9 tips to reduce your email unsubscribe rate
Email marketing is a personal way of approaching your target customers. Best part about email marketing is that you own the channel, you have direct access to your list.
It connects with people more vibrantly. Email marketing can convert its readers and viewers into members, customers, and even supporters. It is a more economic and cost-effective way of reaching out to your target audience. Customer acquisition and retention can only be driven effectively by personalized email marketing strategies.?Email marketing campaigns ?are cost effective, have higher customer retention, high returns on investments, and many such benefits. While using an email marketing software or a database list, you can simply track the email-open rate, the number of links opened, and the exact subscribe and unsubscribe rates.
There are multiple reasons why people would unsubscribe to your emails. Although unsubscriptions can be disappointing, you can track the unsubscribe rates and determine the reasons for the same. There can be a variety of reasons but these three reasons are the most common:
Unsubscribes has its pros and cons, just like a double-edged sword. It is disappointing when you lose your subscribers and prospective customers. However, it also functions as a self-cleaning process for your database list in deleting unproductive subscribers. Is there a good unsubscribe rate to email marketing?
Unsubscribes < 0.2% : Considered within the norms
Unsubscribes > 0.5% : Needs improvement
This is an estimated rate according to?Smart Insights . These are a few tips to reduce your email unsubscribe rate.
1. Keep A Memorable Opt-in Process
One of the most common reasons for people to unsubscribe from your list is because they don’t remember that they have subscribed to you in the first place. Step one is to ensure a high-quality email contact database that is full of people who have willingly opted to receive your emails. Crafting such a productive email contact list starts with allowing your website visitors the opt-in button for a subscription to your content through email.
As a marketer, opt-in email marketing allows you to receive user permission to contact them regarding updates, sales, etc. There are two ways your visitors can become customers through an opt-in process:
Single Opt-in
In a single opt-in process, the subscribers don’t need to re-confirm their subscription. It simply allows the visitor to enter their email address in the ‘enter email-id’ tab and click the ‘submit’ button to become prospective subscribers added to your email list. In this way, your subscribers can start receiving your emails immediately.
Double Opt-in
In a double opt-in process, your subscribers sign up via your uploaded subscription form on your website. After filling the form, an email is sent to their email address that consists of a clickable link for a re-confirmation of receiving emails from you.
Comparison
One of the biggest benefits of having a double opt-in process is that you would be having a database of more engaged people who have re-confirmed their subscription to your content. Also, the extended link to re-confirm makes it easier for the subscriber to remember you. Reporting your emails as ‘Spam’ is less likely to be from the confirmed subscribers with double opt-in. Too many spams can affect your website reputation and email deliverability. In case if any subscriber hasn’t confirmed the subscription, it wouldn’t show on your database list of email contacts and will not receive emails from you till they confirm those. Hence, their email won’t be directly flooding with emails they haven’t subscribed too. This also proves to be beneficial for your business as you would be having an updated list of?engaged subscribers ?only!
Yet the double opt-in process has its own disadvantages as well. It is slightly longer than the single opt-in process and can put off some subscribers. The more steps it takes, the less likely are some people to complete the re-confirmation process. With double opt-in, people may sometimes forget to click on the re-confirm links. Due to this, you may lose potential customers. On the other hand, a single opt-in process allows your database list to grow faster and immediately connect with your new subscribers.
2. Send Emails Frequently
There are no rules for email frequency. But if you send a few emails, you could be forgotten. And, if you send too many emails, your emails could end up in the spam box. Have an email frequency that you can maintain and be sure to make a mention of that in your ‘welcome email’. Once you are able to produce sufficient content, conduct a survey for your subscribers to help you know if they want to receive content frequently from your end.
Automatically reduce email frequencies for non-responding customers.?You could set a database that tracks the engagement level of each customer to reduce the number of emails sent to non-responsive subscribers.
For different segments, have different frequency of emails.?The same frequency rate is not going to fit all segments of customers. If certain segments have lower open or click response then consider decreasing the frequency while they are inactive.
Allow customers to choose their email frequency for receiving your content.?This option can be given while subscribing in the "community preference center" section.
3. Have a Personal Approach
People receive billions of emails, out of which a more personalized one has better open-rate. They also deliver higher transaction rates, from converting your subscribers to customers. To craft personalized emails, write them as you would be talking to them in person. The conversation would be exactly how you would be talking to your favorite customer. Some specific tips to have email personalization are:
Dynamic Content
As a business owner, dynamic content allows you to determine and decide which subscriber can view what kind of content in your email-thread. This means that you can create and send different email content to different segments of customers for a specific campaign. Use personalized subject lines to let the customer be more interested to click on the email.
Additionally, no new emails need to be created. The same campaign can have different versions of the same email for various customer segments.
领英推荐
Power of Integrations
As a marketer, you can use email integration software to synchronize your leads’ information. Many such e-commerce platforms can provide statistics about the number of clicks, bounces, and open-rates that your email has received. This can help you to manage your email subscriber lists and have access to their personal data that they have provided while subscribing. Including this data in your email content makes emails more personal to the subscriber. A personalized email is less likely to trigger the unsubscribe option.
Automation For Relevancy
Marketing automation emails are sent to customers by an email marketing tool. This tool allows you to create different content for different customers at every stage of the customer journey. The more personalized the email feels to the customers, the more engaged they will be with your brand. Sending membership renewal emails and many more like these, show the customers that you are paying close attention to their needs.
4. Optimize For Smartphones
Customers?check their emails on their smartphones more ?than accessing them on a desktop. This number is going to increase as smartphone users have convenient access to emails and the internet anywhere and anytime. So, optimizing your email content for the smartphone is necessary. If a customer opens your email but cannot read or view your content, you have already lost a customer!
Pay Attention to Preheader Text
On your smartphone, the subject line is important as it’s the first thing noticed. But, the preheader text below the subject line is equally important. This is the text that is going to load before your email body on their smartphones and you must ensure the preheader text must highlight the important information first.
Keep Content Short
Most customers are scanners while reading an email or webpage. When a customer sees your email, all you have is 3-5 seconds to grab the smartphone user’s attention. Keep content to the point. Include your call to action and important information in the first half of your email. Use icons, clip-arts or pictures to represent what you are talking about instead of text. Enlarge the fonts for easy readability and keep images medium or small sized, as big images may need scrolling and this can put off a viewer.
Make Icons and Buttons Touch Friendly
Clickable links and icons need to be a little larger on smartphones to make it easy for people to click on them. Important buttons or call-to-action needs to be of a certain size that is visible on your smartphone. It needs to be large so your customers can click on it without zooming in. Also, for your subscription form fields, keep the space large so one can easily tap and start to type their details without zooming in. The standard size for touch-friendly icons and buttons is 44x44 pixels.
5. Ask For Feedback
Your subscribers and customers will be having opinions and will most likely be happy if they are heard or replied to. Don't hesitate to ask your customers what they liked and didn’t like about your brand. This is how you would get a spectrum of answers and decide which products do well and which don’t. Feedbacks also help in email marketing. When you know which content did better than the others, make sure you maintain consistency until another feedback is sent. The easiest way to get mass feedback that can be graphed is by conducting a survey on your website and sharing this feedback link in every email. This also applies to those who unsubscribed to you. Don’t simply let them click ‘unsubscribe’ and leave. Ask them for a feedback as to why they’re unsubscribing and what would make them rethink.?Negative feedback and reviews ?affect your email marketing efforts.
6. Use Different Content Format
Your content should have images or GIFs in between paragraphs to maintain the reader’s interest. You can even share videos or links to your YouTube channel. Engaging readers with vivid content reduces unsubscribe rates. You could also include event information in the different content forms instead of just text. Think of creative ideas to market your brand through email.
Unsubscribers can be disappointing to business owners. But, there are ways that can help you with a more polite response to these unsubscribers. Some good practices may let the unsubscriber rethink of his/her actions.
7. Don’t Hide the Unsubscribe Link
This is for not isolating your subscribers. If they choose to unsubscribe to your emails, having a prominent link may be more polite than hiding the unsubscribe link and frustrating the customer even more. Have the unsubscribe link or button at places for the subscriber to notice it easily. A little consideration may change their mind.
8. Have an "opt down" Instead of Unsubscribe
A simple link of "update subscription preferences" can make the subscribers control how often they would want to receive your emails. Keep options open for weekly and monthly emails instead of daily emails that will less likely be opened by the subscriber.
9. Include A Short Survey After Unsubscribe
Having a short survey when a subscriber clicks on unsubscribe gives a gist of why exactly the action was taken. This allows you to make a note of things why people are unsubscribing. Each time a subscriber clicks unsubscribe, have a pop-up survey appear with just 4 to 5 answer-options asking for the reason for leaving. This feedback will definitely help you identify the biggest reason why an unsubscribe button is clicked.
These are some tips to help reduce your email unsubscribe rate and how you could be thoughtful in addressing your un-subscribers. When someone unsubscribes, don’t take it personally. From a business perspective, you must try your best to make the un-subscriber rethink of the action taken. To reduce your email unsubscribe rate, it’s best to?hire an email marketing expert? to ease this process for you. An expert’s advice on email marketing can be more fruitful than trying a DIY method.