Until today, I never felt the need for an English section in this newsletter. It's crafted for Romanian speakers and those immersed in Romanian memes, insider jokes, and anxieties. Hence the subtitle "Anxieties from the Leprechaunland." But I digress.
I've been on Substack for almost six months now, and my wishlist for Substack features keeps growing. Don't get me wrong; I'm not complaining. I'm content with what I have, content enough to bid farewell to my old server, which hosted numerous older versions of this blog/newsletter. Nevertheless, having a wishlist is never a bad thing, right?
1. An official Substack wishlist
My first wish is no joke—I'd love to see an official Substack wishlist curated and monitored by the Substack staff. This way, I'd be assured that someone sees my wish, and I could discover what other users are dreaming about. Who knows? Maybe Substack fairies might consider granting some wishes from time to time (Christmas could be a good occasion).
2. A shareable image in the format of Twitter & FB cover
This one seems like a no-brainer. I'm somewhat surprised it's not already there. Among the popular formats (Instagram, etc.), it would be incredibly convenient to promote each edition of a newsletter with the cover pic from my Twitter account.
3. Stats for each section
I use a couple of sections, and I'd love to see how each of them performs in terms of views, open rate, etc.
4. Stats based on individual tags
I know theoretically I could obtain this type of stats by linking my newsletter to a Google Analytics account (haven't done that yet), but I'd prefer to see them the easy way—right on my homepage, in my dashboard. I would love to know which of my topics (marked by tags) are getting the most views, the highest open rate, and so forth. It would help me align my posts with what resonates most with my readers.
5. Split test A/B
This feature, while possibly challenging to implement, would be a dream come true. Imagine being able to send a post through a split test in two versions, A and B. Substack would send version A to half of my readers randomly selected, and version B to the other half. This way, I could experiment with different post lengths, titles, images, and more. While I know I can already do split tests on other platforms like Aweber, it would be great to do it directly in my Substack publication without any workarounds or kludges.
6. Send a post to the app but not to email
I assume the app/email notifications are designed to work together, but it would be incredibly useful to use them separately. Sometimes, I have additional posts during the day and don't want to send more than one email per day to my subscribers. At the same time, it makes sense to notify them in the app about the new post.
Hence, an elegant solution might be to create threads specifically for this—a post type sent only to the app, not to email.