

Your Traffic Sources Have a Half-Life - hopeless
http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2011/02/02/your-traffic-sources-have-a-half-life/

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hopeless
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?

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rwalling
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.

~~~
hopeless
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)

