You might think all your emails are relevant to your target email lists and that your content is great. Your readers might not. Hence the unsubscribe button. It’s a requirement email marketers hate. The good news is, there are a few clever and smart best practice tactics that you can adopt to make sure your unsubscribe button gets ignored.
1) Avoid bombarding your contacts with emails
The first rule of thumb, don’t bombard your contact lists until they are forced to click unsubscribe! Email at a reasonable pace and drip-feed them information that is interesting and informative instead. Even if it isn’t relevant to them right that minute, you’ll find that people will keep you in their inbox until you send them something they HAVE to act on.
2) Make it easy to unsubscribe
Sounds counter-productive we know, but the more people feel reassured that you’re giving them an out, the less likely they are to act on it. It’s only when email subscribers are deprived of something that they will find any way to escape. If you don’t give them this option, they can label your email spam, which is worse in the long run.
Try it for yourself. Encourage people to unsubscribe and see how many actually act on it. If anything, it’s a quick data cleanse done for you. The rest you know you are targeting with the right information.
3) Play on their emotions
The more emotive your email, the more often it connects with your audience. So why wouldn’t you play on their emotions? Tell them that you’ll miss them or give them a message about your time together that gives them a reason to pause. No one likes the feeling of rejection – whether the rejector or rejectee. Being humble and apologetic, while sincere, can also play on their guilt. Use this to your advantage. It’s all about that human connection.
4) Make the consequences clear
Tell them that they’ll never receive another email from you again, even if they do business with you. Or list all the things they will miss out on once they’ve unsubscribed from you. No one likes missing out or realising that it may potentially hinder their business with you later down the line. Making this an excellent way to make your email subscribers think twice before unsubscribing.
5) Word your unsubscribe carefully
We don’t mean re-word your unsubscribe button in such a way to confuse them.
“Are you sure you don’t want to unsubscribe? [Yes] [No]” is not the way to clear unsubscribe methods. No, what we mean is change the language to play on the above factors. Examples include:
- Unsubscribe from awesome content!
- Opt-out if you really have to….
- Part ways with us
- Say goodbye for now!
The intention is clear but in a friendly, human way that keeps your email subscribers interested in working with your brand.
6) Make the unavoidable work for you
One thing you just can’t escape is that you might not be for everyone. Maybe they found a different solution, signed up by accident, or just don’t like your content. At any rate, you want to know which of the above deterred them from your website, your product, and you. When unsubscribing, see if you can get any feedback from the less satisfied contacts via online surveys. Even a handful of comments on what could be improved will help you avoid more unhappy subscribers in the future.
You can read more of our email marketing best practice here.
Better yet, if you’re looking to maintain your subscription rate why not have a look at these common email marketing mistakes.