How to Better Manage Unsubscribes with Email

Every day we are attacked by advertising and newsletters from hundreds of companies. We signed up for some of them, others were added automatically after purchase or registration.

It is not so easy to deal with this. Nevertheless, mailings are still an important channel of communication between brands and their audiences.

Recent studies have shown that people are interested in newsletters. However, sometimes letters that were relevant before, cease to be so. In this case, people want to be able quickly and easily unsubscribe.

Despite the fact that users no longer want to receive your emails, the unsubscribe process is still important and should be well debugged.

You should understand that the complexity of unsubscribing or outrage of the user in the process of this action would not be useful. This is short-sighted.

A person may still like your brand, but he just does not want to receive emails anymore. Keep in mind that if people receive unwanted emails, it will soon become annoying and diminish his trust in your brand.

Even worse, if the unsubscribe function takes a lot of time and requires concentration and attention, users will start marking your letters as spam in order not to receive them in the future.

In many email clients, just one click is enough to mark a letter, as undesirable, but such action by one person will reduce the possibility of delivering your messages to other subscribers.

Therefore, here are some tips from Delivra on how to prevent this bitter unsubscribe flow.

4 Ways to Manage Email Unsubscribes

1. Segment your list
2. Send a welcome email
3. Pay attention to your CTR
4. Send a reengagement email

While you should never welcome a growing unsubscribe rate, it’s still important feedback. It’s a sign that your email marketing efforts have room for improvement.

Act quickly and you can stop the problem in its tracks, or even reverse its progress completely.

Of course, it’s better to manage unsubscribes right from the beginning, so you never find yourself in a dire situation.

Fortunately, there are four practical ways to manage unsubscribes effectively so their number never gets out of hand.

1. Segment your list so the right information gets to the right people

Without a doubt, the most important rule for keeping unsubscribes to a minimum is segmentation.

No matter how niche your market is, it’s still made up of different types of prospects. Treating them all the same by sending everyone the same email is a sure way to lose subscribers.

Here are just some of the ways you can segment your email list:

• Demographics
• Time Zone
• Amount Spent
• Past Purchases
• Website Behavior
• Frequency of Purchases

The better your segmentation is, the more each recipient will feel their content is personal. The more they feel this way, the more they’ll look forward to each email, and the less likely they’ll be to unsubscribe.

2. Send a welcome email that creates the right first impression

According to CIO, one of the main reasons people unsubscribe from email lists is simply because they didn’t know or remember they’d subscribed.

We all know the feeling of receiving an email and wondering how the sender obtained our address. In the case of emails, this generally equals a quick unsubscribe.

Therefore, one of the easiest ways to manage unsubscribes is to abstain from shady practices like buying lists or scraping email addresses to add to yours.

Doing either is going to cause more harm than good. Once you have a clean, segmented list full of people who want to receive your emails–you should be sure to send a welcome email to each new lead as they come in.

Here’s a great example from Craftsman.

It also sets the stage for the value that’s yet to come: “What matters most to you?”

3. Pay attention to your CTR (click-through rate)

Every email marketer needs to keep a close eye on their open rates. If you see yours falling, you know it’s time to make some changes.

However, it’s just as important that you watch your overall CTR. You want to know that people aren’t just clicking to open your emails but are also clicking through the CTA (call-to-action) you’ve included. That’s not to say every email needs a CTA, but whenever you do include one, review the CTR.

When CTR begins falling, subscription rates aren’t far behind. That’s because a lackluster CTR speaks to an audience who isn’t very engaged with your content.

It’s not encouraging or exciting them enough to want more from your company.

If your emails are being opened, it means the general topic and subject are probably fine.

Instead, check your length. It might need to be shortened. Next, look at the format of your emails. Are you splitting up the paragraphs, so it’s easy to read? Or is it just all one big block of copy which might be intimidating for your readers to wade through?

You might have to play around with it a bit, but never simply accept a falling CTR.

Know that you have to start making some changes before your next email goes out.

4. Send a reengagement email when recipients quit opening your emails

As we just touched on, the other big metric you need to watch at all times is your open rate.

If you see that number start to wither, you know the problem is probably what you’re mentioning in your subject line.

Either you need different topics, or you need to convey their value better. You may need to segment your list more closely, too.

Then there’s a slightly different problem: some recipients may have simply given up on your emails.

They may not have unsubscribed yet, but for whatever reason, they’ve decided it’s not worth their time to read your messages.

Before you decide to remove them from your list–which we’ll cover next–try a reengagement email. As the name suggests, it’s an email literally designed to re-engage someone who has quit opening your messages.

One of the best examples of an incredible reengagement email comes from Mini:

“Are you out there?” pretty much captures the whole intent of the email.

The company also does an absolutely fantastic job of offering numerous options for engagement.

Recipients can choose the reason they haven’t been opening Mini’s emails.

Better still, the email is entertaining. Questions like “Are you in jail?” or “Are you too busy selling fundraiser candy bars?” are definitely good for a chuckle (the corresponding choice of actions are humorous, as well).

It might even be enough to encourage recipients to look out for other emails from MINI in the future. Are they all this funny?

Finally, the very last option is, “Are you just holding out for the right deal?” In that case, MINI provides a CTA to find out about their financing options and pre-owned vehicles.

Don’t give up on recipients who seem to be ignoring your emails. You have nothing to lose by sending them a reengagement email to see if you can spark their interest.

The most important thing to remember about unsubscribes

Managing the number of recipients who unsubscribe to your company’s emails is absolutely essential for its overall ROI.

However, don’t make the mistake of thinking that people dropping out of your list is always a bad thing.

Surprisingly, unsubscribes can be phenomenal for your email list. Just like you sometimes need to prune a plant, it helps to trim down your list every now and then to ensure it’s made up of actual prospects.

Here’s how Wave manages their unsubscribes:

They actually send an email telling prospects to either start engaging or they’ll quit receiving email messages.

Summary

No list is impervious to recipients dropping out. However, using your industry average as a benchmark, you must manage unsubscribes so that the number doesn’t get out of control.

Delivra could help you keep it to a minimum and won’t just keep your list valuable–it will also show you how to continue providing value to recipients, which is ultimately how you’ll end up converting them.