Do You Know Why People Are Unsubscribing From Your Emails?
By Ryan Pinkham @ConstantContact
Let’s be honest, no one enjoys having people unsubscribe from their email contact list.
With all the work you put into growing your list and the time you spend designing, creating, and sending emails—it’s never fun when someone decides to say thanks but no thanks.
But while losing contacts is something we all dread, it’s also a reality we all must accept.
Whether you’re an email marketing expert, with years of experience and thousands of contacts on your list or a business owner who’s just getting started—you’re going to have people who decide to unsubscribe from your list.
And while you certainly cannot (and should not) expect people to stay on your list forever, you can certainly learn a lot when they decide to walk away.
It’s not goodbye, it’s just see you later
Having someone unsubscribe from your emails is not the end of the world. And in most cases, it’s not the end of your relationship with that customer or client either.
Customer relationships don’t begin and end with an email signup or unsubscribe. For your customers, signing up for your email list is an added bonus of being a loyal customer. Their reasons for signing up will be different based on their particular needs and interests but overall, joining your list is about making life easier for them.
Just because they opt out doesn’t necessarily mean they’re done being a customer.
So why are people choosing to opt-out from your list?
Last year we asked 1,400 consumers that very question. Here’s what they had to say:
- 69% Too many emails from the business/organization
- 56% The content is no longer relevant
- 51% The content wasn’t what I expected
As you can see, for these consumers the decision to opt out had less to do with their perception of the business and much more to do with the overall email marketing strategy.
Just as consumers sign up with certain needs and interests, they also sign up with different expectations for what they’re going to receive. When you fail to deliver on those expectations, you lessen the chance of keeping contacts engaged and increase the chance of having them unsubscribe from your list.
How to learn from customers who unsubscribe
While you shouldn’t bang your head against the wall every time someone decides to unsubscribe, you should take the time to better understand the factors that lead to their decision to opt-out.
That doesn’t mean confronting them in your store or calling them to ask them to explain themselves. (If their decision to unsubscribe didn’t end their relationship with your business; that most certainly would.)
But there is information readily available to you today, that you can use to develop a better understanding of why people decide to opt-out.
First off, you have your reports
Looking at your email reporting is the easiest way to track the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. The “positive” metrics like opens and click-through rates allow you to see the type of interest your emails are generating and the type of engagement that’s actually taking place.
The “negative” metrics like opt-outs and spam reports have a lot to teach you about your email marketing as well.
Your opt-out rate shows how many people received an email from your business and made the decision to unsubscribe.
Having a few opt-outs per email, shouldn’t trigger any red flags. In fact, by giving those readers the opportunity to opt-out you’ll likely be improving other metrics because you’ll be removing less unengaged contacts from your list. (We typically say that around 2% is a normal opt-out rate for an email campaign.)
A spike in opt-outs however, is typically the result of a change that did not go over well with your readers. Remember that the top reasons people unsubscribe are related to frequency, content, and subscriber expectations.
In addition to looking at the content and frequency of your emails, you’ll also want to consider how your list changed over that particular period. If you’ve recently begun sending to a new list of contacts or ran a promotion to help grow your list, there may be a period where some of these contacts decide to opt-out.
But if each time you add a new group of contacts, your opt-out rates for the next email go through the roof, you may need to take a fresh look at the signup process you’re offering consumers. It may indicate readers were expecting something different when they decided to join your list. (continue @ConstantContact)