For the last week of 2015 I was cleaning, re-arranging, re-organizing, de-cluttering…you know, out with the old; in with the new.
Yesterday was email day. Unsubscribing from email newsletters, opt-ins and offers that aren’t relevant to my needs or wants anymore. Deleting sent, drafts and inbox items that aren’t needed anymore and finally, cleaning up my own email lists.
I couldn’t believe that I had created roughly 1.5 email lists per month last year. Different trainings, product offers, webinars, newsletter, writing and speaking events led me to more lists and more relationships.
No doubt, as a result of all the lists I built, some people will receive emails from me starting tomorrow and think, “What does this email or newsletter have to do with me? I signed up for a webinar and now I’m on a mailing list?”
Personally I hate it when someone does that without permission so today I sent an email to all my list telling people exactly what I did and offered them not 1, not 2 but 3 opportunities to opt out. I don’t subscribe to the idea that just because you opt-in with an email address for one reason I now have permission to hit you with everything else I have. I make sure you know what’s happening.
I know some of you may be thinking about list segmentation, tags and filters right now and saying to yourself that Burrows is nuts adding all this extra work. The truth is, I actually like manually working on my list. It helps me understand my relationships with people and get to know them better. It’s not just an automated process for me…it’s getting to know people.
Tomorrow an email newsletter will go out to my new and refined list that is going to talk all about using email for relationship and community building. I truly believe that email is an incredibly underrated and overlooked tool for law enforcement.
As much as I have shared information here and on social media sites, I save my best stuff for my email newsletters. Want to know what I think? You have to be my mailing list for that.
I’d be honored if you took the time to sign up to receive emails from me on. I send out on a ‘not too frequent basis’ of about 1 or 2 times per week (closer to 1). You can click here or sign up using the button on the right side of this post.
My information is primarily about law enforcement, policing, legal issues, communication, leadership, social and digital media. Every once and a while I throw in other info just for fun.
