What would cause someone to unsubscribe from your email list? We’ve shared on numerous occasions that you should have a mailing list in my Why bother with email marketing post and we have Eleven tips for successful email marketing as well. But what would cause a subscriber to throw up their hands and hit that “unsubscribe” button? I have done this a lot lately. As part of paring down the number of emails I get I have taken a number of steps. The first is to establish an email account just for mailing lists. Period. That’s all it’s for. That way I can segregate all the things I’m interested in but don’t need to prioritize. The wonderful offers, info, mailers and more that may be relevant, but often aren’t. But what would cause me to just throw up my hands and unsubscribe altogether? Too many emails
Let’s face it, we all get a lot of email messages. If you have subscribers who have asked to be on your list, treat this as something of incredible value because it is. That individual has told you that they trust you not to cram their inbox with tons of stuff that is likely not relevant. What promoted this whole post is that one of the companies I am very interested in receiving information from finally got cut off completely and that makes me kind of sad. That company would send multiple emails per week, sometimes multiple emails in a day. If you don’t open these with any regularity, and that’s pretty typical, eventually you’ll look down your list and there are tons of unopened emails from one sender. That’s when I decided enough was enough. It’s far, far better to send one email per week with a summary of the various things you’ll want to share. For example, in my RV-related blog our emails will have notifications of new podcast episodes, new blog posts, updates on new discounts and deals and more. But the recipients only get one email per week. That was what I promised them and that’s what they get. Irrelevant content If you are granted permission to send emails about a subject or business and you stray from that, be prepared to get unsubscribed from. Nothing is worse than making the promise that you’l share information about one subject and, suddenly, here comes an email about something else. For example, I gave my email address to a company who does tips on podcasting. Then I found that they would send infrequent emails about deals and discounts but still relevant to the podcasting industry. At first these very infrequent emails didn’t bother me much, but then they became almost as frequent as the main emails I had asked for. In the very beginning when there were deals on gear, they would include them in their monthly wrap-up emails and I was totally fine with this. I already have the gear I need so I could just sift through what wasn’t relevant to me to get to what was. Lately when I didn’t have the time to open emails of theirs for a week or two, suddenly I look down the list of unopened emails in my inbox and there are a noticeable number of emails from this sender and most of those are deals and partner offers. So now I’m off that list, too. Partner offers and relevant discounts and deals are fine as part of the main email and I absolutely realize the appeal of sending your recipients emails with partner offers as this can be a lucrative way to use the power of your voice. I do it. But it’s also a great way to lose the trust you have built with your audience which is why, if there are relevant partner offers, I’ll put them in the main emails and put them toward the bottom. Other reasons Another way to lose people is to send make-up emails. We all make mistakes, but it just looks bad when you look down your list of emails that you’ve received and there are two within a short period of time, one with a correction. It’s better to be late than inaccurate Formatting Finally, emails with lousy formatting really bug me. Maybe I’m too picky but I like simple, readable emails. Those that always have a different look and have more graphics than text just don’t make the cut. In my case, and that of many, many others, I have the graphics automatically turned off so emails that are graphic-heavy may not even convey a message. Furthermore, you don’t know what device someone’s going to be reading your emails on so stick to text with links to your website where they can see the pretty pictures. This shows-up perfectly on all devices. Comments are closed.
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Tony BarthelTony Barthel is passionate about great marketing for small businesses Get Free Weekly Marketing TipsCategories
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