Chris Worfolk's Blog

I regularly cycle up and down the canal towpath and often think to myself “I hope I don’t fall in – all of my stuff would get wet, and I would too, which could be unpleasant or maybe even dangerous, on a cold day.”

But, having lived in Leeds for the past few decades, I should be aware that the real risk is not falling into the two feet of water. It’s not being able to get out because you’re being torn apart by inferi.

Yesterday, Elina had the day off, so I took a break from studying so that we could go for a bike ride. We returned around 3:30 pm. Then, at 4:45 pm, this happened:

It is possible the body went into the canal in the hour between us getting home and someone else spotting it. But, more likely, it was already there when we cycled past it.

It was just around the corner from our house, so the entire street was lined with emergency service vehicles. Who knew Leeds had a CSI? I hope David Caruso is available to play the TV adaptation.

Beyond the jokes, though, it is no doubt a sad occasion. Bodies do turn up with an uncomfortable regularity, but usually, it’s a drunken student far downstream. Let’s hope it’s a high-end sex robot that someone has mistaken for a real human.

This is my speech for the 2017 humorous speaking contest at Toastmasters.

Today we continue my series on people who cannot spell panini.

This shop I found in May, for example. They have at least worked out that there should not be an apostrophe there.

Leeds Beckett has not, however.

Even if the word panini was the singular form, why would you add an apostrophe there?

The title card says:

Coverage will resume momentarily

Which, of course, means that coverage will return but only for a moment. Which sounds about right with the number of adverts they have in the US.

This is a speech I have at Leeds City Toastmasters last month, advocating that we use our camera phones a little bit less and live a little bit more.

When you send an email newsletter with a provider such as MailChimp, Aweber, etc, they give you a report on who opens your emails. But how accurate are these numbers?

I had the opportunity to test this recently.

It’s good practice to clear your email list periodically because email providers use open rates to access whether your email is spam or not. So, if you have a lot of old, inactive addresses on your list, or it’s going into people’s spam box and they’re not seeing it, it is a good idea to remove them so that it does not affect email delivery to the people who are reading your emails.

How I tested it

For two lists I had, I created a segment who had not opened the last five emails we sent them.

I then sent these people an email saying “are you receiving this?”, inviting people who still wanted to receive the email me back. Anyone who did this would indicate that the numbers are not accurate.

Here are the results…

West Yorkshire Humanists

We had 120 people on the list. 36 had not interacted with the last five campaigns.

Of those, 11% read and 6% clicked the email. This suggests that people are receiving my regular emails but choosing not to read them.

An additional four people emailed me to say they wanted to continue to receive the email. This suggests that the tracking statistics are out by a significant amount. This is because this is just the people who were bothered to email me back; how many were in the same situation but didn’t bother to?

Anxiety Leeds

We had 256 people on the list. 100 had not interacted with the last five campaigns.

7 people emailed me to say they would like to continue receiving the emails.

Again, this is probably only a selection of the people who are receiving the emails and not being tracked.

Conclusion

The open rate tracking provided by MailChimp, and likely other email providers, is a useful guide to see campaign to campaign. However, it does not seem to be an accurate measure of who exactly is reading your email because many people are reading them but not reporting as having done so in the reports.

There are a lot of excellent podcasts out there. I could do a whole blog post on my favourites. But, in particular, there are a few episodes that really stand out as useful for entrepreneurs and marketers.

I’m only listing a few here, with a plan to expand this list over time.

How to Get 100,000 YouTube Subscribers

Noah Kagan is the founder of Sumo.com. In this episode, he interviews Tim Schmoyer, an expert on YouTube marketing.

Click here to listen.

Getting Inside Your Prospect’s Head

David Garfinkel is the star of the show in the Copywriters Podcast. Getting inside your prospect’s head is difficult and few people explain it well. I think Garfinkel has come the closest.

Click here to listen.

How To Build A Fanatical Tribe of Customers

Mike Dillard runs Self Made Man. In this episode, he interviews Russell Brunson, founder of Clickfunnels, and author of Dot Com Secrets.

Click here to listen.

I’m back at university, studying. Like a geek.

Why? Because learning is fun.

Nobody believes me when I say that. It is perhaps because the course is geared to people who want to use it as a step towards their future career. But even people not on the course seem to be suspicious of such a concept. How did I end up with this friendship circle?

So far it has been pretty standard. Not much has changed since my undergraduate degree.

There are some nice benefits of being a postgrad, however. I get to experiment on undergraduates, for one. That’s not a joke: I literally have access to a pool undergraduates to experiment on.

Of course, my updated take on Milgrim will have to pass an ethics committee first.

I can also take out up to 25 books from the library. Not that anyone would ever need to do that.

After Hugh & Anna’s wedding, I noticed the Shustoke Reservoir was a convenient distance from Coleshill for a Sunday morning run. THe route round has a little variety: there is a wooden section before taking in the banks for the remaining three sides.

Click the image for a larger panorama.

Writing a Systematic Review for Cochrane is not difficult. Simply take a large amount of studies, explain why most of them are rubbish, point out that those that remain don’t provide enough evidence it works and finish by saying more research is needed to understand the impact on anyone who isn’t a young white undergraduate.

In fact, it’s so straightforward I have written a template…

Simply insert your variables you are away. Happy meta-analysising!