Why no one wants to sign up for your newsletter!

No one ever wants to sign up for your email newsletter.

So you have to have something on your opt-in page, or on the front of your website, that is a little bit more exciting than 'sign up for updates'. Because I don't know what I'm going to get. I don't know what I'm signing up to.

And it seems like the logical thing to put down.

• But what is an update?
• What are you going to send me?
• Updates of, you know, news?
• Or coffee granules or something like that?

When I see 'sign up for updates' on a website now, I'm thinking: how am I going to fit that into my life? What do I get? Will it help me thrive or survive?

Because when someone puts their email address into your website, that is equivalent to them handing over about £20. That's the level of trust and value you need to exchange to get their email address.

So my favourite thing is an email sequence.

On the front page of the London Coworking Assembly, when we want you to join our email list — and we've had more people join our email list in 2025 than the whole of 2024 — you sign up to hear the five biggest mistakes that coworking community builders make when they start a coworking space.

It's called - The Five Mistakes That Sink Coworking Spaces - And How to Fix Them - get it here.

And the five mistakes are:

• Talking about a community before it exists
• Ignoring hospitality — and hospitality is not a £20,000 Ferrari coffee machine, it is making people feel seen in your space
• Ignoring inclusion — you want a community, not a super club or a clique
• Crap communication — a really simple email system so you're always in touch with people
• Thinking it's all about growth, when it's quality over quantity

The way to never spam people is to make sure they sign up themselves, and put something on the front page that says why they should. Do a double opt-in, get full explicit permission, and tell them it's totally okay to unsubscribe.

When we launched it back in 2025, we had around 50 people sign up in the first couple of months! Which for a little organisation like us is huge.