.
I think you covered the whole story very accurately, and hats off that you didn’t come to hasty conclusions. I can add a personal example: I work for a media company operating thematic broadcast television channels across Central and Eastern Europe. In that region television subscribers cannot make their subscription package on an a la carte basis but they can only subscribe to pre-set packages, where the channel line-up is grouped by genre in most cases, e.g. kids’ channels are in a block, followed by news channels, etc. In some cases these operators run a so-called promotional channel with favorable EPG position where they rotate the thematic channels monthly (it’s mainly for upselling purposes). What happens when a channel appears there? Reach grows, while average time spent declines. If the reach grows proportionally more, then the conversion was beneficial. I think neither way is ultimately good or bad, but if I needed to make a choice, I’d choose the higher reach and lower time spent combination. Not because it’s better, but it’s more stable: performance doesn’t depend on a limited number of viewers (in your case: readers).
The reach growth or the favorable conversion rate however doesn’t always happen. I’m a big believer that it has much more to do with the content itself rather than with the system/method. If the content is niche, or the competition is substantial, it doesn’t necessarily translate to higher interest. In your case: you write mostly about growth tactics and related experiences on Substack. It’s an interesting topic, but the competition is fierce - there are a lot of publications dedicated to this very topic, some of them seem really successful. Why them? Who knows. Sometimes I feel the authors of these successful publications don’t understand it clearly either.
That’s a really useful analogy. I think you’ve put your finger on the caveat I was wrestling with: a lower open rate isn’t automatically bad if total reach and absolute readers are still increasing.
What concerns me more is when subscriber growth outpaces actual readership so much that the extra subscribers barely translate into additional opens or engagement.
I’m going to compare absolute opens + open rate + subscriber growth together next. And I agree about the competition too — that’s partly why I’m trying to differentiate through actual experiments and data rather than generic Substack growth advice.
sorry for spamming you, but it relates to the open rate and probably you will also find it useful. I’ve done a deep dive into the analytics, and found that about 50% of my subscribers don’t receive e-mails from me at all, I guess due to their settings. With this group, I feel there is hardly any distinction between subscribers and followers.
I checked my own data after your comment, and interestingly I don’t seem to have the same situation.
My Aug 3 post went to 53 email recipients and got 18 opens (~34%). My Aug 19–20 posts went to 242–244 email recipients, but only got 33–35 opens (~14%).
So almost my whole subscriber base is still receiving the emails — the recipient count grew about 4.6x, while opens only grew about 1.9x.
That makes me think my drop is more about audience dilution than email delivery settings.
But your point made me realize we should probably separate total subscribers, email-reachable subscribers, and app readers when analyzing this.
It’s a very interesting obaervation. It means that practically all your subscribers receive e-mails from you. I can tell you that I don’t, and not because I changed anything in the settings - I kept the default notification setting on “prefer app” from the first moment. I think the difference may be in the way of subscription: if someone subscribes via the app on the phone, the notification setting seems to be “prefer app” by default.
That may be the missing variable. One odd thing, though: you appear in my recipient details with 12 opens, even though you say you don’t receive the emails.
That suggests Substack may be combining app and email activity under the same subscriber record. The documentation confirms that “Recipients” can include email or push, but I couldn’t confirm that subscribing through the app automatically selects “Prefer app.”
Could you check what your Newsletter Delivery setting currently shows? That would help clarify what the dashboard is actually counting.
Thanks for the feedback. And yes, it’s clear, and let me say that your way of thinking is much closer to me, even though most people seem to prefer the promise of instant solutions.
Exactly. Instant solutions are easier to sell 😄 but I’m more interested in understanding what’s actually repeatable, even when the answer is less exciting. That’s probably the direction I want to keep pushing with this publication.
I think you covered the whole story very accurately, and hats off that you didn’t come to hasty conclusions. I can add a personal example: I work for a media company operating thematic broadcast television channels across Central and Eastern Europe. In that region television subscribers cannot make their subscription package on an a la carte basis but they can only subscribe to pre-set packages, where the channel line-up is grouped by genre in most cases, e.g. kids’ channels are in a block, followed by news channels, etc. In some cases these operators run a so-called promotional channel with favorable EPG position where they rotate the thematic channels monthly (it’s mainly for upselling purposes). What happens when a channel appears there? Reach grows, while average time spent declines. If the reach grows proportionally more, then the conversion was beneficial. I think neither way is ultimately good or bad, but if I needed to make a choice, I’d choose the higher reach and lower time spent combination. Not because it’s better, but it’s more stable: performance doesn’t depend on a limited number of viewers (in your case: readers).
The reach growth or the favorable conversion rate however doesn’t always happen. I’m a big believer that it has much more to do with the content itself rather than with the system/method. If the content is niche, or the competition is substantial, it doesn’t necessarily translate to higher interest. In your case: you write mostly about growth tactics and related experiences on Substack. It’s an interesting topic, but the competition is fierce - there are a lot of publications dedicated to this very topic, some of them seem really successful. Why them? Who knows. Sometimes I feel the authors of these successful publications don’t understand it clearly either.
That’s a really useful analogy. I think you’ve put your finger on the caveat I was wrestling with: a lower open rate isn’t automatically bad if total reach and absolute readers are still increasing.
What concerns me more is when subscriber growth outpaces actual readership so much that the extra subscribers barely translate into additional opens or engagement.
I’m going to compare absolute opens + open rate + subscriber growth together next. And I agree about the competition too — that’s partly why I’m trying to differentiate through actual experiments and data rather than generic Substack growth advice.
Hi,
sorry for spamming you, but it relates to the open rate and probably you will also find it useful. I’ve done a deep dive into the analytics, and found that about 50% of my subscribers don’t receive e-mails from me at all, I guess due to their settings. With this group, I feel there is hardly any distinction between subscribers and followers.
I checked my own data after your comment, and interestingly I don’t seem to have the same situation.
My Aug 3 post went to 53 email recipients and got 18 opens (~34%). My Aug 19–20 posts went to 242–244 email recipients, but only got 33–35 opens (~14%).
So almost my whole subscriber base is still receiving the emails — the recipient count grew about 4.6x, while opens only grew about 1.9x.
That makes me think my drop is more about audience dilution than email delivery settings.
But your point made me realize we should probably separate total subscribers, email-reachable subscribers, and app readers when analyzing this.
It’s a very interesting obaervation. It means that practically all your subscribers receive e-mails from you. I can tell you that I don’t, and not because I changed anything in the settings - I kept the default notification setting on “prefer app” from the first moment. I think the difference may be in the way of subscription: if someone subscribes via the app on the phone, the notification setting seems to be “prefer app” by default.
That may be the missing variable. One odd thing, though: you appear in my recipient details with 12 opens, even though you say you don’t receive the emails.
That suggests Substack may be combining app and email activity under the same subscriber record. The documentation confirms that “Recipients” can include email or push, but I couldn’t confirm that subscribing through the app automatically selects “Prefer app.”
Could you check what your Newsletter Delivery setting currently shows? That would help clarify what the dashboard is actually counting.
Sent you a message separately.
Thanks for the feedback. And yes, it’s clear, and let me say that your way of thinking is much closer to me, even though most people seem to prefer the promise of instant solutions.
Exactly. Instant solutions are easier to sell 😄 but I’m more interested in understanding what’s actually repeatable, even when the answer is less exciting. That’s probably the direction I want to keep pushing with this publication.