The Coaching Tools Company Newsletter Survey (August 2016)

In this year's Newsletter Survey, 377 of you kindly responded, so a BIG Thank-you! We had great feedback both from people who open every newsletter thing right through to those who rarely read our newsletters! There were some key themes that came up again and again and we have already begun to action some of them. If you're interested in what your fellow "Launch Pad" Newsletter Readers had to say, read on...

You loved:

• 51% of you mentioned our Free Coaching Tools, Special Offers, Discounts and our Coaching Tools generally!
• 40% of you mentioned our articles - especially practical articles with tips to grow clients and business, and articles that share how to use the tools.
• 25% of you loved the tips, ideas, inspiration and upbeat tone of the newsletter.
• And 8% of you also mentioned the quotes, coaching questions and infographics!
• Finally you also said that variety of content, regularity of contact, a feeling of connection and the positive, upbeat attitude were also important!

Room for improvement

51% of you said to change nothing! The rest of you had some great suggestions including:

• Make the newsletter shorter/less busy/less content.
• Make the newsletter subject headings clearer/jazzier/more interesting.
• Changing the name of the newsletter, the from name and more for clarity/connection.
• More modern design.

What stops you opening newsletter?

• 40% said not enough time/too busy.
• 21% said receiving too many emails generally.
• 23% said our email just gets lost/doesn't stand out/needed more "jazzy" headline.
• 19% said the subject headline needed to be a relevant topic.

On Newsletter Frequency

Following your input (see Question 6 detail below), we'll be staying mostly weekly (53% of you still chose weekly over other frequencies). HOWEVER, we will:

• Include fewer things in each newsletter, so it's less busy/overwhelming!
• Send all existing subscribers a monthly free tool for the next 12 months! (something we added for new subscribers and thought existing subscribers would be disappointed to miss out on). This comes separately to the newsletters.

Changes already made:

• We've already included links to the newsletter content in the introductory section at the top of the newsletter.
• We've created a cleaner newsletter header.
• We've added audio (watch for a monthly podcast from Ben Dooley's great Coaching Skills Forum).
• More free tools (we're sending a monthly free tool for everyone for 12 months!)

Changes planned:

• More articles about how to use the tools (we're aiming for one article a month with "how to" use tools).
• More focused topics!
• Improving our subject headlines - although that is a work in progress 😉

Read on for charts of the results - with figures!

Question 1:

• 75% of you have been coaching for up to 5 years.
  (24% less than 6 months, 26% for 6 months to 2 years and 25% for 2 to 5 years)
• 14% of you have been coaching for between 5 and 10 years.
• And 12% of you have been coaching for 10 years or more!

Question 2:

• Roughly 39% of you are new or have been receiving our newsletter for 6 months or less.
• 44% of you have been receiving our newsletter for between 6 months and 2 years.
• And 17% have been getting our newsletter 2 years or longer!

Question 3:

We were very excited to hear that when it comes to receiving our emails:

• 30% of you are watching your inbox!
• 42% of you mostly look forward to it.
• 17% of you are sometimes looking forward to it.
• 10% a little bit.
• 1% not at all.

Question 4:

I was surprised and very happy! to read that, of the 377 of you that answered our survey, 82% of you open most or all our newsletters:

• 41% of you opened EVERY single newsletter!
• And 41% of you opened MOST of them!
  AND
• 8% opened some, 8% opened occasionally and just 1% rarely or never.

But we're not resting on our laurels - we have listened and are working on improvements!

Question 6:

We all get far too much email these days (I can remember when email was new, and it was exciting to get them!). You said you would like to receive our newsletter:

• 4% said twice a week
• 53% said remain weekly
• 33% said every 2 weeks
• 10% said monthly

So, we'll be staying weekly for now, but being very conscious about that. And sometimes we may send one less newsletter a month to lighten the load.

Question 7. If you could make just ONE change to The Launch Pad Newsletter, what would it be?

• 44% of you said n/a or nothing or that you weren't sure
• 11% of you said more tools/free tools/tips and practical advice or examples of how to use them (this is happening!)
• 9% said a more modern layout/bigger images/less text
• 5% suggested changing the name
• 5% suggested making the newsletter less busy/fewer things
• 3% suggested more articles/content!

A few of you also mentioned:

• Including a newsletter contents summary with links at the beginning of the newsletter. Done!
• Including audio/podcasts or video. Done! You may have noticed we are now including a monthly podcast from Ben Dooley on a coaching competency topic!)
• Including quotes (we include a mini quote/question/journalling prompt section of 1-5 items at the end of every newsletter!)
• More advanced tips and tools.
• More links to coaching research.
• Different languages or cultural coaching experiences/tools.
• Special niches or populations (eg. children, parents, retirement, people being laid off).

Finally, Newsletter Design...

Some people said the layout/format was dated and cluttered/busy and/or difficult to read on a mobile. Although many people said the opposite too!

• We have already made small changes following the survey. We also want the newsletter to open on many different devices (different PCs/Macs/iPads/tablets/various smart and iphones) and many different email reader softwares (and different versions of these software) eg. gmail, outlook - different versions, yahoo, hotmail. Each device and email reader software interprets email fonts, spacing and formatting differently. So we try to keep the design as simple and straightforward as possible.
• Some people requested more/big images. This a challenge as too many big images can make reading newsletters on mobile phones/devices slow and make it hard for people to find/read the content!
• If anyone has specific design suggestions we are excited to hear from you...

If you liked this survey post, you may also like:

• Coaching Conferences & Events 2016 (some of you mentioned interested in coaching events!)
• The Coaching Tools Company Survey - 2014
• The Coaching Tools Company Survey - 2012