How to deal with customers who unsubscribe your email list

Email marketing is one of the most common online marketing strategies. And while there is so much information and many training courses on how to build a mailing list and how to convince web traffic visitors to opt-in to a newsletter, internet marketers should also be concerned about those who unsubscribe mailing lists.

There will always be some who unsubscribe a mailing list; the recognized normal rate is about 0.2%. But it’s always unpleasant to notice a spike in the number of unsubscribers. One reaction is to get angry and blame yourself. That’s not going to help much.

A better way to achieving as a low an opt-out rate as possible is to learn why customers decided to click that unsubscribe button.  Actually, there is a positive slant to this if you think about it. Remember the old adage, “What can be measured can be fixed!”  Opt-out rates can at least be measured and dealt with. What about those subscribers who immediately delete the email? You can’t track that information!

It may not be able to directly ask them unless you’re willing to call them personally (if you have the information), but by analyzing your own marketing patterns, a number of improvements in customer interactions can be implemented.

Here are several ideas that might help you analyze why some people chose to unsubscribe from you mailing list.

Frequency:  This works in both directions although almost always it's because messages are too frequent. Sending several email promos a week can often be frustrating for subscribers whose email boxes are already too full.    

Relevant content: This might be obvious although there are some twists to it. If your audience is rather broad in profession, level of management or skill set, it may be difficult to always capture the attention of all your readers. In one company, the sales team was getting a high level of “unsubscribe alerts”.  The overall unsubscribe rate was acceptable but when the unsubscribes were analyzed by job title, it turned out that senior execs (the most valuable names in the database) were unsubscribing at 25 time the overall rate. They realized that the content they were delivering was not relevant to senior executives!

The importance of content also points to the idea of expectancy. If people signed up to your list to receive a newsletter, they won’t be too pleased to receive mail just full of promos and links to products.

Mode of communication: With the increasing use of mobile marketing and social media, it may be that some subscribers prefer these methods of communication rather than email. Do you maintain parallel roads of contact with your customers?

Change in position:  There is a lot of business lost by people moving from one company to the next. So the unsubscribe may not be your fault at all, rather you will now need to find who has filled the position vacated.  Maintaining parallel links with your customers can help in obtaining this information.

Aside from thinking about these points, useful information can be gathered “on the way out.”  Instead of just having a “Thank you and goodbye” unsubscribe message, you may want to think about how to turn unsubscribes into either re-subscribes or to receive helpful feedback from them. For instance you may say “We want to thank you for your subscription and we’re sorry to see you go.” Then ask if they would mind answering 1-2 short questions about why they decided to leave. Not everyone will fill this out, but some will. Maybe offer them other newsletters or information you have. Maybe they would agree to be contacted at some time in the future?

So, you can actually use your unsubcribers be help improve your conversion rate. That's pretty cool!

Hope this was useful for you.

To your success,

Mike Firer

NimdX Admin