Why I "Fired" 169 Subscribers

A Subscription Spring Clean

In the UK, March teeters between winter's final grip and spring's warmer promise, this means rain, the possibility of snow and the occasional glimpse of sunlight. The clocks “spring forward” to British Summer Time (BST) on 30th March, ushering in longer, lighter days.

With this seasonal shift comes the age old tradition of spring cleaning, not just for your home but for your mind and goals. As nature reawakens, it feels like the perfect moment to shake off stagnation, reassess priorities, and set a fresh course for the months ahead.

Fair warning, if you're not into posts on Substack that are about Substack, you might want to give this one a miss, maybe give this one a go instead:

The Battle Begins: Long vs. Short

Why March is the New January

January, with its New Year’s resolutions, is traditionally the time for goal-setting. Yet, by March, many of those resolutions lie abandoned, with life going back to normal.

The spring offers a second chance. The promise of warmer days and the financial year's end makes it a perfect moment to reflect, realign, and restart.

Whether you want to:

• Spring-clean your mind,

• Build that elusive “beach body” for summer,

• Or reboot your mental clarity to tackle creative or professional aspirations,

March is your cue to begin.

Subscriber Spring Cleaning

I like statistics. I'm a spreadsheet geek. Give me a set of numbers and I will reveal their secrets. It's like reading tea leaves, but nerdier.

Because of this, I try not to look at my Substack stats too often. I don't want to be sucked in and ruled by the numbers. But recently, I took a peek and spent an inordinate amount of time playing around with the data I could access, which was a lot more than I thought! You can really drill down and find out all sorts of interesting things about your readers.

The Mystery of the Declining Open Rate

Back in January 2025, I hit 1,000 subscribers. Woo! I celebrated the achievement, but a number on a screen doesn't really mean much.

What actually matters to me is connection. The people who read, who comment, the ones who engage. The people who check in on me, the friends I have made along the way, they're who matter. You, reading right now, you're who matter.

I try to reciprocate engagement as best I can. It should be a two-way street. I think that's how community works, being there for each other, not in a transactional way, but because we want to be.

So while my subscriber count was going up, I noticed my email open rate was steadily going down, I think that number is more important than the number of subscribers.

What's the point in having thousands of subscribers but having nobody read what you write? The subscriber number on your profile page looks impressive, but it's just a hollow number, it say's little about how many people are reading.

Before my unexpected brush with virality in December, my email open rate hovered around 35-40%. Since then, it has plummeted to 23-25%. That's a lot of people who just... don't open the emails. I'd like to see that number go back up.

You can read about my being accidentally interesting below:

Accidentally Interesting

Unsubscribing the Unengaged

Substack gives you all sorts of filtering options, so I decided to do a little detective work. I filtered my subscriber list down to people who:

1. Subscribed more than two months ago

2. Have never viewed a post, either by email or in the app

3. Have never engaged with me in any way

There were 189 people who fit that description. A whole village of silent subscribers.

I don't want my emails cluttering up someone's inbox if they don't actually want them. If you like The Curious Detour but don't want emails, that's fine, I don't want to impose myself on anyone, and I don't want anyone to feel guilty about unsubscribing.

You always have a choice in who you subscribe to, and I actively encourage anyone who signed up because they liked a single post or note to unsubscribe if I turned out to be something they weren't expecting. If you want to keep in touch, just follow me instead of subscribing.

I'd rather have a smaller number of engaged, interested readers than a bloated list that gives me a false ego boost. I think I gained so many subscribers from that viral note because a lot of people resonated with that one post, but maybe not with the others, and that's completely fine.

The Curious Case of the Silent Subscribers

I sent an email to those 189 people. The subject line? "This might be goodbye, but no hard feelings." The email explained that, if they wanted to stay subscribed, all they had to do was interact with a post in the next 7 days. Do that, and they would stay on the list. If not, I'd remove their emails after a week had passed. I tried to make it sound less like an ultimatum and more like a choice, less "eat your vegetables" and more "would you like carrots or broccoli?"

I fully expected the email to have zero opens, assuming these were dead accounts, bots, or inboxes where my emails were automatically going to junk. But after only an hour, the open rate was already at 9%, with 21 views, more than I anticipated.

Within 45 minutes, I had my first engagement from someone on that list. I won't call them out, but I was amazed that even one person had received my probably rather defeatist email and decided to stay. Not only that, but they commented that the post they clicked on was incredibly relevant to their situation at the time. Weird how things work out sometimes. Maybe the universe has a subscription to my newsletter too.

The Results Are In

After a week:

• 50 of the 189 people I emailed opened the email

• 7 people clicked a link to one of my articles

• 13 people engaged in another way

• A total of 10 people re-engaged and remain subscribed

Which means I've just hit delete on 169 emails from my list, taking my subscriber count down to around 1,050. And honestly? I don't feel disappointed. It's like doing the dishes, things are just a bit cleaner and shinier now.

It's a lot of people to lose. It makes my graph look like I've been cancelled but I'm interested to see how it affects my email open rate. Will it go up or was this whole exercise pointless? Realistically from the number of subscribers I have removed my open rate should go up to around 27%, which isn’t a great increase, around 13%, but it’s a start.

Why This Matters (At Least to Me)

Nothing really changes. Life goes on. But now, at least, I feel like I'm writing to more people who actually want to read.

And I know some people reading this might think, "What a self-righteous prick, who does he think he is?"

I can understand that, but I did this subscriber purge because I care more about meaningful engagement than vanity metrics. It's not about the number of subscribers, it's about the connection with readers who actually want to be here.

For me, a big list of disengaged subscribers is like having a house full of guests who never say a word, never laugh at your jokes, and never even acknowledge your presence. That's not community, it's a crowd of ghosts. And I've never been good at ghost whispering.

I want conversations, back and forths, people who read, think and challenge me. Not because they have to, but because something in what I wrote made them want to.

Cutting subscribers who never engage isn't about rejection, it's about respect, for them, for their inboxes and for myself. If they didn't really want to be here, then I've just done them a favour. If they did, then I'll welcome them back with open arms.

And if you are already a subscriber who's made it this far into the post, well, you're definitely in the right place. Thanks for being here.

Would you ever consider a subscriber spring clean? Do you think it's pointless? I'd be interested to hear what you think, is there anything you are considering in a spring clean of your own?