Hey Reader,

Picture this.

You've been on three dates with someone. Three good dates. You're genuinely excited to see them again...

And then they get down on one knee. 💍

You'd run, right? Not because you don't like them... because the relationship hasn't earned something as serious as a marriage proposal yet.

Treating someone who signed up for your email list last week the same as someone who's opened every single email you've sent for a year, bought your merch, and shown up to three shows is the marketing equivalent of a third-date proposal.

Last week we talked about identifying your cold subscribers and cutting them loose. But knowing who's gone cold is only half the picture. The other half is knowing who's actually engaged (no pun intended) and how engaged they are.

Here's how I sort that out...

Every 30 days, I look at how long it's been since someone last opened an email, and I put them in one of four buckets:

Hot. Opened something in the last 30 days.
​Warm. Last 60 days.
​Cool. Last 90 days.
​Cold. Nothing in 90+ days.

So what does that actually mean about how you communicate with each group? It basically comes down to meeting people where they're at in their relationship to you.

Your hot subscribers want to be insiders. These are the people who'd read literally anything you send them. They want the behind-the-scenes stuff, the bonus content, the "you're finding this out before anyone else" feeling. Around a release, this is the group I might email four or five times with things like:

• early demos of the next release
• photos from the studio session
• the story behind a lyric

When you're selling merch or music directly, your hot subscribers are the ones who can handle more follow-ups. People rarely buy on the first ask. You're not annoying them. You're giving them enough chances to say yes.

Your warm subscribers like you, they're just not obsessed yet. Same kind of content, just less of it, maybe two or three of those extras instead of four or five. This is also where I'd send something like a discount code and an invitation to browse your store. If they click through, that tells you two things: one, they've got actual buying intent, not just curiosity. Two, if they opened it, you just gave them something valuable (which makes them more likely to open whatever you send next.)

Your cool subscribers get the highlights reel. Release dates. Tour announcements. Merch drops. The milestones that matter. Everything else, skip it. They're still here, they're just not asking to be insiders right now, and that's fine. Not everyone wants the same depth of relationship, and forcing it on them is how you end up in their spam folder.

But there are some people who want all the details from you all time time. Give them as many as you're comfortable sharing.

Once you can actually see who's who, you can stop guessing and start tailoring the way you communicate with them accordingly.

Not gonna lie, this can be a bit arduous as a manual process... so I built an automation that does this scoring for you automatically. Every 30 days it checks how long it's been since each subscriber opened something, tags them hot, warm, cool, or cold. I use it on my own list, and I'm giving it away because I'd genuinely rather you have it than have to rebuild it from scratch:

It's a Kit automation you can import directly into your account. And if you're not on Kit yet, you can create a free account that includes 1 automation and up to 10K subscribers.

Full disclosure: I'm an affiliate, but I wouldn't be pointing you to it if it wasn't the exact tool I use and love.

Talk soon,