Too often I receive a blast from a small or medium sized business that just makes me cringe. For example, the other day, I received an email from a company that had information in it for its current clients, which I am not. It made no sense that they sent it to me, but odds are, they sent it to their entire list. There are clear ways to increase your unsubscribe rate, and not sending relevant information to your entire list is the biggest one.
According to an Epsilon Study in 2009 67% of North Americans unsubscribe from a company’s email list because they found the content irrelevant. Follow the tips below to increase your open rates, decrease your unsubscribe rate and encourage overall engagement with your email readers.
6 Steps to Decrease Unsubscribe Rates:
- Use your email provider to create segregated lists. No matter if you only have 50 subscribers or if you have 30,000 subscribers, each subscriber is unique, has his/her own needs and should be treated as such. Remember your lists are only seen by you and your marketing team so do not worry about the subscribers knowing which list they are on. Utilize the list option in your email platform and separate subscribers by services, products or client type.
- On your sign up form create interest choices. This is the best way to truly gain an understanding of what you client wants. Let your client decide which list they want to be on! Keep the choices less than 6, as too many choices can lead to a subscriber abandoning the sign-up altogether.
- Import your own list of current clients. Keep an updated list of your current clients in your email database. Use this list to send updates about client related events, updates, and information that pertain to just the active customer. The same goes for creating a list of potential customers. Think of each subscriber as in a different phase of the purchaser’s path. Your email communications need to nurture each lead appropriately according to his/her place on that path.
- Keep the titles (and content) relevant to the audience. Even if they personally signed up for your list, a subscriber still needs motivation to open the email. Make sure the title is as relevant as the content in the email!
- Only send one large communication piece to the entire list per month. The second reason people unsubscribe? Too many emails. If you are sending more than one large blast to your entire list each month, you become a nuance and also devalue the information you are sharing. By limiting your large blast to once a month, you create anticipation from your customers. Make sure your ‘entire list’ email combines “something for everyone”.
- Make sure your “forward to a friend” button is prominently displayed. Did you know that depending on your email provider, and unsubscribe process, if someone forwards your blast to a friend (using the traditional forward method, not the button in your email), the friend can unsubscribe the original subscriber? All the friend has to do is forget it was sent as a forward and click the unsubscribe button. To avoid “wrongful unsubscribes” make sure you place the “forward to a friend” button at both the top and in the footer of the email. By using the button, friends can not unsubscribe for the sender.
Before covering the tips on how to increase sign-ups, you need to be clear on why you want more. People often think the larger number of sign-ups means you are doing better at marketing your business. This is not the case. It’s what actions the subscribers take after reading the content- that matters. 
Therefore, you need a newsletter goal. Each piece of communication should have a planned purpose and desired outcome prior to sending it. Once you have an idea of what action you would the readers to take, you can strategize the content you want in it.
6 Tips to Increase Newsletter Sign-ups:
- Create Sign-Up Forms. This seems simple enough, yet I have seen many clients that enter in emails personally whenever they get them and don’t provide website “passerby’s” to sign up on their own. Remember that there may be a potential customer who is not ready to call you about services, but is still interested in your content. By providing sign-up forms on your site, you are supplying customers with an easy and non-pressured way to learn about your company.
- Place the forms everywhere! Have a link in the navigation of your site titled “newsletter”. You should provide sign-up forms in the sidebar of your site and buttons to sign up on appropriate pages. You should also have a sign-up extension on your Facebook business page.
- Opt-in option. No reputable email platforms these days allow you to use unauthorized or purchased emails. If you want to gain the trust of your readers, gain their subscription and ultimately gain their business, make sure your opt-in (and opt-out for the matter) options are set correctly and easy to manage!
- Provide subject choices. Email open rates will increase when the email is specific to the needs of the reader. Provide a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 6 different subject check-boxes for new sign-ups. See example here by click here.
- Clearly state the value. Explain in a sentence or two above the newsletter fields, what the reader will receive or how they will benefit by signing up. What makes your emails unique? Keep it short and sweet.
- Make the emails forwardable and sharable. Make sure you have a “forward to a friend” option inserted in every email communication that goes out to the public. You also want to connect your newsletters with your Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook pages to autopost. And thirdly, insert social sharing buttons in each email campaign. As outsiders see the emails from a friend’s (whom they already trust) page or a forward, they are likely to sign up as well.
Recent Comments