It can be disheartening to see those unsubscribes when reviewing your email response data. Here are a few reasons why people unsubscribe, as well as tips to help you re-engage your audience and send them relevant and valuable content.
Let’s Start by Identifying Your Unsubscribers
Who are these people? And, more important, why don’t they want to receive your emails anymore?
Users who unsubscribe to emails are commonly people who’ve forgotten why they receive your communications or are simply no longer interested in them. They’ve often grown tired of lengthy newsletters and emails about products or services they’re no longer interested in, and perhaps they never were.
The thing is, your audience can become worn out from all the marketing emails that land in their inbox every day. They want to hear from someone who will stand out, help solve their problems and relate to them on a personal level.
Here’s a Few Reasons Why People Unsubscribe
1. You’re spamming their inbox.
You may receive emails from larger retailers and organizations daily or even multiple times a day, so how can emailing your peeps once or maybe twice a week be spamming? It depends on the content of your emails as well as what your audience considers spam.
-> Try giving your subscribers choices for how often they receive emails from you and/or on what topics.
2. You’re constantly selling.
Most people grow tired of feeling pressured to buy a product or service they are not interested in or don’t need. Even worse if it’s repetitive pressure.
-> Unless the purpose of your email campaigns is solely to provide coupons and special offers, be sure to include information your subscribers will find helpful more often than you pitch your products and services.
3. You’re sending content deemed irrelevant, boring, or repetitive by your audience.
Whether you’re rewording and resending the same email sent the previous week, or re-sending the same emails you sent a few months ago, those who’ve been on your list for a while will notice.
-> Make sure to send new content more often than re-sending older content. And, it doesn’t always have to be a long newsletter. A short email with a quick tip can be very helpful and well-received.
Now, How to Re-engage Your Audience?
Sometimes, an invitation to come back is all that’s needed to entice folks to re-subscribe to receiving your emails. Be sure your subject line is enticing and gets their attention, such as: “Thanks for being a loyal member,” Your account is expiring in X amount of days,” or “We think you’ll like these…”.
1. Personalize your emails with subscribers’ names.
Adding a person’s name to the subject line or greeting is a powerful way to connect to your audience. Whether or not they know you, or anyone at your company personally, their brains still receive the same psychological impact as if your company greeted them in person. Switching from general audience greetings to personal greetings is a subtle change that will help get your audience’s attention.
2. Use Segmentation.
Remember, not everyone on your list has the same needs. You can segment your audience into groups based on interests, activity, whether they’ve already bought from you – and what they bought – or if they’re not yet a customer. Rather than “blasting” everyone on your list with the same message, by segmenting you will be able to send emails that better fit each individual.
3. Incorporate a double opt-in system by email verification
A way to help make sure folks want to stay engaged with your emails is to incorporate a double opt-in system. After a subscriber submits their email, send them an email asking them to verify their email.
Double opt-ins are beneficial in two ways. First, this two-step process ingrains the idea into your audience’s mind to keep an eye out for your emails. And second, the extra step can help you weed out fake emails and spammers.
For more tips to increase your email marketing success, see Email Marketing vs SPAM.