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Probably one of the most distressing things in marketing is when someone unsubscribes or opts out of receiving your emails. You’ve been trying so hard to create great emails and keep your contacts interested and engaged, right? Then why would anyone unsubscribe? Does that mean your efforts are falling flat?
As for the first question, there are many reasons people opt-out of receiving your content, namely:
Most Common Reasons Behind Email Unsubscribes
59% Too many emails.
43% No longer find the brand or information relevant.
43% Don’t recognize the brand or don’t remember signing up.
26% Unsubscribing is easier than marking as junk/spam.
24% Don’t like/trust brand.
21% Had a bad customer experience.
Source: 2019 DMA report
Now, if a user decides to unsubscribe due to receiving a bad customer experience or losing trust in your brand, it’s best for you to do whatever it takes to fix that thing and make sure any bad impression / experience is handled in a positive, respectful manner.
If they opt out because they are bothered with receiving too many emails, then you should definitely adjust the frequency of your sent emails, or even better: let your subscribers deice the number of emails they shall receive and how often they are going to receive them from you.
If they unsubscribe for any other reason that you believe is not enough to trigger such action, it’s best not to take it personally and to make it as easy as possible for them to opt out.
Why? Because the easier you make it on them, the better lasting impression they’ll have of your company, possibly even inspiring them to keep in touch in a different way, such as following you on social media. Sometimes “goodbye” in this sense could simply mean “see you later.”
However, if you’re seeing a higher-than-normal level of unsubscribes, the first thing you should do is take stock of your email marketing efforts to make sure you’re doing everything you can to deliver useful, interesting, valuable content to your subscribers. Here are the things you need to check:
Are your email subject lines grabbing the recipient’s attention? After all, some unsubscribes could be a result of the recipient deciding they no longer want to receive your emails based on the subject line alone. Make sure your email subject lines are descriptive, engaging, and clearly convey the value (not merely your selling opportunity) the reader will receive by opening the email.
Almost half of people who unsubscribe from emails do so because the content of the emails is not relevant to them. In some cases that can’t be avoided—someone who was very interested in baby registries a year ago likely has no interest in them now, for example—but in other cases not finding the information relevant just means it’s not holding their interest.
To ensure you are delivering content that is relevant, interesting, and valuable to your customers, make sure you have a good understanding of your target audience and create content designed to address their specific needs or interests.
Map your content to the customer journey so you have enough content for all stages of the buying process—awareness, consideration, and action—and segment your email list so you’re sending the right content to the right people.
Unfortunately, email lists degrade about 22% per year as people change or abandon email addresses, or simply stop engaging with your emails. Those “bad” addresses act as dead weight, dragging down your open rates and preventing you from maximizing leads and conversions. To keep your email lists as “clean” as possible, there’s no need to wait for unsubscribes. You can simply through your list manually or use an email list cleaning service to remove invalid addresses. If you also plan to drop un-engaged subscribers from your list, be sure to send them one last “Are you still interested?” checking whether they still want to be on your list or not.
Voila can guide you through all steps related to writing the right subject lines, creating compelling email content, managing your contact lists and more. All you need to do is get in touch with our expert team.