Taking Advantage of an Unsubscribe Event

in Email Marketing, Online Strategy / Web Development

Email is a proven, consistent performing channel for driving direct sales, customer retention, brand engagement and value adding communication. Of course driving maximum value from your email list requires a strategic plan that considers the needs and desires of the individuals in your list, and delivers targeted, relevant messages in a timely manner. Strategies are often based on individual interest areas, user triggered communications and offers and product / purchasing life-cycles.
 

Recent work with a client reminded me that one strategy that is often neglected is how to best deal with unsubscribes. Email, being a permission based channel, is going to involve a continuous stream of unsubscribes for one reason or another. Now any good email management platform will handle legislation compliant, and best practice methods of providing a recipient an easy and quick method of unsubscribing from your email list. This commonly involves a double-opt out method (an initial action followed by a confirmation) to ensure the recipient really wants out. Once the double-opt out requirements have been satisfied, the system immediately and efficiently prevents the recipient from receiving further emails.

Now in an ideal world we would only have subscribers and no unsubscribes as our list grows with highly engaged, active and satisfied recipients. However, people will unsubscribe for a number of reasons - their interests or responsibilities change, the feel they are receiving emails too frequently, they are receiving emails too infrequently, they don't find the communications relevant, they don't find any value in the communications, they don't like the look of the communication, they don't like the tone of the communication and so on.

Unsubscribes should not be seen as a bad thing - they do contribute to maintaining a list of engaged and active recipients, however the problem is that we don't often know why they are unsubscribing. This is valuable information that may assist us in further segmentation of our list, refinement of our message and satisfaction of more customers. Devising a strategy around unsubscribes can not only lower your unsubscribe rate, but can also help you drive more value from your entire list.
 

Following are a few of strategies to consider:

• Send a goodbye message reminding the recipient of the value of your email communication with instructions to easily re-subscribe.
• Ask them why they are unsubscribing and collect feedback and reasons that may help you plan future communications. If you are using a double-opt out system, in the confirmation step, you can ask the unsubscriber to complete a short survey to explain their reason for leaving. Combine this with the tip above and you might keep the contact.
• Offer them different content. Perhaps you have the recipient in the wrong segment of your list. Offer them a subscription to your other segments or alternate content.
• Make them an offer. The unsubscribe process can be an ideal time to make them an offer they can't refuse. If they take up the offer, you may actually retain them and strengthen the relationship. The offer should be relevant and based on the profile data you have on the recipient. If you maintain profile data that is indicative of the value of the particular customer, you can use that to vary the generosity of the offer.
• Give them access to update their own profile and preference centre. This is more a strategy to prevent them from unsubscribing in the first place by allowing them to control the type, frequency and content of the email communications they receive from you.