And that is not necessarily bad. I actually had one set up from the start of this blog in 2021: mailchimp. My user account ended up being deleted without my knowledge. I would be happy to share a few details. I had been moving from Gandi.net to a new email provider (Skiff) that went belly up just two months later. After a second email hosting transition (to Tuta), I forgot to set up an important alias on my email domain, hence I did not get mailchimp’s emails. Nor did I connect to manage it from time to time. My bad. Anyhow, the situation is that since July 2023 I have no more functioning newsletter. And I lost the subscribers list, which I had not backed up.
I looked up a few alternatives thanks to Perplexity.ai, and while I was at it, I stumbled upon an even more important question: should I even issue a newsletter? in this personal blog I plan to write also about my work, which are posts I would share on linkedIn too and have their own categories such as Alliance Management or tags such as Cisco Live. But the charm of a blog is that it offers something that is neither too refined, too polished nor too marketed. These are just my interests, which have evolved over time, which I take pleasure in sharing. Then why create some more email noise for people I like to connect with? what are the alternatives? I am not saying I never want again to set up a newsletter, but here are my thoughts about it. Or if I ever create a newsletter, I should have different lists: per language or professional versus private…
What about tracking? It is possible to find a newsletter system that even sends plain text emails and uses no cookies. I visited regularly a few beautiful, professional blogs that don’t even have newsletter, then why bother having one here?
Who uses RSS or Atom feeds today?
Well, not everybody does but it’s still working really fine. This is not in my routine, I forget to open that app. But I provide both feeds on the contact page.
Telegram
That was a feasible and rather short configuration on IFTT. Simply put, people can visit my Telegram channel and subscribe to it if they so choose. But Telegram nowadays is not only filled with ads, but also spam. I am regularly contacted by profiles presenting themselves as ladies. I never went far in exchanging with these spammers, but I do suspect they are scammers too. Since it’s a one-time setup with no recurring costs, I just leave it as it is. It just works.
In the end, it’s about relevance
Are people connecting, are they interested? well I can say I have a few blogs on my mind which I regularly check without the help of a feed reader or a newsletter. Most newsletters I subscribed to just land in an email folder I rarely check. Said otherwise, I will come back if I like a blog.
To conclude on this, rather than “engage” as marketing professionals suggest, I prefer to post a link to my blog with a summary on linkedin (for business-related topics) and still get statistics either from linkedin or thanks to a cookie-free system which I plan to install soon.
