I was on the verge of calling it quits with my newsletter back in 2019. At that point, I had around 800 subscribers, but the open rates were pretty lackluster, hovering around 18%. My email platform, ConvertKit, kept telling me that this was “average for my industry,” which wasn’t exactly the most helpful or reassuring feedback.
I decided not to stop emailing altogether, so I generated a different kind of report instead. This time, I filtered the results to show me everyone who had opened at least 12 out of my last 15 emails. When I got the list, I found that 43 people had done so.
I sent a brief email to each of the 43 people over the course of two weeks. The emails were short and to the point, simply expressing my gratitude for their interest. I didn’t include any sales pitches or requests, just a genuine “thank you” — something like: “Hey, I’ve noticed you’ve been following my work for a while now, and I just wanted to take a moment to say thanks, I don’t say it enough.” That was it, no attempt to set up a call or ask for anything in return.
Those 43 people sent me nine qualified referrals over the following year and a half.
Nine referrals. From 43 emails. I’ve been thinking about that ratio ever since — and it’s completely changed how I think about audience-building.
Where For Art Thou, Loyal Fans?
The platforms aren’t showing you your loyal fans. They’re showing you your recent engagement.
Those aren’t the same thing. Recent engagement is whoever happened to see your last post when the algorithm surfaced it. Loyal fans are people who’ve been paying attention for months or years — who’ll mention you in a conversation you’re not in, who’ll share something you published two years ago because they went back looking for it.
Regular social media tools usually focus on what’s been happening recently, like the past week or month. They aren’t really set up to show you someone who’s been quietly reading all your emails since last year without ever interacting with them publicly. This kind of person doesn’t show up in your normal analytics reports — they’re basically invisible in the dashboard.
She’s out there somewhere in your audience, waiting to be discovered. You won’t find her by scrolling through your followers list, though — she’s a bit more elusive than that. To track her down, you’ll need to dig a little deeper and be more proactive about where you look.
Identifying Your Top Fans
Email is where you start, not social media.
To start, go to your email platform and create a segment filter. This filter should include people who have opened at least 75% of your last 20 sends and have clicked at least once. If you’re using ConvertKit, this will only take about two minutes to set up. However, if you’re using Mailchimp, you’ll need to navigate to Audience > Segments, which might take a bit longer. When you apply this filter, you’ll likely get a smaller list than you expected. For most newsletters with under 5,000 subscribers, this loyal fan base usually consists of around 50-200 people. These are the individuals who are really engaged with your content and are your true loyal fans.
Those people have been voting with their attention, consistently, in a channel they chose (their inbox), with no social pressure to do it publicly. That signal is worth more than 500 likes on a post that the algorithm happened to boost.
Managing a community and building a following — these are not the same job, even though I treated them like they were for a long time. Community management is mostly just keeping the lights on, you know? Respond to comments, like posts, make sure the numbers don’t look terrible at the end of the month. Fine. Building a real following is the part where you ask a genuinely uncomfortable question: if I stopped posting tomorrow, which of my readers would actually notice? Not “oh, haven’t seen them post lately” notice. Go looking for them notice. For me, for a long time, that number was maybe 15 or 20 people — out of over a thousand subscribers. Kind of humbling, if I’m being honest. But those 15-20 were the ones sending referrals, mentioning me in conversations I wasn’t part of, sharing things I’d written years earlier. The other 1,100? Nice to have. Those 20? That’s the whole business, basically.
On social media, it’s pretty much the same story, but it’s a lot tougher to measure. What you really want are the people who keep coming back to your content and similar content in your niche, time and time again — the ones who show up no matter what the algorithm decides to show them that day. When it comes to loyalty, comments and shares are way more important than just likes. I mean, likes are easy, but they don’t really mean much. When I started tracking this stuff for my own accounts, I was surprised by how small the list was. We’re talking a dozen names, maybe twenty. But referral after referral in my business came from exactly that group — not from the months when I had a ton of followers, but from those specific twenty people. So don’t get too caught up in the numbers game — focus on building real relationships with the people who actually care about what you’re doing.
Mentioning someone in a post can really get the conversation started. When you tag someone who is directly related to the topic, it’s like saying “hey, this is about you” — and it can lead to some genuinely interesting discussions. It’s not about tagging a bunch of people, but rather just one or two who have a clear connection to what you’re talking about. A simple “hey, this is related to what you were talking about last month” can make a big difference. It takes just a few seconds, but it can turn your post from a one-way broadcast into a two-way conversation.
Connecting with Dedicated Supporters
So. You’ve got the list. What now?
Send them a brief email, straight from your own address, not a newsletter. Keep it short. Just a simple acknowledgment, no need to pitch or ask for anything.
Many people who create content never take the time to reach out to their audience in a personal way. I’m guilty of this too, having gone almost three years without doing it in a systematic way — which is pretty embarrassing, considering what happened when I finally started. When you send personal emails like this, the response rate is much higher than with newsletters. People often reply with comments like “I’ve recommended your work to three people but never mentioned it to you.” That feedback was just sitting there dormant in my audience the whole time, waiting for someone to ask the right question with a simple 30-word email. It’s amazing what you can learn when you take the time to connect with your audience one-on-one.
To create a stronger connection with your most engaged readers, consider setting up a special email segment just for them. This group gets exclusive content 48 hours before it’s available to anyone else. You can also use Twitter or LinkedIn to your advantage by making lists or tracking notifications from your loyal followers. This way, you can interact with their content on purpose, rather than relying on the algorithm to show it to you. The key is to be intentional about how you engage with your loyal audience, regardless of the platform. By putting them first every time you publish something new, you can build a community that will support you and help spread your message.
To build strong professional relationships, focus on shared work experiences and challenges. Discussing common frustrations and niche challenges can help establish a genuine connection. It’s also helpful to show interest in their current projects and what they’re working on. However, be careful not to cross the line into overly personal territory. The goal is to earn their trust, not to become their friend. Trust is a more lasting and valuable connection in a professional setting. By keeping conversations grounded in work-related topics, you can create a strong foundation for a durable relationship — one that works for both of you over the long haul.
The mechanics by platform:
| Strategy | Description |
|---|---|
| Personal email (not newsletter) | When you send a simple 30-word email from your own address, just to say thanks, it’s way more likely to get a response than a big group email. |
| Early-access segment | Separate your top engagers (75%+ open rate) and send content 48 hours early. The gesture signals that you noticed them. |
| Social media lists | Twitter/X lists and LinkedIn notification-tracking let you engage with key followers intentionally, not algorithmically. |
| Specific @mentions | Tag 1-2 loyal readers when a post is directly relevant to them. Gets conversations started in the first hour. |
| Instagram Stories replies | Who’s replying to your Stories consistently? That’s a higher-signal indicator of loyalty than standard post likes. |
| LinkedIn post notifications | If someone enabled notifications for your posts, they want to see you immediately. That’s a committed follower. |
| YouTube community posts | Subscribers who engage with polls and community content (not just videos) are showing above-average commitment to you as a creator. |
Build Lasting Relationships
The reason the initial outreach works so well is that it’s genuinely rare. The reason it compounds over time is something simpler: memory.
When you take the time to recall something important to someone in your network — like a new service they mentioned they were launching — and you bring it up a couple of months later, it really does make a big difference. It shows you’re genuinely interested in what they’re doing and that you care about their success. Most people don’t bother to remember these kinds of details, so when you do, it sets you apart. It’s a small gesture, but it can lead to a strong sense of loyalty and appreciation that goes well beyond just sharing great content. By showing that you value and remember what people tell you, you build a connection that’s genuinely hard to replicate with posts and updates alone.
I pay close attention to what my most loyal readers are engaging with, not just looking at overall numbers. I use this information to decide what to write about next. It’s not about what’s currently popular or what I think sounds interesting — it’s about what this specific group of readers has already shown they care about. If they’ve spent a lot of time on a particular topic, like writing long replies, forwarding posts, or sending me direct messages with follow-up questions, I know that a follow-up piece on that subject will do well. This is why knowing who your loyal fans are matters not just for building relationships, but also for figuring out what to write and repurpose next. They’re essentially telling you what to focus on, if you’re actually paying attention.
I also take the content that really resonates with this group and turn it into different formats — like a video version of a post they were really into, or an email newsletter that dives deeper into a topic they kept asking about. It’s the same basic content, but presented in new ways to people who have already shown they want more of it.
Make yourself reachable in a sustainable way. A monthly Q&A, a community Slack, a standing 30-minute block on your calendar every two weeks — the specific format matters less than the consistency. Open-door unlimited availability burns you out and eventually makes you resent your most committed readers, which is a bad outcome by any measure. Pick one touchpoint, hold it, let it be known.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can you measure the success of creating loyal fans in terms of ROI?
Honestly? Two things. Repeat visit rate, and how much of your traffic is coming in direct — not from ads, not from search. First-time visitors might convert once. Return visitors keep coming back, and they bring people with them. I’ve seen this pattern in client work over and over — the conversion rate gap between new visitors and return visitors usually runs 3x, sometimes 5x. That’s not a small gap. That’s where the whole ROI case for loyalty-building actually lives.
Also worth a look: where are your email signups actually coming from? If it’s mostly paid traffic or SEO, and that word-of-mouth number isn’t growing quarter over quarter, you’ve got a retention problem, not just an acquisition problem. The 43-person thing I mentioned — nine referrals in 18 months, from a group most analytics dashboards would have written off as a rounding error — was basically proof of this. Small and engaged beats large and passive. Every single time, in my experience.
What are some common mistakes businesses make when trying to connect with their top fans?
Treating your biggest fans exactly like everyone else — that’s the main one. Sending out mass emails, using canned replies, and relying on automated messages tells your most loyal followers that you haven’t really noticed them. And these are the people who have been paying the most attention to you. A short, personal email — just 30 words — can do a lot more to keep them loyal than a whole month of polished broadcast content. It’s a simple signal that says “I see you, and I appreciate you,” which turns out to be a pretty powerful message.
The other one: chasing follower count instead of follower quality. I’ve worked with brands that had 80,000 Instagram followers and generated less referral business than a blogger with 900 email subscribers and a genuine relationship with 60 of them.
How can you maintain a balance between personal connections and professional boundaries with top fans?
Be genuine about the things you actually know about someone — like their professional situation, what they’re interested in within your niche, and what they’ve told you directly. But stay professional about everything else. The reason this kind of connection works is because you both care about the same subject matter, so try to stay focused on that. If someone starts using you as a sounding board for things that have nothing to do with your area, politely steer things back on track. Most people will understand and be completely fine with that.
Can fans become too demanding or entitled, and how should you handle that situation?
Yes, and problems like this often start when someone receives special treatment once and then expects it to be the norm going forward. Instead of punishing them, it’s better to clearly define the different levels of access or benefits from the start. This way, everyone knows what to expect and there’s no room for misunderstanding. For instance, if “top-tier access” means getting early content, monthly Q&A sessions, and a community channel, then everyone knows what they’re getting. There’s no ambiguity, and people can’t lobby for special treatment because the benefits are consistent and well-defined. When everything is out in the open like that, the sense of entitlement tends to fade away pretty quickly.
How can you identify potential fans who may not be as vocal or active on social media?
When it comes to figuring out who your real loyal fans are, email data can be a lot more helpful than social analytics. Someone who opens almost all of your emails — we’re talking 90% over eight months — but never actually replies is still absolutely a loyal fan. They’re just showing their loyalty in a quieter way, without any public performance attached to it. Things like how far someone scrolls through your content, how often they come back to visit, and how consistently they open your emails are actually better signals of loyalty than how many comments they leave. And the good news is, you can measure all of these things.
The people who don’t say much are often the most valuable ones in your audience. When they finally do get in touch, it’s usually because they’re ready to buy or recommend you to someone else. I learned this firsthand from that list of 43 people back in 2019 — almost all of them were people I had never heard from before I reached out. Don’t mistake silence for disengagement. It almost never is.
