I’ve made some changes to my newsletter, in order to make a fresh start in the new year.

First, the newsletter will come from a new email address. Please add deborah AT deborahcooke DOT com to your address book. The next newsletters will go out the week of the 26th and you might need to look for them in your spam folder (or promotion folder if you use gmail) because of the changed sender address.

Second, I changed newsletter service providers. The main difference on your end is that the newsletter will look different. I’m still playing with the design!

Third, I stopped all of the automations and simplified them. Each of the groups below now has a single welcome message when you sign up.

(I realized later that if you’d subscribed in the last couple of weeks, I probably cut off your welcome sequence. 😦 I apologize for that, but the fact that I made this mistake is yet more proof that things had gotten too complicated.)

Fourth, I eliminated the dedicated series lists. They seemed like a good idea, but were proving hard to maintain. I needed to simplify things so I can write more.

Fifth, I eliminated the All the News option. Compiling this newsletter was a problem as it always exceeded the maximum size for the email.

Sending too long of a newsletter means several things:
• the long newsletter will be truncated by some email servers, which has to be annoying to subscribers;
• the truncation cuts off the footer. This means that the bit of code that tracks whether the newsletter is opened hasn’t even been delivered, so it can’t be triggered, so the information about open rates is just wrong.
• my previous provider also had some issues with reporting when subscribers read the newsletter on their phones. Given how many people who do that, I had no faith in the data.

There are lots of sexy things you can do to resend to subscribers who haven’t opened the newsletter or to re-engage with subscribers, but if the open data is wrong, then those really aren’t possibilities anymore.

The new set-up is much like the old in that there are three groups in my list:

Dragons & Angels is the newsletter for my Deborah Cooke paranormal romances. Subscribers were added to this list who had chosen Deborah’s paranormal romances in the old list, and also if they had joined the Dragons of Incendium list.

Heroes & Bad Boys is the newsletter for my Deborah Cooke contemporary romances. Subscribers were added to this list who had chosen Deborah’s contemporary romances in the old list, and also if they had joined the Flatiron Five list.

Knights & Rogues is the newsletter for my Claire Delacroix medieval romances. Subscribers were added to this list who had chosen Claire’s medieval romances in the old list, and also if they had joined any of the medieval romance series lists (like the one for the Champions of St. Euphemia).

Those subscribers who had chosen to receive All the News were added to all three groups.

For 2018, each group will get a newsletter when there’s news about relevant books. I’m going to focus more on new releases. Subscribers will get a 30% discount on many new releases for shopping in my online store – this offer will only last a short time around the launch date. The transaction will be processed in my Selz store and the book will be delivered by BookFunnel, who will ensure that the book is delivered and ready to be read on the device of choice.

I’m pretty happy with this change and how well the transition went. Be aware that managing your group membership is a little different. On the old service, you could update your preferences and change which groups you belonged to. On the new service, when you choose to unsubscribe, you can leave specific groups or leave the list completely. To join new groups, you need to use the links above to subscribe to them.

My next newsletters will be delivered by the new service from the new address. Look for Dragons & Angels on December 26, Knights & Rogues on December 27, and Heroes & Bad Boys on December 28. They might end up in your spam or promotions folder this first time, so keep an eye out for them.

I have a lot of new ideas for the newsletter for 2018 and am looking forward to this fresh start!