Keeping Them All In – 3 Ways to Minimize Unsubscribe Rate from Your Email List
“There’s a fine line between friends and pests: Friends are always there when you need them. Pests are always there. Can I be your pest?”
- A greeting card
As an Internet marketer, you can either be a friend or a pest. Your prospects can either think of you as both an authority and a buddy or they can perceive you as a no good spammer who’s out to rip them off.
I’m sure you don’t want to be the latter.
Nobody wants to be seen as a creep, but every so often, Internet marketers who are new to using mailing lists and email blasts get a little trigger with the send button. The most likely outcome us either getting banned from using your mailing service or seeing a high volume of people who unsubscribed from your mailing list.
Once a subscriber leaves your list, you automatically lose the chance to make him or her a loyal customer.
Fortunately, it isn’t hard to figure out why customers opt-out of the list, and finding out how to keep them all in it is equally simple to do and implement in your email marketing campaign.
Reasons why customers opt-out of an email list
There are many reasons why people unsubscribe from a list. Some opt-out for very personal reasons, while some opt out because of any or a combination of the following reasons:
- Spam. All they see is unnecessary clutter in their inbox. Subscribers reach a certain point when they wonder why they subscribed to your newsletter in the first place.
- Messages that are overly promotional. Promotion is at the heart of every email marketing campaign, but over-promotions prove to be detrimental to your strategy.
- Lack of real value. Customers opt-in for the value that they can get. They are on a constant lookout for anything that could solve their problems or for anything that they find extremely useful.
Now that we’ve laid out the three major reasons why customers hit the unsubscribe button, let’s talk about the remedies to help you keep all your subscribers in and keep them motivated for the long haul.
Below are three best practices that you should implement right away to make your email marketing campaign this year a success:
- Decrease the number of emails you send on a regular basis. I don’t know about you, but I find it a bit annoying to find my inbox full of messages that I don’t read anyway. There’s no exact rule as to how frequent you should send out your email, but remember that less is better. Sending out email twice a day is way too much, and you could get flagged for spamming.
- Educate more, promote less. Always remember that subscribers opt in to your email newsletter for the value that they get out of it. People willingly give their email addresses because of the promise to receive valuable information, and you need to deliver on that promise – always. That’s why you should always provide your subscribers with information that relate to their interests, and we’re talking about FREE information here. For every three or so emails that you send out to your subscribers, keep the promotional messages to just one email.
- Keep it short, Shorty. Content is king, yes, but a content that is short yet jam-packed with extremely useful information lords over them all! Remember that, just like you, your subscribers don’t have all time in the world to go over ultra-long email messages that are nothing but fluff. Just give them exactly what they need in a succinct way.
By keeping in mind these best practices your subscribers will appreciate you and love you even more. In fact, experience has shown that by keeping your messages short, informative and less promotional, your subscribers will even pass your messages along to people who they think would also benefit from them.
Keep it short and sweet.
Andy “can I be your pest?” Jenkins
