Your Traffic Sources Have a Half-Life

softwarebyrob.com

3 points·hopeless··3 comments

I wonder though: Why do email lists not have the same half-life as Twitter? Is it that people take longer to get through their inboxes and so the traffic is spread out over time or are they storing emails for reference and returning to it later?

Because an email list is far more valuable than Twitter.

If you have 10k followers vs. 10k email subscribers, your response rate is like night and day. Hands down, email wins.

Now there's another side to Twitter, which involves the virality of it and has nothing to do with your followers, but simply people re-tweeting your link. In this case it's a decent ally since it provides that quick-spike viral traffic, but it has a very short half-life.

Hey Rob, thanks for replying. I'm sure you're right that email lists are more valuable although I was wondering more about the difference in half-life rather than response rate.

I guess it's obvious that tweets quickly pass by leading to a short half-life. I'm still slightly confused why people would clickthrough from an email days (weeks?) after it was sent. Are they storing the emails to think about it and return later? I suppose the reason doesn't matter, it was just idle curiosity.

Also, I've learnt a very valuable lesson about HN. I submitted this article when I read it before lunch Irish time. Unfortunately, most of the U.S. and the HN audience hadn't woken up so the link fell off the radar. Sorry for inadvertently burying a very interesting article. Keep them coming (and the great Startups for the Rest of us podcast)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com