How I Started a Newsletter Before I Had Anything to Send

What building the Second Spin Creations newsletter taught me about starting small, testing the whole thing and not creating another content machine.

When I decided Second Spin Creations should have a newsletter, I thought there was one fairly obvious problem.

I didn't have any newsletters.

No backlog of finished emails. No publishing calendar. No carefully planned list of subjects waiting to go.

That made me wonder whether I was trying to start one too early.

It turned out I was asking the wrong question.

The first thing I needed wasn't a newsletter to send.

I needed to work out why somebody might want to hear from Second Spin Creations again.

Why have a newsletter at all?

Second Spin Creations is still at an early stage. I'm building the business one project, experiment and lesson at a time.

Someone might discover the website, like what I'm doing and want to see what happens next.

A newsletter could give them a simple way to say:

Keep me informed when there's something worth sharing.

Once I looked at it that way, I didn't need the newsletter to make the business appear more established than it was. It could simply let interested people follow along while Second Spin Creations develops.

It also became clearer what I didn't want.

I didn't want another marketing system that needed constantly feeding. I didn't want to promise a weekly email and then spend every Thursday wondering what on earth I was going to put in it. And I didn't want someone who was interested in Second Spin Creations to sign up and immediately receive a stream of sales emails.

So I made an important decision:

There would be no fixed schedule. I'll write when there's a reason to.

Decide what you're promising

Before choosing templates or designing emails, I needed to answer a more basic question:

What exactly am I asking somebody to sign up for?

An email address might not seem like much, but somebody is trusting me to use it for the reason I said I would.

I wanted the signup to make that reason clear:

Join the Second Spin Follow along as Second Spin Creations develops—one project, experiment and lesson at a time. I'll occasionally email you when there's something worth sharing from the work of Second Spin Creations—something I'm making, testing, learning or documenting. There's no fixed schedule. I'll write when there's a reason to.

I also had to decide what information to collect.

I could have asked for names and other details that might supposedly become useful later.

Instead, I asked for one thing:

An email address.

That's all I actually need to send somebody a newsletter.

Alongside it is a separate, unticked consent box confirming that they want to receive occasional emails from Second Spin Creations.

I'm not trying to build the biggest mailing list possible. I'd rather have a smaller list of people who understand what they've joined and actually want to hear from me.

One welcome email was enough

Next came the question of what happens immediately after somebody joins.

This was another opportunity to overcomplicate things.

I could have created a welcome sequence, follow-up emails, introductions to the business and messages designed to keep a new subscriber “engaged”.

But someone joining an occasional newsletter hasn't asked me to start a seven-email conversation with myself in their inbox.

So I created one welcome email.

It says hello, explains that Second Spin Creations is still at an early stage, gives a few examples of what I might share and sets the expectation that there isn't a fixed schedule.

Then something happens that I particularly like.

Nothing.

There isn't another automated email waiting to go.

The welcome email makes the promise.

What I do afterwards determines whether I keep it.

Looking right isn't the same as working

Only after sorting out those decisions did I build the system.

I used Wix because that's already where the Second Spin Creations website lives.

On paper, it was simple:

Signup form → subscriber → welcome email.

Eventually everything looked right.

But looking right isn't the same as working.

So I became my own first subscriber.

I went to the live website and joined exactly as somebody else would, using a real email address.

I checked that my consent had been recorded and that I'd become a subscribed contact. I waited for the welcome email to arrive in a real inbox.

Then I replied to it.

The reply reached me.

Then I unsubscribed.

That last test uncovered behaviour I hadn't expected. If I'd stopped when everything looked right on screen, I wouldn't have found it. I only did because I signed up and used the system as a real subscriber.

Eventually I confirmed that the full unsubscribe route worked too.

That gave me a much better way of thinking about the test:

Join. Receive. Reply. Leave.

A preview can show me what an email looks like. It can't tell me what actually happens when a real subscriber uses the system.

But where are the newsletters?

At this point the system worked.

Which brought me back to the problem I'd started with.

I still didn't have any newsletters.

Should I write several before making the signup available?

Perhaps prepare three or four, create a list of future subjects and establish a content calendar so I always knew what was coming next.

Then I realised I'd be creating exactly the thing I'd been trying to avoid.

A content machine that needed feeding.

What would I put in those advance newsletters?

Things that hadn't happened yet?

Subjects manufactured because I'd decided I needed an email to send?

The newsletter is supposed to let people follow Second Spin Creations while I'm actually building it.

So that's where the material should come from.

Something I make. An experiment that teaches me something. A failure that changes how I work. Something useful I publish. Or something I haven't anticipated yet.

The work should create the newsletter. The newsletter shouldn't create the work.

What I actually needed

Looking back, my original idea of what was required to start a newsletter was much bigger than what I actually needed.

I didn't need a backlog of finished emails, a publishing calendar, an elaborate automated sequence or a plan for what I'd be writing about six months from now.

I needed a reason for the newsletter to exist.

A clear promise to the reader.

A way for somebody to choose to join.

One welcome email.

And a system I'd tested from beginning to end.

Once those things existed, I could stop working on the newsletter and get back to working on Second Spin Creations.

Eventually something will happen that makes me think:

Someone else might find this useful.

Then I'll have something to send.

That's where I am now.

People can join. The welcome email works. They can reply. They can unsubscribe.

That's enough.

I don't need to invent something to send just because the system is there.

I didn't need a backlog of newsletters. I needed a promise I could keep.

The rest can come from the work.