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Wikus Engelbrecht is a writer, journalist and digital poet at GraphicMail, an international email and mobile marketing service provider. His professional career in language and media has traveled the film, print advertising, magazine publishing, food theatre and online content industries since 2003.

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Three Ways to Lower Email Unsubscribe Rates

Written on
Jan 31, 2012 
Author
Wikus Engelbrecht  |
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Three Ways to Lower Email Unsubscribe Rates

GRAPHICMAIL – Over time an email marketing list may erode as people lose interest in your offerings or, worse yet, become annoyed by your newsletter sends. Regardless of the reason, emailers have to accept a certain amount of list depreciation as things go on, but when that list begins to lose too much mass too quickly, it might be time to consider a few ways to stem your unsubscribe rate.

There’s always something you can do to save some of your subscribers. Following are three day-to-day campaign tips that are sure to minimize your opt-outs:

1) Listen to your readers.

First of all, in opt-in email marketing, a subscriber ignored is a subscriber lost — which is why you need to take whatever campaign feedback you get seriously, while you still have that person’s attention. A little remedial communication is always a lot easier than getting someone back onto your list after they’ve left.

Most of the time, though, people will unsubscribe quietly and without logging any complaints, despite all of your hard work to keep them satisfied. When this happens, you need to take the opportunity to solicit feedback from them and act on it. Chatting to a disgruntled reader who has opted out probably won’t help you save that email recipient, but it may help you prevent future subscribers from leaving your list.

2) Customize email frequency.

Are you bombarding your subscribers’ inboxes, or leaving them too scarce for their tastes? Just as you could let them choose the types of emails they receive, you should also let subscribers adjust the frequency at which you send to them. A major step in preventing unsubscribes is in letting your email newsletter recipients tell you what frequency is right for them, which can vary from daily, to monthly, or anything in between.

Everyone on your list will have a different frequency that’s the best fit for them. So, offer customized email frequency options at the bottom of every email and also on the page to which your unsubscribe link navigates, as a final effort to retain your subscriber. You can send these emails to your inactive subscribers, too, asking them to select their ideal sending frequency to re-engage and prevent an impending unsubscribe.

3) Improve you segmentation.

The more specific your email subscriber segments are, the better able you are to deliver content that speaks directly to their interests, making you a welcome fixture in their inbox.

Not everyone signs up to your newsletter for the same reasons — they live in different places, they have different behavioral patterns and they like different products. This being the reality, marketers need to split up their lists and craft messages accordingly. Email segmentation is important because it allows you to deliver only the most relevant, customized content to your subscribers. Suppose you could create two or three different offers that would appeal to different groups of your subscribers, depending on their needs, wants, interests and objections. The more relevant an offer is, the more likely someone is to take you up on that offer, and the less likely they are to unsubscribe.





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