Hello! Interrupting our usual scheduling to let you know The Ask newsletter is leaving Substack for Mailerlite.

TLDR version:

The Ask newsletter will continue on Wednesdays but emails will arrive from ellen@the-ask.uk and show up as Ellen Donnelly - The Ask via mlsend.com.

🧹Important Housekeeping

When the email arrives on Wednesday 8th Feb you can not only show the Email Gods this an email you want to receive, but help to show your support for the newsletter in general with some quick steps:

1. Move the email into your primary email tab or inbox

2. Add me as a contact

3. Send a reply! A simple ‘hey’ is great or why not introduce yourself if we’ve not spoken before?
   Do share what you’re working on and any questions you have about your professional path, I can reply with some thoughts/resources for you.

That’s it! Thank you for your support in this transition 🙏 I’ll be back on Wednesday with the usual entrepreneurial career guidance.

But for those of you interested in the specifics behind the decision (be warned it gets a bit geeky) then I’ve unpacked it all for you in this BTS-style post. I know many of you are fellow newsletter writers and may want to understand a bit more context. As usual, consider my thinking as a framework for your own decisions, not prescriptive advice. Your own situation is unique.

It’s been a long time coming

Thoughts that ‘The Ask might be better off overall with a different email provider’ started back in 2020, just months after I’d started writing.

So why wait this long?

There have been so many benefits to using Substack, which I’ve listed here.

So to get this out the way — I have absolutely no issues with Substack.

I am a huge fan of the business and the role it has in the disintermediation of traditional media systems. To quote its mission statement “Substack lets independent writers and podcasters publish directly to their audience and get paid through subscriptions” but the nuance of this mission is relevant to my decision to leave.

The benefits to writing on Substack

The fact that I’ve been able to get over 3,000 email subscribers since my first email post went out in March 2020, is largely because of how incredible writing on Substack has been.

First off — unlike most email service providers (ESPs) — sending emails on Substack is free. So I’ve not paid money to send emails which not only made the barrier to entry lower but has always made Substack an appealing channel from which to promote The Ask coaching business.

Through the process and enjoyment of writing, I have built a thriving coaching business. Writing consistently, week after week, sharing content that helps my audience, is the reason for this progress (not the ESP itself) but regardless, I still have Substack to thank as part of my entrepreneurial journey.

Secondly, Substack offers an incredible user experience to writers on the platform. They are consistently offering support to writers, such as the Substack Grow programme I was selected to participate in last summer.

Also, because of the way the platform is designed, my newsletters have been automatically hosted on a public URL and so unlike many emails which only ever stay in readers’ inboxes, my newsletter has remained discoverable online at no extra effort to me.

With public URLs of every post and beautiful UI, others have been sharing my posts on their own platforms and channels too. I loved creating artwork, or working with an illustrator, to aid this design aspect.

The final — and arguably the best — benefit I've found to publishing on Substack has been their recommendations engine, which allows Substack writers to recommend other newsletters to their own new subscribers. For example, when you subscribe to Femstreet, The Ask is one of three newsletters that its writer Sarah recommends:

This creates a network effect wherein the more writers who think your writing is good, the more readers you get in return. When you recommend those same writers, too, it becomes a symbiotic relationship of everyone helping each other, including readers finding content aligned with their interests

The number of publications recommending The Ask newsletter now stands at 28, which I’m very thankful for. As you can see that’s 896 people (many of you!) who found out about The Ask in this way. Thank you all for letting me into your inboxes each week, it is an honour to write to each of you.

So, the benefits of this feature have made leaving Substack an incredibly hard decision. Recommendations have been so powerful in fact, that I basically do zero outside-promotion of my newsletter on other platforms, and it grows day after day:

So before I explain why I am changing newsletter platforms, in spite of the not-so-insignificant benefits, first a huge thank you to my top four recommenders - I strongly suggest you go subscribe to them if you enjoy this newsletter.

• Femstreet Learn from incredible female founders, builders, and investors, stay on top of tech news, and maybe get your next job. Sarah Nöckel — as you can see, you’ve been a huge driver of this growth, so thank you!!

• YouTopian JourneyWeekly wisdom and motivation from the world’s first graphic novel for self-help, mental health, overcoming obstacles, and self-improvement. Writer Shaun Gold rocks, and his writing will give you a much-needed boost of motivation.

• TRUST-able TRUST-able is about helping entrepreneurs become true trusted advisors in their market niche. Robin Good shares unique perspectives writing online from his own journey blogging since the year 2000.

• Women of Wearables WoW has been a huge staple in the startup scene for a long time, especially for women health tech and femtech. The newsletter offers opportunities to grow in their businesses and succeed in their careers. Thank you, Marija Butkovic.

Many of The Ask’s community members and clients have incredible Substack publications, too:

• Both Are True by Alex shares hilarious life advice & learnings from a dad, actor and writer in Los Angeles. Trust me when I say this publication is going places.

• Working Mums Club by Abha writes and curates the best content for working mums interested in creativity, productivity and entrepreneurship.

• Life Club by Kitty writes thoughtful evidence-based psychology around the topic of codependence in relationships.

• 🔥Enough to be Dangerous by Alice writes for an audience of customer-facing SaaS professionals who want to uplevel their web, SaaS, and cloud technical acumen and tech industry know-how, without learning to code.

So all this to say, it has felt like writing in this cool online club of creative people doing interesting things in the world. To all 28 writers and anyone else who has ever endorsed The Ask, thank you.

But this isn’t goodbye! I might be leaving Substack but I am not leaving the internet ;) 

New here? Subscribe now and join 3k entrepreneurial readers.

The cost of writing on Substack

So exactly why am I leaving?! I hear you cry.  (You definitely aren’t crying but I might be).

Well as with everything in life, there are costs and benefits to every decision. The cost of writing on Substack has been not having access to some of the features that most other ESPs offer.

ESPs are built predominantly to help a business market its services.

And marketing is part art and part science.

My approach to date has been to create content I think is interesting, helpful, and aesthetically pleasing. This has created a demand for The Ask’s products and services through organic brand-building efforts. The quality of this newsletter has been what has driven its own growth, and in turn, the growth of the coaching business where I’ve had the chance to coach talented, thoughtful, creative people for the last three years.

Which is great, but there’s not been a lot of ‘science’ to it.

Science, in that I need to be able to measure what is and isn’t working to be able to make it better. You need to be able to customise your content or offers for your customers and segment them based on their preferences. You need to be able to track things like your reach and awareness, the effectiveness of the marketing funnel, the cost of acquisition, customer churn… you name it.

Building an online business requires monitoring hundreds of various data points. Using Substack as the core driver of my business leaves this part of the business lacking.

That’s because Substack is designed for writers, not business owners.

If you are making money from your writing itself then Substack has built the perfect tool for you. Writers can charge their readers to receive their writing directly without being hired by a media institution and writing clickbait content that drives ads.

But if you have a business to run — one that generates income from other products and services outside of content itself — the Substack functionality falls short. Again, this is because of Substack’s mission to help writers and they have deliberately not built these features. They are staying true to their identity, not competing with the likes of Convertkit, Mailchimp and the other major players in the email marketing space.

Whilst writing this post I discovered a ‘Why I left Substack’ post by Jacob Donnelly, who said the same exact thing about his decision to leave. There’s nothing like having your decisions validated by strangers on the internet, even if we do have the same surname!

Tools like Mailerlite, my new ESP, however, have my needs designed at the core of their product.

Why I’m moving to Mailerlite

I’ve chosen Mailerlite as it offers incredible features and a reasonable price, and have already been using it for some email campaigns and lead magnets so I am familiar with it.

Whilst emails will be sent by Mailerlite, which offers customisable design options, I will put the articles onto The Ask blog so that public URLs of content remain available for new people (who are not on the email list) to discover them.

This is more work for me, but better on balance.

There are many email newsletter writers who discover similar shifts are needed as their business evolves, as this recent post from Trends shows:

Measuring what is and isn’t resonating will help me to improve over time and continue to better serve you as readers, and in turn, create the best possible products and services.

I often wonder if the overall growth of the business has been hampered by not having some of these features before. One example, is the fact that the writing is publicly available on Substack and thus, has not directed traffic to The Ask website, but theirs. When it comes to building domain authority and SEO optimisation, this hasn’t helped one bit. We are talking 700k+ views, so when you think about leaving value on the table, that’s a pretty big chunk of opportunity gone.

Now if I was a creator or writer, I could have better captured this value.

Either by charging for the newsletter, or pushing other forms of monetisation. But my goal was to focus on growing the coaching business and creating incredible results for clients. I deliberately didn’t paywall this newsletter so that money didn’t become a distraction.

However, now the business is almost three years old it’s leveling up.

Levelling up brings new challenges. Some exciting things are around the corner, including a YouTube channel, plans for IP, events, and more which are being announced this month.

Naturally, each of you will be more interested in some of these things than others. With this in mind, Mailerlite offers a better way of tracking these interests. This is not about watching your every click and being creepy but doing what I believe makes sense for where The Ask is at, as a business.

In fact, name a successful business, and its unlikely they are using Substack for their primary marketing channel.

So… that’s the scoop.

Am I 100% making the right choice?

Not necessarily. And there is also a world in which I would return if I felt that was necessary. But I’ve made this decision using my best judgement and hope it will pay off eventually.

I’ll leave The Ask Substack page online for a bit longer and add any new subscribers manually but, not for long.

If you are not a subscriber be sure to join the new party over here.

Thank you as always for reading, and look out for the next email on Wednesday from ellen@the-ask.uk!

Ellen Donnelly, Founder + Chief Coach, The Ask.