This is a classic example of how just because you think you know almost everything about what you’re doing, doesn’t mean you can tell other people who you think don’t know as much as you do, to shut it.
After all, how can they know any better, right?
It’s embarrassing but this was me.
True Story
See, with all the webinars, white papers, articles, and case studies I’ve read on email marketing, I seemed to have been so convinced that I was a semi-expert (expert level would be if I charged people to let me talk about it) on this subject.
It’s easy to get caught in this state of absurd arrogance knowing that not a lot of people (at least in the Philippines) invest time in doing the same thing.
One day, a team member asked me, “Now that we have our newsletter set up, maybe we should have a popup screen asking people to subscribe?”
Within just 5 seconds, I looked like this:
Oh dear. I was quickly coming up with ridiculous reasons as to why we cannot possibly do that. What have I turned into!
My teammate had the WTF look. “Yeah! WTF?”, I asked myself.
It was a humbling experience. More than humbling, it was mortifying.
“Why can’t we at least TRY it?” was the next line I heard.
I was so full of myself thinking I’ve read it all that I didn’t even think that those case studies and best practices might not necessarily apply to our company!
(A mistake I think all of us at one point also made. Bah. Look at me trying to drag everyone into this.)
I changed my rage face to something more amiable.
Then I went back to my desk and started looking at possible solutions and if they really did work.
I found Padiact, met Claudiu Murariu, their wonderful and very helpful co-founder, and the rest is history.
We installed it on our site and almost a year later, we’re now at 10k subscribers. We were and still are, seeing about 2-3% conversion rates each month.
What a waste it would have been if I insisted that I knew everything.
Lesson Learned
My newsletter popup story might not work for your company or for your website but what I can guarantee you that will always work is this: having team members who are brave enough to call you out, to experiment, and to make sure that it’s not just your business that is growing, but also yourselves.