I Left Substack for Mailerlite and Returned to Substack

Why I migrated my email list TWICE in one Quarter...

Nov 21, 2024

You might question why I endured the hassle of migrating my entire email list across platforms twice in one Quarter.

I mean, there's this valid question of why did I leave Substack (which housed my newsletter AND my podcast), migrate everything to Mailerlite, and end up migrating BACK to Substack soon afterwards? Did I not think that my subscribers would notice this huge change, that I would risk losing some of my list in the process (because both things totally happened, by the way)?..

To answer this question in full for those curious, and to find clarity in my actions for myself, I'll recall my motivations and reasoning from that time and attempt to translate those findings here. To be sure, leaving and then returning to Substack was not a decision made in haste. I made the choice after many late nights of contemplation and arguments with myself. You might even call it a painful experience in some ways.

So now, let's come to discover what all played a part behind the decision to make my two great migrations across email service providers (ESPs). Follow along with me and hear me out as I make the case for this serious, and hopefully final, choice of mine.

Mailerlite was the first email service provider that I loved. I had tried other providers before, of course, but I felt no loyalty to them in the way that I felt towards Mailerlite.

As such, Mailerlite was my select platform and saw me through several iterations of two different businesses…

The platform itself developed in application and became more robust over time, and I still found myself easily able to navigate the dashboards and menus regardless of their transformations. Mailerlite was my longtime choice and I even came to rely on its key features (even at the freemium tier) coupled with my familiarity to more or less "get the job done" when it came to email automation.

Then, I was introduced to Substack one evening during a deep rabbit hole Web crawl of mine. I simply saw an unfamiliar link domain, followed it to its destination, browsed around Andrea's site, and created an account for myself under my first name in order to not feel as though I was missing out on this new great thing. I still maintained usage of my Mailerlite list at that time.

I happen to experience Bright Shiny Object Syndrome terribly when it happens to me, and this time was no different at all...

Oh, I loved being able to create standalone pages; I adored writing the About page for my first publication. I felt as if I had a new toy as I discovered the Discussion threads feature (from that time), the Chat, and... podcasting!

The visionary in me could not be contained as I quickly taught myself everything I now know about podcasting in order to use this Substack feature. I had always wanted to dive into the world of podcast management for my own business, and seeing this possibility so near to me was exciting. After a few starts, I discovered that I very much enjoyed audio media, and podcasting forever changed the way I present my business to the world.

Meanwhile, I was growing more and more pleased with my every new subscriber on the platform. My long-form content was a joy to create, and I was re-living my old love for writing every time that I would log on. Then there came the very pivotal point at which my Substack subscriber number dwarfed my humble Mailerlite list...

This was the moment that I merged my email lists into one larger list of all those who had ever opted-in to receive messages from me, and decided to continue using Substack as the new official email service provider for my business.

And this proved to be a beautiful and suitable partnership for a long while. I happily published (or scheduled) a new post every week as I watched my subscriber number grow exponentially. I also published my first true podcast season to my delight. This new wing of my business was an exciting source of enjoyment for me as I dutifully carried out my Editorial Calendar on the platform and engaged with my first true "community" of followers. I didn't even mind the sacrifices that I had to make to keep all of this going... ..until I DID mind, of course.

As my business grew and developed, I found that I needed more and more resources and features to meet its growing needs.

Specifically, I found myself lacking in automated sequences, analytics, incentive emails, products/services, landing pages for marketing, segmenting and grouping, and more. With so much left not provided for, I felt that my hand was very much unfortunately forced to migrate my email marketing operation back over to the provision of Mailerlite. But, as they say, the grass always seems greener on the other side.

While back with Mailerlite in a paid subscription, I immediately felt myself experiencing an entirely new type of sacrifice that I was equally unable to tolerate. With the migration came a publication name change and a change in identity itself that I couldn't appreciate. I very much missed the commenting, Chat, Discussions, and the entire "community" that I was able to foster on Substack. I quickly came to miss the easy and simple way that my whole publishing workflow was streamlined for both my newsletter and podcast. It eliminated the need to introduce an entirely separate platform that I had began using in replacement. I felt stifled in the very type of content that I was able to publish as well. I felt obligated to only broadcast promotional emails and it drained my soul. Enough was enough.

I lost a couple of subscribers in the migration back to Substack.

But while reintroduced to the platform, I saw my subscriber number increase as rapidly as it had before. The growth on Mailerlite was slower and more difficult to accomplish, even with the many additional features. I sent an email blast explaining my migrations to my list as soon as the words to do so with found me. I felt moved to. I warmly thanked those who stuck around throughout my little experiment, and I felt a deep appreciation for feeling like I was back "at home" and in my element.

You see, it came down to deciding what I needed to function in my business in the most minimal way. Added features were no good if I didn't use them, after all. I identified for myself what all I required from an email service provider in order to thrive as a business owner, and I chose which platform could accomplish this at the most basic level. When it came to that test, Substack prevails simply because of its added benefits (not necessarily features). The way that publishing both my newsletter and podcast were highly streamlined inside of one platform was a huge deciding factor. And I found that when I contained all of my lead magnets to one central hub, that I could settle for one automated Welcome (incentive) email that contained access to them, if I had to. The rapid subscriber growth also motivated me to return to Substack, as this hadn't ever been possible for me before with Mailerlite. And most importantly, I was very much enjoying myself in the experience of maintaining my Substack publication as well!

So there you have it, a solid case for why I felt I had no choice but to switch providers for my entire email list twice in one Quarter.

I truly feel that I am all the better provided for having done so, and I consider my actions to be the right choice in the end. And If you have your own experiences with different email service providers, including Substack, that you'd love to share, meet me below to leave a comment on this post; I'd love to learn about your own adventure.

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