Things I’ve Learned About Email Mailing Lists

Creating a blog post and mini-course is a good lead magnet

I created a blog post about why I’m writing pure HTML & CSS. At the bottom I created a section about building your own with a button to subscribe to a mini-course. This was a strong lead magnet and about 1.9% of users signed up to my mailing list.

Using a button increased conversion rates significantly

When I first released the course I used a bold text link. I later changed this to a button. The button improved conversion by about 70%.

Buttons are clearer to email readers too

Although my parents are not in my target market, they commented that there was “nothing to click on” in my messages. They missed the link text completely.

Importing from an old, unused list was a bad idea

I had two old lists of email addresses that I had collected but never communicated with. The open rate on an email to this list was very, very low and the unsubscribe rate was very high. It’s probably not worth importing a list like this.

Written by Joel Dare on July 26, 2025.

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