5 Ways to Get Your Customers to Unsubscribe Today
You’ve finally done it. You have an email marketing program. You’ve developed some content, collected some email addresses, and are on the path to keeping your customers and prospects engaged through some direct content marketing.
Kudos are in order – but wait! Developing an email marketing program is essential but your work isn’t done yet – keeping prospects engaged and not hitting ‘the unsubscribe button’ is what gives your email marketing program high value for the dollar/time input. The Direct Marketing Association found email marketing’s return to be $40.56 for every $1 invested in 2011.
The danger of unsubscribes is more than just losing your numbers off your list – you may be damaging your customer relationships but you may also be on your way to being blacklisted (blocked from sending emails) by your Internet Service Provider (ISP – think Comcast, Verizon).
Here’s a quick guide to how NOT to execute an email marketing program. My top 5 ways for getting your prospects to unsubscribe today:
1. SPAM Me
In the truest sense of the word – send me email I don’t want and didn’t sign up for. I signed up for your tips on how to improve my public speaking – don’t send me your affiliate link for a Whole Foods Groupon. UNSUBSCRIBE.
Takeaway: Stay relevant and on topic. Affiliate links aren’t all bad but they better be really relevant to your list (and don’t send them out too often) – some email services even block affiliate links (MailChimp has been known to do so).
2. Don’t Get My Permission
Buy my email along with hundreds of others in a list that’s being sold as ‘opt-in’ – I didn’t opt in for YOUR service. Maybe I opted-in through another email sign-up by forgetting to un-check the box that says I’d be interested in ‘other offers’ or maybe you bought my email address from a scammer who lifted it from some personal website. Either way, I don’t know you so I’m hitting REPORT SPAM at the top of my Inbox.
Takeaway: This is one of the biggest violations of the CAN-SPAM Act in the United States. Besides being a legal violation, your list won’t be of any value to you if it’s not a list of people who WANT to hear from you. Keep it legit and your list will stay valuable.
3. CROWD My Inbox
You send me 20 emails a week. I don’t care how great the emails are – I don’t have enough brain space to process that many emails just from you in a week. Unless I specifically wanted to hear from you every day, once a week is quite enough. 20 emails a week = UNSUBSCRIBE.
Takeaway: Respect your subscribers’ time. Tell them how often you plan on communicating with them when they sign up – and then stick to it. Once a week, twice a month – pick a schedule and stick to it.
4. Wait a Month to Send Me an Email
You’ve been collecting email addresses for awhile through a well-placed ‘sign up for our newsletter’ widget on your website. But you’ve just been ‘too busy’ and have been ‘really meaning to get around’ to an email marketing program. So a month after I opt-in, you send me your first email. Having no memory of who you are, I click REPORT SPAM.
Takeaway: If you’re not ready to execute an email marketing program, don’t put the sign-up box on your site. Emails sent less than once per month can equal unsubscribes of 2%-5% (10 times higher than average) – per Vertical Response. Stay ahead of the game – write out 4-8 emails prior to putting that sign-up widget on your website.
5. Write Your Subject Line Like a Late-Night Infomercial
BUY NOW!!!! MAKE MONEY!! You reek of spam when you send an email full of all-caps or exclamation points. I don’t even open your email – I click REPORT SPAM and hope the Internet gods take care of the sender of that email garbage.
Takeaway: Use best practices when writing email subject lines – avoid all-caps, exclamation points and anything get-rich-quick scheme-y phrasing. Keep your subject lines brief, descriptive and intriguing.
Remembering this 5 things when developing and executing your email marketing program will help keep your customers engaged and unsubscribes low.
So what’s an unsubscribe rate you should be aiming for? Vertical Response says between .2% and .75%. MailChimp has a great survey of their customers’ average unsubscribe rates (and other email stats) organized by industry.
Do you have a favorite way of keeping your unsubscribes low? Share it in the comments – let’s hear it!
