I'm Trying Something New

That could help you too

Last week I paid $47 for some Substack growth tips from Wes Pearce.

Some of it was useful. Lots of it was pretty standard stuff.
Notes. Recommendations. Collaborations.
Ya de dah. Yawn 🥱

But One Thing Made Me Sit Up…

and you might want to listen up too

Apparently, if you want to give your Substack emails a better chance of landing in your subscriber’s Primary Inbox (instead of getting dumped into the Promotions tab where emails go to die), you need to make your emails look like real, human messages.

Not a Newsletter or a Flashing Billboard

Just a simple, straight-up email.

Wes reckons doing this bumped up his open rates nicely.
Which is great ... but it comes with a catch.

It looks boring 🥱

Plain. No pretty images. No fancy formatting.
Not exactly the kind of thing that makes your Substack homepage look like you’ve got your life together.

Wes’ Workaround?

He formats the website version later, or posts a different version entirely.

Wes isn’t the only one doing this. Matt Giaro also sends plain emails. Matt’s email today’s didn’t even link back to Substack, it went to a different website. Rebel.)

My Situation

I don’t have a fancy Kit subscription (like many of the Substack high-flyers are using).
I don’t have a second website to dress things up on.
I’m working straight from Substack, basic but honest.

So here’s what you’re getting today:

• A plain-ish email (sorry if you hate it), with a useful tip you might want to test yourself...

• a link to my latest post: 👉 The Substack Odyssey 🎒

No fancy bells. No secret funnels.
Just me, figuring this out in public.

If you want to try the Primary Inbox Hack yourself, go for it.

I’d love you to hit reply and tell me if it changes your open rate.
If not, no worries—I’ll send you an update next week and let you know what it did to mine.

Talk soon,
Deb
Substack Lab — Where Experiments Get Messy Before They Get Good 🧪