Consulting the Cards: Re-Engaging the E-Mail List
Over on my YouTube channel, I’ve been featuring a number of readings using the Lenormand Oracle, and the response has been wonderful.
And, as a result of this activity, every now and again I’ll get a message from a viewer or subscriber asking me to consult the cards about his or her particular situation.
Such was the case with Eugene. He wanted to know if it would be possible to look at the cards regarding his e-mail subscriber list. Eugene is self-employed and was sending e-mails to his list on a regular basis. Along the way, Eugene began to notice that his open rate and click rate were declining, and he got very discouraged. And he stopped e-mailing his list altogether. When he wrote to me, though, he told me that he hadn’t sent his list any e-mails for almost a year.
Now he wants to re-engage with his list. But he’s concerned about getting a high unsubscribe rate when he re-engages. He’s also tossing around the idea of what type of message to send now when he hasn’t been in touch for almost a year.
So, I took my Lenormand deck in hand to tackle this situation for Eugene, to see what the cards could offer him.
The video below reveals the cards in the reading:
If you prefer to read the post, here it is:
Since I knew the subject of the reading was Eugene’s e-mail list, I went through the cards to find Letter. Letter is a card of news and messages; it’s a card of written correspondence, making it the perfect card to represent an e-mail list. This e-mail message needs to serve as Eugene’s manifesto of service to his potential customers and clients (which are what the people on his list are, in actuality).
Finding the Letter card in the deck, it goes in the center of the line of five cards. I will also include the two cards coming before Letter, and the two cards after. This is the Line of 5 for Eugene: Clouds, Mice, Letter, Dog, and Ways.
Eugene's Line of 5: Clouds, Mice, Letter, Dog, and Ways.
If you’re new to my Lenormand readings, then I need to point out that Lenormand is a system that works best when cards are read in pairs and triplets, creating meaning from the keywords of the individual cards.
The first pair comes from the cards immediately flanking Letter, Mice + Dog.
Mice is a card of loss and gradual erosion and decay. It’s also a card of stress and worry. So, the card highlights the stress and worry Eugene has about the loss his absence has possibly created, but also the loss he fears if people unsubscribe if and when he re-engages.
Dog is a card of loyalty, help, and support. I see this card as the type of people Eugene wants on his list; he wants loyal subscribers, those that will stay on his list, no matter the frequency of his e-mails.
The pair could be read as “loss of help or support.” People sign up to be on a list because of what they are going to be receiving from the sender. They are looking for some type of help and support with the things they are going through. Not being sent any news or messages from Eugene in almost a year could been seen by some on his list as a loss of help and support, and as a result, he could be losing (Mice) their loyalty (Dog), which he is also worried about (Mice).
With Letter between these two, we can see that the cards are validating Eugene’s stress and worry (Mice) about the news or message to send (Letter). The pair of Letter + Dog offer a solution: send a message (Letter) that is friendly (Dog, which can also mean friend/friendship, as a dog is considered “man’s best friend”), as well as offering some form of help or support.
A possibility could be to send a message asking the people on his list to share what it is they might need in terms of help and support where they’re at right now; this gets his subscribers to help him know what types of messages to send in the future because he got it straight from the source.
Moving to the outer cards, we have Clouds + Ways.
Clouds is a challenging card, and often indicates confusion, uncertainty, and doubt. As the first card in the line, it says that doubt was the culprit in getting him to stop e-mailing his list in the first place. Now, it’s a sense of uncertainty that is causing him to hesitate re-engaging. Again, the cards are validating the experience.
Ways is a card of choices, options, and alternatives. It says that Eugene is going to have to make a choice of some kind, as it points to being at a crossroads. This card is also about direction, so it could suggest moving in a new direction, and taking a different approach (another meaning of the card).
As a card of departure, it can suggest that there is the possibility of people moving on, and Eugene has to make the choice (Ways) to let them go. Times change, and with that, so do the needs of people. Just as he is making the choice to engage or not, his list also gets to make the choice to stay or to go.
The pair of Clouds + Ways could be read as “confusion or uncertainty about the best approach.” That again validates the situation. The pair also suggests that Eugene “make the decision to approach the confusion and uncertainty.”
The next pair is Clouds + Mice. Again, validating his experience, this pair says that the “confusion and uncertainty is stressful” for Eugene.
Mice is a great card to appear after a challenging card like Clouds, because it can also suggest that there will be a “loss of confusion,” which translates as clarity. Mice suggests that the confusion will gradually diminish or lessen, and Eugene can’t let the time it takes eat away at him.
The pair of Dog + Ways encourages Eugene to adopt a “friendly approach,” and offering “helpful and supportive options and alternatives” to his list.
Eugene didn’t offer the exact nature of his business, but Dog is a card that can suggest being a guide, someone who offers advice (advisor), or someone who is a consultant of some kind.
To round out this reading for Eugene, I’ll take the cards and form some advice by stringing the words of the cards together, which is called creating a forward narration.
From left to right, this is what I see for Eugene:
Confusion and uncertainty (Clouds) lessen (Mice) when a message is sent (Letter) offering helpful and supportive (Dog) options and alternatives (Ways).
And since I mentioned alternatives, this is just one way to approach this reading for Eugene. There is another, which involves the pips (playing cards) on each of the cards. I’ll talk more about this in the next post…
Until then…
