Understanding Unsubscribe Requests
Subscribers unsubscribe for the following reasons:
Irrelevant content: Subscribers may find your emails irrelevant or uninteresting.
Too frequent mailings can rapidly lead to a fatigued audience and unsubscribes. Poor deliverability-if your messages are landing in spam folders for example-can also lead to unsubscribes, as subscribers might want to avoid receiving spammy messages in the future. Technical issues with either your email service provider or the email client of subscribers can cause unsubscribes. Managing Unsubscribe Requests
Make Unsubscribing Easy: There should be an unsubscribe link visible in your emails. This shows respect for subscribers' choices and adds to your good reputation.
Process Unsubscribes as Bulk Email Data Soon as Possible: Give back to unsubscribes as soon as possible to avoid further annoyance. Remove subscribers from your list when requested.
Anaylze Unsubscribe Reasons: Where possible, offer subscribers an opportunity to indicate their reason for unsubscribe. This may give you insight as to how you can refine your email marketing campaigns further.
Segment Your List: Segment your subscriber list based on interests or preferences to deliver targeted and relevant content to them. This helps reduce unsubscribes by not cluttering subscribers' inboxes with e-mails they do not want to see.
Rethink Email Frequency: Understand the frequency that you are mailing them and replace this with a different frequency, if needed. Too many emails can overwhelm your subscribers and result in unsubscribes.
Monitor Deliverability: Keep a tab on email deliverability. If your emails land in spam folders, it results in unsubscribes. Sometimes you may have to involve your email service provider to help you improve your deliverability.
Snooze Option: You may want to consider giving subscribers an option to snooze their email subscriptions from you. This will afford those who could be suffering from an onslaught of email fatigue to do so without removing themselves completely.
Unsubscribes to Your Advantage: Analyze unsubscribe data to improve future email marketing. Look for trends and patterns that can help you determine what does and doesn't work.
Additional Tips
Value: Let your emails be of value to your subscribers. This may potentially reduce your unsubscribe rate and improve engagement.
Transparency: Always be transparent with your subscribers as far as best practices in email marketing are concerned. It will help in building trust and loyalty.
Preference Center-Offer subscribers the ability to manage their email preferences.
Control unsubscribes and not only will your future email campaigns be improved, but so will the quality of your subscriber lists, too. Unsubscribes happen and are part of email marketing. The better your understanding of the motives that lead subscribers to unsubscribe and your proactive approach to those motives, the better the relationships you are able to establish and maintain with subscribers, which, in turn, can help you achieve your marketing objectives.