This week was intense!  There’s a reason why Ariel suggests that you set aside only a few times a month to really build the email list. 

So what was I doing to build my email list?  Facebook messages.  Lots and lots (LAL?) of messages.  I felt like I was actually living online.  Only the sunlight and eating differentiated me from that dude in their parents’ basement. 

When I started MSi9W, I did a mass email to recruit people to my mailing list.  Having largely exhausted the potential recruitment in my inbox (for now), I turned to Facebook.  There’s a lot of old friends that I only interact with through Facebook, or friends that I only see in person and don’t communicate with through email. 

Not to mention my Facebook Artist page.  There were ~160 potential new list members there alone. 

So I got started.  Lots of Excel spreadsheets ensued, to make sure that I wasn’t double emailing or double messaging someone. I decided against mass messaging; a lot of these people I hadn’t talked to in a while, so I wanted to be personal and hear about their lives as well. 

Another challenge was balancing the personal with the professional (the “ask”).  In my experience, you don’t have to overdo it with the personal — too many questions or connections confused some of the people I messaged; such details can be saved for follow-up messages, when they’ve answered back.

Out of the ~110 messages I’ve sent out so far, about 50 or so have responded (positively, of course).  almost 50% open rate!  that’s good, right?  haha.  i dunno.

But yeah, I’ve gotten the list to 150 people now!  It’s a good feeling, for sure. 

The next week of MSi9W focuses on networking.  oh boy…

-Andrew