The River List

About

This website has been set up to broaden the reach of local businesses, and provide one calendar for the area. We are very diverse – Alma, Nelson, Pepin, Stockholm, Maiden Rock, Bay City, Red Wing, Lake City, and Wabasha – yet we are also one community. The challenge is how to find what you are looking for, be it music, theatre, mechanic, or dentist, it can take a lot of looking and asking before you locate it. Because I get asked all the time “where can I”, this website was born.

In 2014 Pat Carlson asked me if I would forward things out via email to her lists while she and Wally went away for much of the winter. I quickly agreed, and as we got deeper into what she was doing and how she was doing it, I recognized that I would need to make it easier. She had different lists to forward on different things, and I knew I would never be able to keep it all straight. She agreed to let me do that, and once I had it all set up let me know that it would be great if I would just keep doing it as she didn’t want it back.

Uff da. Well okay then! Sure! Why not! What in the world was I thinking, I thought to myself.

At the time I had a Constant Contact account so that’s where I started. If memory serves, and it may not, there were around 250 people on her lists. As of this writing, January 2019, there are 465. I fully expect that number to jump as this website gets going.

I moved to MailChimp in 2017, and added a picture to the top of the email. Until that point it had been only text, and I intend the one picture to remain. Adding this website will do nothing to change the email, I promise! The open rate for the email is around 60%. It drops about 6% in the winter, probably due to those who leave the area for warmer climes. And that open rate is achieved within a few hours of the email being sent. The audience has learned to watch for it on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and they very loyal. It’s free to list things in it, and you can subscribe to it here.