Hello hello!

I hope you all had a wonderful week wherever you are.

I know some of you run newsletters or collect guest emails from your short-term rentals, but haven't started sending them regularly yet.

Today, I'm diving into what I've learned over the past year of writing this newsletter and the key findings along the way.

Quick backstory

I am naturally a creative person who got molded into the accounting and data analytics worlds (thankfully), and for a long time I was afraid to write.

And even more so to start a newsletter.

But because of my past work, I'm no stranger to newsletters.

Back when I worked in corporate data analytics at a mortgage company, my team and I tackled a special project in my final two years there: Portfolio Retention (in other words, how to keep existing customers).

In the mortgage world, you're a new customer when you finance your home with a lender.

If you refinance that same home with the same company, you've been retained.

If you go elsewhere, the customer is lost.

It's similar in hosting: repeat guests who return to your property year after year mean you've successfully retained them.

The more repeat guests who know, trust, and love your place, the easier everything becomes.

At the mortgage company, part of our retention efforts involved sending newsletters.

They went out on a set cadence, and my role on that front included researching vendors, interviewing them, evaluating solutions, setting up systems (or finding people to do it), reviewing email and text content, getting approvals, and monitoring metrics.

That's the full newsletter lifecycle, but in a corporate environment with a team.

One memorable moment: our team sent what we thought was a strong edition for approval, only to get it back marked up with over 30 changes.

We had to rework a small template that completely altered the original idea.

Our design wasn't on-brand or aligned with corporate standards.

Understandable. Rules are rules.

That's why it feels so freeing to write this newsletter.

I can add whatever image I want, link to what inspires me, and design it in a way that feels authentically like me.

How it started

Before launching Unique Stays newsletter, I explored several platforms: Substack, Beehiiv, and Kit.

I set up full accounts and even published articles on both Beehiiv and Kit.

I quickly realized Kit was the right fit for me.

The functionality was exactly what I was looking for, and the aesthetics too.

I love Kit's founder, Nathan Barry. He inspires me with his focus on creators and building tools that help us share our work without the burnout.

Since I work in it every week, the look and feel matter beyond just functionality.

I tried building everything in Kit myself, and it worked, but…

I wish I'd taken one shortcut from the start: enrolling in Matt McGarry's newsletter bootcamp.

It's an awesome program packed with valuable insights I still use.

When You Subscribe, You Get Free Access To Weekly Deals, News, And My Favorite Finds.

Growth journey

It started with one reader: me, testing sends to make sure everything looked, arrived, and felt right.

Then 5 (close family and friends), 10, 20, 50, 80…

Hitting 100 readers felt amazing.

Knowing 100 people were opening and reading was incredibly motivating.

Then came 200, 500, and wow, 1,000!

As the list grew, I experimented to improve:

Trying different topics to see what resonated (and what didn't).
Writing in good moods, bad moods, using speech-to-text in iPhone Notes then editing, but eventually settling on my current process: raw draft first, edit later, final proofread after a break.

Writing helps me think better

My mind buzzes with ideas from morning to evening.

Rod compares it to a train barreling along at hundreds of miles per hour.

And writing helps me to slow down and reorganize thoughts.

Newsletters are hard and rewarding

Hard because a weekly cadence demands discipline.

No matter what's happening in life, it goes out.

Rewarding because I see the results: your replies, questions, feedback, even introductions.

My input sparks the output: your thoughts and questions, and that's beautiful.

Many of you have helped me improve.

Thank you!

One reader suggested adding a top image (great idea, I implemented it the very next edition). Others proposed specific topics, which inspired future issues.

Topics aren't a struggle for me.

Hospitality is my daily world, so my finger stays on the pulse.

If this were a side hustle instead of my main one, I might have burned out by now.

Subject lines (the honorable mention)

Subject lines deserve special recognition. They're crucial.

I think of them as packaging: the subject line, preview text, and top image (my thumbnail).

Kit's A/B testing feature of subject lines is fantastic, and I use it every time.

For the first 60 to 240 minutes, I send the same newsletter with 5 different subject lines (now including preview text variations).

For example: 100 readers get version A, the next 100 get B, and so on.

Kit then crowns the winner based on open and click-through rates.

Before testing, I guess which one will win.

I don't always nail it, but the exercise sharpens my instincts.

Shorter subject lines have consistently outperformed longer ones.

My goals for them:

Provide clear context about the topic
Create a curiosity gap (without being overly sensational or clickbaity)

The curiosity gap is that hook you see in movies: something intriguing happens early, leaving you eager to know how or why. Detective stories are classic examples, mystery up front, reveal at the end.

The key is to make it intriguing but accurate. It should capture attention and lead naturally into the content without misleading or twisting the meaning.

One thing I wish:

I wish I had started it earlier.

That's all for today.

Till next week, dear readers!

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