What Happened When I Re-Engaged 50,000 Email Subscribers After 3 Years

Most people are absolutely terrified of rewarming their email lists.

Especially coaches, who have a remarkable ability to turn the invitation to “Send an email to your list and let them know you're still alive”

...into...

“But what if Mary from Coventry, who downloaded a PDF from me in 2017 thinks I’ve changed and is pissed off at me for reaching out?”

Anyway, this weekend I decided to send out 50,000 emails to people who hadn’t heard from me in over 3 years.

(In fact, some of them checked their email inbox history and told me it had been closer to TEN... yeah, that was me) :)

So imagine my surprise when more than 300 people took the time to personally reply and tell me they’d missed me, remembered my work and were genuinely pleased to hear from me again.

Some told me things I’d taught them years ago had stayed with them.

Some told me how my work had genuinely changed their lives.

Some simply said “Welcome back, I can't wait to hear more"

(One was obviously so impressed with my new-and-improved email skills that he asked me what company I'd hired to do the re-warm)

And yeah...

About 4,000 people unsubscribed.

But quietly.

Sensibly.

Without setting fire to my house.

And without starting a Facebook group called VICTIMS OF DAX MOY’S UNEXPECTED EMAIL

And what REALLY impressed me was that I had ZERO complaints lodged with my email provider amd ZERO angry “WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?!” emails.

(To be honest, I'd been expecting more than a few of those)

But no, the people who didn’t WANT to hear from me anymore simply... left.

Which is EXACTLY what the unsubscribe button is for, right?

But look, I'm not just sharing this to brag about how awesome my emailing skills are. I think there’s a useful lesson in this for EVERYONE and ANYONE who's filling their head with stories about why they can't reach out to past relationships.

It's that we massively OVERESTIMATE how offended and pissed off people are going to be by our showing up in their lives, DM's and inbxes after going AWOL and that we massively UNDERESTIMATE the value of the relationships we built properly through being a good friend and servant to others.

Because when you boil it all down, email marketing isn’t REALLY about email. That's just the VEHICLE.

No, it’s about RELATIONSHIPS.

It’s about whether you were useful.

Whether you helped.

Whether you said something worth remembering.

Whether people felt better, clearer, stronger or more capable because you showed up in their world and served them in some kind of way that made a difference to something they were going through at the time.

And as I've been reminded after 'spamming' 50,000 people this weekend, if you did THAT...

Then time doesn’t just automatically erase the relationship like it never existed. It just puts it to sleep.

So when you come back, your job isn’t to start trying to extract money from it.

Your job is to RECONNECT.

Be useful again.

Listen.

Serve.

Remind people why they trusted you in the first place and allow the people who no longer want the relationship to leave without taking it personally.

Because not wanting to reconnect with you ISN'T rejection.

It's clarity and all coaches should LOVE that the people they once served are clear enough to make that kind of a decision, don't you think?

That's why the 4,000 unsubscribes doesn't bother me at all. In fact, it makes me smile because it's made my contact list that much more accurate.

And the 300+ personal replies?

Well, as well as giving me a big head and inflated sense of ego, THAT tells me something far more interesting...

So look, if you’ve got an old contact list sitting there gathering dust because you’re scared of what people might think if you suddenly reach out to them...

...then maybe the problem isn’t that THEY’VE forgotten you.

Maybe it's that YOU’VE forgotten how much value you gave them before YOU disappeared.

Jussayin' :)