You Are The Media (YATM) is the home for marketing misfits. It started in 2013 at the seaside, in England 🌊 The community is built around creativity, interdependence, visibility, experimentation and co-learning.
SHARE
Hi YATMers! I’m Tim Flynn, most recently, as the picture suggests, a new dad to twins, Arlo and Luca.
That was us leaving the hospital last week not fully aware of the sleepless nights ahead. Thankfully, family and friends have saved us with home cooked meals and breaks to sleep!
Alongside that, I also work as an assessor and monitoring officer for Innovate UK, and together with my co-founder Marc, I write Innovate UK grant applications and advise businesses on grant writing. We're also the co-founders of a tech startup called All Axis. We enable retailers to easily create and display 3D online content that loads quickly and looks great
My recommendation today is Bake Off: The Professionals. My partner and I don’t have the bandwidth for anything more complicated than cake in many different forms. It’s easy viewing, light-hearted, and the plot is simple enough to follow even when you’re sleep-deprived.
Tonight (11th at 6pm) we’re running a talk to demystify Innovate UK grants: what they are, who they’re for, and how to write a successful application, that's here. If the timing doesn’t work, message us and we’ll happily catch up.
Numbers tell you what happened. People tell you what matters.
The future doesn’t belong to the people who track the most data, but to the ones who build the strongest connections.
It’s tempting to treat analytics as the map to everything. By this I mean clicks, bounce rates, session length and conversion funnels.
When you build a practice around chasing spikes and optimising for strangers, creativity and real connection get dimmed.
The work that matters isn’t what the widest audience touches for a moment; it’s what the smallest, committed group returns to and acts on.
Keep analytics where they belong, a useful tool and centre your energy on the people who opted in, showed up, replied and introduced someone else to your work.
Why Data Obsession Misses The Point
Last year, like most of us, I upgraded to Google Analytic 4 (GA4) when the deadline noise was loud. Did it give me more metrics? Yes. Was I mesmerised? No.
I still care far more about the newsletter subscribers who reply, the people who turn up to a Lunch Club, and the people who contribute inside YATM Club.
Analytics will show you where people landed and where they left. They’re great at revealing friction. They don’t show intent, trust, or choice. A spike in traffic is a potential audience; an opt-in is a relationship.
People Who Opt In. Audience Connection
An opted-in audience grants you three things no algorithm can, permission, attention, and direct access.
The opt-in for YATM starts when people subscribe to this newsletter.
☀️ Permission means you can talk to someone without a middleman.
☀️ Attention means they’re more likely to act on what you suggest.
☀️ Direct access means you can learn from them, not in aggregate but in conversation.
Simple, personal moves make a difference.
Measure Commitment
Vanity metrics can stand to the side. Commitment signals take over.
Analytics are still useful, for spotting leaks and testing ideas and reporting back, but the signals that should guide creative decisions are the ones that demonstrate choice.
Here are seven signals, that count (from years of figuring out):
1) Replies (qualitative).Number and depth of email replies or the questions people ask. Treat replies as your richest focus-group.
2) Repeat engagement. People who open, click, stay and keep turning up
3) Action taken. Subscribers who complete a small “starter” task. I ask subscribers if they would like to start the newsletter and be the YATM Takeover.
4) Attendance-to-registration ratio. Who signs up and who actually shows up.
5) Conversions that matter. From free to paid, or from reader to active contributor.
6) Referrals and introductions. People who bring others in.
7) Retention and feedback. The people who stay month-to-month and share input
These are the places where data and human judgement meet. Numbers are the indicator; involvement is the evidence.
Practical Moves To Make Your Audience Your Priority
You don’t need to abandon analytics, you need to rescale them to the right job.
This newsletter is my anchor. It’s where the entire YATM database lives, not owned by anyone else. I nurture it so people want to join in, not just watch from a distance.
Small, intentional modifications have made the difference:
🩷 Welcome intentionally. Ask one down to earth question in your welcome message: “What are you working on right now?’ Use the answer to personalise follow-up.
🩷 Create micro-commitments. Give sign-ups a low-risk task (reply, share a resource, read an article). The ones who do are worth your time.
🩷 Design for return visits. Create with others in mind, what’s useful, what’s fun. They need to feel invited to play a role.
🩷 Run micro-experiments with people. Test a new format and ask for feedback. Ship, learn, tweak, iterate.
🩷 Use analytics to find friction, not to decide your identity. A high drop-off means fix the UX, not change your mission.
🩷 Amplify the people inside your community. Feature subscribers, let others lead, hand them the tools to contribute.
🩷Treat your newsletter as a convening, not just distribution. Events, memberships, Lunch Clubs, and Creator Day are where numbers turn into relationships.
Use analytics to validate hypotheses from the conversations you have. They don’t replace them.
Examples From YATM
Example 1) Identity
2025 has been a notable year in terms of identity. Many people in YATM don’t want to fit into an industry box. They’re reluctant marketers trying to promote themselves and their work. From input, we now approach what we do as the home for marketing misfits. We are proud of that.
I learned more from deep conversations (within YATM Club) than months of traffic data. That feedback changed the offer and the language and it changed how people saw themselves.
Example 2) Lunch Club
Our YATM Lunch Club year started in London and the whole occasion was shaped by the people who attended.
We all had a seat at the table and it was the participation from the people who opted in, that made the day.
It felt great as the theme of the event on ‘curiosity’ meant that everyone could join in and give input.
Do you chase clicks, or do you deepen a smaller group’s capability? I’ll take the latter every time.
Example 3) Newsletter to encourage wider connection
Every week someone from the community starts the newsletter and they are the YATM Takeover to introduce themselves and inviting others to connect on LinkedIn.
The invitation is via the email sequence for new subscribers, tmaking sure people feel seen and valued from the start. It also happens from others reaching out if they can start the newsletter.
Everything is driven by the interaction, conversation, which then ripple out into wider connection across the YATM community. No analytics dashboard can replicate that kind of intimacy.
Let’s Round Up
Data is a tool. Use it to locate friction, test hypotheses, and measure the health of systems, but don’t let it become the boss.
The real work is creative. It's about building rituals, finding threads, designing experiences, and inviting people in.
If you start with the people who choose to be with you, the numbers become clearer and more useful. You’ll stop optimising for strangers and start creating for the people who are actually on your side.
My intiial 'hopeful' takeaway - From reading the report, there's a collective yearning for more genuine, human-centred marketing that prioritises clarity, connection and creativity over algorithmic efficiency.
See People You Know Coming To Creator Day?
All good events are in fact, maker spaces. This means it's hands-on and participatory.
I will share the presenters for Creator Day in October, but the emphasis has always been about the people who are joining in. Here are some of the people already booked on, if you would like to come to our Creator Day space, we're going to make you feel at home next May, in Poole.
It goes up on 20th September and it currently costs £185. Use FMseaside to save £20 when you book here.
If you'd like to spread the cost over five months, reply here and I'll sort that out for you. You're going to feel part of a space that was made for all us.
You Are The Media (YATM) is the home for marketing misfits. It started in 2013 at the seaside, in England 🌊 The community is built around creativity, interdependence, visibility, experimentation and co-learning.
