Weekly Report · Updated August 29, 2026

Email Performance Analysis

Every daily email compared against its own category baseline — apply (coaching), product (Masterclass / Tackling Texting), and content (podcast / video / posts) — plus list growth, churn, and buyer signals from the weekly BerserkerMail export.

Data cutoff: August 28, 2026

32.1%
Avg Open (Email Wk)
+26
Real New (Aug 18–25)
18
Unsubs (Aug 18–25)
80.5%
1-Wk Survival
471
Buyers (+7 in 2wk)
01 · This Period's Emails

Every email vs. its category baseline

Last two weeks shown (Aug 15 – 28), so recent still-accumulating sends don't shrink the table. Baselines are the trailing 90 days, full-list sends only: apply 34.1% open / 0.13% click · product 35.3% / 0.22% · content 34.0% / 1.64%. Deltas are against the email's own category.

DateSubjectTypeOpenΔ OpenClickΔ ClickUnsubs
Aug 15Neurotic Scorekeepingproduct32.7%−2.60.20%−0.024
Aug 16😚😚😚👌👉… (emoji subject)apply29.4%−4.70.11%−0.025
Aug 17Worried?product33.2%−2.10.19%−0.034
Aug 18Stupid Ways to Improve With Womenproduct33.6%−1.70.33%+0.117
Aug 19Directionlessapply31.4%−2.70.16%+0.032
Aug 20How to pass her testsapply30.6%−3.50.13%0.004
Aug 21Are you being a passive little 🐶?apply32.9%−1.20.14%+0.014
Aug 22How to watch R-rated movies with your parentsapply32.9%−1.20.14%+0.014
Aug 23What to do if your wife is a Lindsay Clancy fancontent32.3%−1.72.90%+1.262
Aug 24Solving the Lead Droughtapply31.6%−2.50.16%+0.032
Aug 25The Fruity Reason You Hate Small Talkproduct31.0%−4.30.44%+0.223
Aug 26People Who Need a Boss Are Not to Be Trustedapply31.6%−2.50.11%−0.021
Aug 27A Unique Fix to Dead Bedroom *apply30.2%0.14%6
Aug 28She's Alone, But You Don't Have to Be *apply27.1%0.09%4
* Aug 27–28 captured under 3 days old — provisional, refreshed next scrape. Prior provisionals matured on schedule (Aug 19: 29.4% → 31.4%, Aug 20: 26.0% → 30.6%). Standout of the fortnight: the Aug 23 video email hit 2.90% click (185 clicks) — best content send since mid-July (see Standouts).
02 · Standouts

Emails that beat their category

Buyers keep coming: 464 → 471 in two weeks Product +7 Buyers
The buyer drought is officially over: after six flat weeks in July, 7 new buyers in the last fortnight (DMM purchases and Tackling Texting). The sells driving it stay consistent with the sample-first pattern — the Masterclass push weeks plus the Tackling Texting teaser emails ("More tactical" 0.48%, "The Fruity Reason You Hate Small Talk" 0.44%, both 2× the product baseline). Steady daily selling at ~2 product emails/week is converting without an unsub cost — the fortnight ran the summer's lowest unsub rates.
Buyers471
2-Week Change+7
Best Product Click0.44%
The dark-topical video email: 2.90% click Content
Aug 23's "What to do if your wife is a Lindsay Clancy fan" pulled 185 clicks (2.90%) to the YouTube video — 1.8× the content baseline and the best content send since "Why Women Abuse Men They Love" in July. Same formula both times: a dark, culturally-live topic + a self-interest frame ("what to do if…") + video payoff. That's now a repeatable pattern, not a one-off — and it cleared the subject-line self-interest floor: provocative BUT about the reader's situation.
Clicks185
Click Rate2.90%
Content Baseline1.64%
03 · Unsub Watch

What cost subscribers — and what didn't

Highest unsub rates of the last month (Jul 29 – Aug 28, full-list sends). Quietest month on record — nothing over 0.17%, and the latest fortnight ran the summer's lowest rates.

EmailTypeDateUnsub RateLost
3 Slots LeftproductJul 310.17%11
How I Mindfooked My PartnerapplyAug 20.12%8
Stupid Ways to Improve With WomenproductAug 180.11%7
Snagged Myself a FilipinaapplyAug 70.11%7
22 Guys Walk Into A Cigar BarapplyAug 30.11%7
Why "Friendzone Her" BackfiresproductAug 130.09%6
The month's pattern fits the long-run one: the top of the table is discount/urgency product pushes (Masterclass 90%-off sequence, affiliate scarcity email), not daily apply emails. Historic spikes (0.25–0.43%) have come from shock subject lines and launch-week fatigue; long-run unsub rates are nearly identical across categories — daily selling does not cost meaningfully more subscribers than content.
04 · List Health

Subscriber flow: August 4 → 11

Growth — acquisition recovered
20 real new subscribers — 13 from Twitter organic (first double-digit Twitter week since June) and 6 from the home page. Only 1 bot form-fill, versus 138/week at the leak's peak: the Application Funnel bot flood has effectively stopped. Net real movement: −1 (essentially flat, and a big improvement on the prior window's −27).
Real New+20
Twitter Organic13
Net Real−1
Bot-Filled+1
Churn — back to normal after the promo-week peak
21 unsubs ≈ 0.32%/week, back inside the summer's normal band. The prior window (Jul 28 – Aug 4) was the summer's churn peak — 0.47%/week, 31 unsubs — landing right on the Synastry promo and the heavy sales run around it. One promo week at elevated churn, then immediate normalization: the list absorbed it.
Churn Rate0.32%/wk
Prior Wk (Promo)0.47%/wk
Buyers & Intent — conversions landed
3 new buyers this week (one DMM, two Tackling Texting), taking the total from 461 to 464. The buyer drought that lasted all of July broke the same week the free-sample Masterclass email went out — see Standouts for the mechanism.
Buyers464
New This Week+3
06 · Retention Tracker

One-week survival: a new subscriber's chance of still being here 7 days later

The headline metric. For each join-week cohort, we check every subscriber's status at the first snapshot at least 7 days after they joined. Current answer: a new subscriber has an ~80% chance of surviving their first week (244 of 303 measurable). This series gains one bar per week as snapshots accumulate.

1-week survival rate by join week

Jun 1 (112)
75%
Jun 8 (42)
90%
Jun 15 (26)
85%
Jun 22 (28)
79%
Jul 6 (15)
80%
Jul 13 (23)
83%
Jul 20 (15)
80%
Aug 3 (20)
80%
Aug 10 (12)
83%

Measurable subscribers in parentheses. Jun 29, Jul 27, and Aug 3 cohorts omitted (too few measurable at ~1 week yet). Only cohorts that joined within snapshot coverage (Jun 2 onward) can be measured at ~1 week; earlier cohorts appear in the retention-to-date chart below. The Jun 1 cohort (75%) was the paid-traffic spike — still the low-water mark.

Retention to date, by join-week cohort (as of Aug 25)

Apr 6 (74)
73%
Apr 13 (46)
76%
Apr 20 (26)
77%
Apr 27 (43)
95%
May 4 (25)
68%
May 11 (21)
71%
May 18 (16)
62%
May 25 (34)
65%
Jun 1 (150)
69%
Jun 8 (42)
86%
Jun 15 (26)
77%
Jun 22 (28)
75%
Jul 6 (15)
80%
Jul 13 (23)
83%
Jul 20 (15)
80%
Aug 3 (20)
80%
Aug 10 (12)
83%
Aug 17 (19)
95%

Cohort size in parentheses. Jun 29, Jul 27, and Aug 17 cohorts omitted (under 10 subscribers). Each cohort's bar updates with every new snapshot, turning this into a survival curve.

Self-Audit lead magnet: download rate by join week

Jun 1 (150)
5%
Jun 8 (42)
10%
Jun 15 (26)
4%
Jun 22 (28)
11%
Jul 6 (15)
7%
Jul 13 (23)
0%
Jul 20 (15)
13%
Jul 27 (6)
67%
Aug 3 (20)
50%
Aug 10 (12)
42%
Aug 17 (19)
21%

% of each join-week cohort carrying the "Downloaded Self-Audit" tag as of Aug 25. The tag went live ~Jul 19, and the step-change is visible: cohorts joining before it ran 0–13%, while the Jul 27 and Aug 3 cohorts download at 50–67% — the self-audit is now in the new-subscriber path, and when it's actually in front of new opt-ins, roughly half take it. (Jul 27 is a 6-person cohort; the Aug 3 read — 10 of 20 — is the solid one.)

List-wide churn rate (% of actives lost per week)

Jun 9–23
0.30%
Jun 23–30
0.29%
Jun 30–Jul 7
0.35%
Jul 7–14
0.32%
Jul 14–28
0.28%
Jul 28–Aug 4
0.47%
Aug 4–11
0.32%
Aug 11–18
0.37%
Aug 18–25
0.28%

Subscriber flow (people per week: gained vs. lost)

WindowReal New / wkUnsubs / wkNet / wk
Jun 9–23 (14d, averaged)+34.5−20+14.5
Jun 23–30+26−19+7
Jun 30–Jul 7+3−23−20
Jul 7–14+23−21+2
Jul 14–28 (14d, averaged)+16.5−18.5−2
Jul 28–Aug 4+4−31−27
Aug 4–11+20−21−1
Aug 11–18+11−24−13
Aug 18–25+26−18+8
Source: email-data/cohort-retention.csv and email-data/weekly-metrics.csv, both recomputed from the committed snapshots each week (scripts: compute-cohort-retention.py, compute-weekly-metrics.py). Cohort retention = still-subscribed ÷ everyone who joined that week (bots excluded). Churn = unsubscribes ÷ actives at window start. Jul 21 snapshot missing, so Jul 14–28 is a fortnight. Jul 28 – Aug 4 was the summer's worst week (promo-week churn peak plus an acquisition dip); Aug 4–11 normalized on both fronts.
07 · Tone & Strategy Mix

What kind of emails went out — and how they sold

Every full-list send is classified on two axes. Tone: light (warm, funny, celebratory), medium (analytical or story-driven with stakes), heavy (dread — divorce, betrayal, loneliness). Selling strategy: proof (testimonials, track record, community, credentials), insight (selling by demonstrating the thinking), tension (analyze the problem deeply, build tension, pitch into it). Splits below: last week vs. the trailing 4 weeks.

ToneLast week (Aug 22 – Aug 28)Last 4 weeks (Aug 1 – Aug 28)
Light2 of 7 (29%)12 of 28 (43%)
Medium4 of 7 (57%)14 of 28 (50%)
Heavy1 of 7 (14%)2 of 28 (7%)
Selling strategyLast week (Aug 14 – Aug 20)Last 4 weeks (Jul 24 – Aug 20)
Proof0 of 7 (0%)6 of 28 (21%)
Insight4 of 7 (57%)13 of 28 (46%)
Tension3 of 7 (43%)9 of 28 (32%)
Read: tension is recovering (3 of 7 this week, 32% on the month) after its late-July trough, insight still leads, and proof went to zero this week — the first proof-free week since tracking began; worth one proof send next week so the mode doesn't go cold. Heavy tone reappeared ("She's Alone, But You Don't Have to Be") — still rare at 2 of 28 on the month. The newest sends are classified from subject lines only until their texts land in the swipe files. Segmented sends (under 1,000 recipients) are excluded from splits. Classifications live in the Tone/Strategy columns of sent-emails.csv.
08 · Method

How this report is built

Categories. Every email is classified by its CTA: apply → patstedman.com/apply (1-on-1 coaching), product → the Masterclass or Tackling Texting sales pages, content → a podcast, video, or post. Comparisons are always within category — a content email's 2% click rate and an apply email's 0.15% are both normal.

Baselines. Trailing 90 days, full-list sends only. All-time averages are inflated by the higher-open era of late 2025.

Excluded outliers. Sends under 1,000 recipients are excluded from all averages — these are segmented sends to buyers, event registrants, or sales-page visitors (e.g., "The Dynamic Man Masterclass is HERE" at 83% open to 249 buyers, the Forbidden Intimacy Deep Dive emails at ~380 registrants, "Your Free Call" to 24 people). They're a different audience, not a signal about copy. The most recent 2 days of sends are shown but not scored, since opens are still accumulating.

Sales proxy. BerserkerMail doesn't report per-email revenue. "Sold well" = high-intent clicks on apply/product emails plus buyer-tag changes in the weekly list export attributed to that window.