We recently did a post on How to Build Your Email Subscriber List and another on How to Segment Your Email Subscriber List, so this Q & A seemed an appropriate bookend to the series:

Dear Rich,

I’m getting a lot more unsubscribes lately from my email newsletter and I’m not sure why. What can I do to keep people from unsubscribing from my list?

Frustrated in Farmington

Dear Frustrated,

There are a few tried and true methods to keep people from unsubscribing from your list:

• Stop publishing new email newsletters; if they don’t get them, they won’t unsubscribe.
• Threaten them with bodily harm if they do.

Unfortunately, the first option won’t help you grow your business and you’ll still be paying monthly hosting fees, and the second one isn’t very cost effective given all the necessary travel.

If you are suddenly getting a spike of unsubscribes look to your behavior:

• Did you stop delivering on expectations? If you promised monthly information-rich email newsletters during signup and you’re suddenly sending weekly discounts from the company store, you may get a lot of unsubscribes.
• Did you recently make a major change your email newsletter? People want consistency. A change in design, layout, name, or adding lots of advertising or banners can all turn subscribers off.
• Did you stop providing value? Let’s face it: none of us would be too upset if we started getting less email. Every email newsletter you send out comes with an implicit invitation to unsubscribe. Sometimes the value to provide is no longer relevant to a subscriber; if you sell kids clothing and they suddenly became an empty-nester, your email newsletter no longer holds any value. Other times you put your own interests, such as selling your Webinars or widgets, before the needs of your audience. Whatever you send out, make sure that it provides value to your audience, otherwise they’ll unsubscribe in droves.

Rich Brooks
Email Marketing for Small Business

Photo credit by saneboy