You Should Have A Newsletter, Too.

So, first off…. yup. I made some changes. 😇

New logo for the WP Edge. A few design tweaks. A few changes to the format. Nothing major, but…. always tweaking. I never stop. It’s a thing. 🤪

But, speaking of newsletters…

I’d like to tell you why I think you need one, too. I want to talk to you about the benefits of starting a newsletter and sticking with it.

And then I’ll give you some of the inside scoop on how I craft this newsletter every week inside of FluentCRM and how I manage it.

So, let’s do this thing….

Why You Should Have A Newsletter

Speaking of newsletters, I have to step back for a minute and marvel at the fact that I am now sending out Issue #536 of this newsletter. That’s crazy!

It didn’t start out the way you see it now, of course. It started out as The Daily and, true to it’s name, was actually a daily email. Yup, 7 days per week. It isn’t so crazy, really.

But, things shifted as strategies shifted. Plus, I felt the need to slow down. So, through various names and email frequencies, we’re sitting here with The WP Edge. And I appreciate the fact that you’re here! 🙏

Now, I think you should have a newsletter, too. If you don’t have one now, I think you should start one.

And no, I don’t think you should automate it! While there are a lot of different formats for these things and you can decide how you want to play it, there is a benefit to sitting down, each week, and writing something for your audience and sending it to them.

One of the things people often struggle with the most is…. what to email people to maintain the relationship. All too often, I find business owners with email lists that they have let go stale because they barely ever send anything at all. What a waste of an asset!

The way I see it, you should be sending out a newsletter as a form of ongoing engagement with your email subscribers. It should be going out to everybody who is not actively receiving some kind of promotional marketing sequence.

This is stuff I talk about in my course called Email Marketing Engine. I don’t really focus so much on courses these days, but that course was one of my better ones. And it showed how people would usually enter your email list through a lead magnet. And they may end up on a pre-written marketing sequence. But, when they’re not receiving a sequence like that, they need to be in your engagement pool. Those are the people who aren’t being “marketed to” right now. And those are the people who should be getting your newsletter!

If they take action on something on your site and you need to send them another email sequence (like a sales sequence or an onboarding sequence), then you pause the engagement (so that you don’t barrage them with emails). But, then when that is done, you UNpause engagement… and they begin getting your newsletter yet again.

Newsletters are for staying relevant and top of mind with your people.

But frankly, it serves a purpose for YOU as well…

That practice of creating a newsletter every week (or whatever frequency you choose) makes you better at what you do.

It makes you a better writer.

It keeps you tuned in with what’s going on in your market.

It makes you better at your area of expertise.

Writing this newsletter every week for you helps ME as much as I hope it helps you.

It helps keep me in tune with all that is happening in the world of WordPress. I have to pay attention so I can tell you about it!

It also helps me become a better writer.

People often ask me how long it takes for me to create these issues each week. The answer is…. 2-3 hours per issue. Sometimes I get a headstart and the issue is almost completed by the time Monday rolls around. Other times, I start working on the newsletter immediately when I come in on Mondays and have it out to you guys mid-morning.

But, I try never to miss. It has become a regular thing I do. It is a repeating task on my schedule every single week. Nothing automated. I create each issue – by hand – every single week.

And I often have people tell me how much they appreciate it. Even if they might let 2-3 weeks go by and play “catch up”, they tell me they find value in the newsletter.

And that’s the point. And why I think you should do it, too.

Frankly, the way I look at it, if you can’t do something as simple as a weekly newsletter, you might not even be in the right business. 😇 Harsh, perhaps. But, I believe it.

This Week In Concierge

One of the things that I’m putting more thought into lately is not just helping my clients with their websites, but also playing the occasional advisory role in their business.

I like to keep my ear to the ground in the world of business, so I’ve been doing more reading lately. And, few nights ago, I was reading The 1-Page Marketing Plan, by Allan Dibb. One quote was a goodie and I highlighted it on my Kindle and I thought I would share it….

“Struggling business owners will spend time to save money, whereas successful business owners will spend money to save time. Why is that an important distinction? Because you can always get more money, but you can never get more time. So you need to ensure the stuff you spend your time on makes the biggest impact.”

Many lessons could be drawn from that simple highlight. But for all of my clients, I want you to keep this in mind with regard to your usage of Concierge services.

The entire point of Concierge is to save YOU time.

That’s time you don’t have to spend updating plugins, messin’ with your hosting, evaluating plugins, debugging plugin conflicts, figuring out why crap doesn’t work…. you name it.

If you’re spending your time doing that stuff…. stop. Just ask me.

I’ve had clients tell me they were trying not to BOTHER me. 🤪 While I respect the courtesy, you NEVER bother me. This is literally what I do. So, always…. get in touch with me for things that come up. I’m here to save you time.

WordPress News & Updates

WooCommerce Incremental Releases. WooCommerce has come out with both the 9.9.4 and 9.9.5 releases.. focused on stability improvements, security enhancements and bug fixes. 9.9.4 also paused the rollout of the new email designs to existing stores due to some edge use cases. Frankly, I like the new email designs.

WooCommerce 10.0. Version 10 of WooCommerce is due out on July 7th. Some of what’s coming in this one includes sharable checkout URLs (with ability to have products pre-added to the cart), improvements to the coupon system, and accessibility improvements on the front-end.

CERN Switches to WordPress. CERN (the guys with that big particle accelerator in Geneva) has officially made the switch to WordPress (and away from Drupal). They said “WordPress at CERN is designed to transform the experience of website owners from being web developers to being content creators, allowing them to focus on what really matters: the content.”.

BetterDocs Spams The Block Editor. Mark Zahra posted another report (link on X) of plugins injecting annoying ads into the WordPress interface…. this time the BetterDocs plugin advertising another plugin right inside the block editor. This is happening more and more… and I think I may even start cataloging these things so I can shame them publicly.

New Video About Etch. Etch is the new, upcoming page builder being developed by Kevin Geary… and he did a new intro video for it. Etch is shaping up to be pretty different than other page builders. Actually, fixing a lot of the issues found with other builders. Check out that video to learn more about Etch.

Automattic Turns 20. Automattic, the company that sparked WordPress, just celebrated it’s 20th anniversary and Matt Mullenweg wrote a post about it. Crazy it has been that long. I was one of the early guys using WordPress very shortly after it came out. In fact, at the time, I was using a CMS that I personally built. As I watched what WordPress was becoming, I didn’t even want to use my own CMS anymore. The rest is history. 🤪

FAIR Aims to Prevent Singular Control. Joost de Valk and Karim Marucchi gave a talk at the Open Source Summit discussing FAIR (watch on Youtube here). FAIR is a new open source effort to keep one entity (Matt) from controlling the entire WordPress plugin ecosystem. You can read Karim’s original announcement post about FAIR to learn more about it, if you missed the news.

EventKoi site launched. EventKoi is a new and upcoming events manager plugin that has been teased… but they’ve now officially launched a website for it. It is still pre-launch and you can’t buy it yet, but it gives an idea what they’re shooting for. Personally, I kinda like Pie Calendar, but I’ll keep an eye on this one, too.

Robert DeVore’s Plugins Get Taken Over. After Robert DeVore decided to step away from WordPress, it looks as if WebDevStudios has officially adopted 20 of Robert’s plugins and will maintain them moving forward.

How I Create, Send And Archive This Newsletter

OK, so continuing on this newsletter thing…. let’s talk tech.

This newsletter is written in and sent from FluentCRM. I am writing it right from within WordPress. Each issue is a “campaign”. And every week, I begin by cloning the previous week’s issue (using the “duplicate” function) to create a clone as a new draft campaign. Then, I modify it for the new week.

By doing it this way, I can keep the design consistent each week and I don’t have to re-invent the wheel every time.

The first time I designed one of these issues, it took a little time. I don’t use the Visual Builder in FluentCRM, but instead use the block editor. It doesn’t do everything, but it does enough. And, as I said, once I dial it in, I just clone it each week so I don’t have to redo it.

In terms of what to say, I’m not gonna sit here and say it always comes easy to me. Sometimes, I have to sit there and noodle what the topic of the newsletter is going to be. But, I look at it like exercise. The more I do it, the stronger I get at it. I also monitor numerous sources for things happening in the world of WordPress so that I can tell you about it in the “Quick Bits” section.

When it is all done, I always send myself a test email. I make sure it looks good. I also proofread it, although I’m not going to sit here and act like I never miss something. 😇 Plus, I’m not a perfectionist. I think it is more important to communicate to your audience than to please your high-school English teacher.

Before I send, I archive every issue. Now, there are two ways to do that….

FluentCRM happens to have a campaign archive shortcode. You can place that shortcode anywhere on your site and have archives show up automatically. While this works, I find it a little limiting in being able to control the look and feel. So, I go with plan B….

I have created a custom post type with Advanced Custom Fields just for my newsletter archives. And for every issue, I basically copy/paste the content of the newsletter into that post. Between copy/paste and some pre-built patterns I’ve saved into my block editor for pre-built components, I can post a newsletter issue to my custom archives within a couple of minutes. My template for the custom post type formats it nicely and also automates certain components (such as the links at the bottom of every issue).

Once the weekly issue has been posted to the archives, I go back into FluentCRM and proceed to SEND the campaign to all of you.

In my case, I have the site currently set up with Amazon SES for sending email. Many of my Concierge clients are using Postmark. I may switch at some point, not sure.

That’s the basic process for sending this newsletter every Monday morning.

Now the question for you is…. are you doing the same? And, if not, are you ready to start?

If you need help getting set up, just reach out and I can assist.

Whether it is help designing a newsletter template in FluentCRM, or setting up the custom post type for your archives, or connecting your site to a quality email SMTP service so your emails get delivered… I can help with the tech so that you can just get started.

Concierge clients…. just reach out to me in Basecamp or via email. For others, book a Roadmap call and let’s devise a plan.