How do you feel when someone unsubscribes from your mailing list? Sad? Disappointed? Frustrated? You have that short and abrupt goodbye email. Don’t view unsubscribes as something negative. They can provide you with a lot of useful opportunities to re-engage.
Unsubscribes give you a chance to reconnect with the customers who are really interested in what you’re offering. A simple ‘goodbye’ email will alert your customers who have unsubscribed in error, or give you one last chance persuade a disengaged subscriber to stay with you.
Re-engage the Benefits
Goodbye emails don’t seem to be particularly widely used. This could be because many people don’t want to ‘bother’ their customers after they’ve unsubscribed. However, one further email is unlikely to mark you out as a spammer. If it helps you retain even one subscriber, it will have been beneficial.
The word ‘goodbye’ can often trigger an emotional response in people. A goodbye email will give your subscriber a chance to assess why they signed up for your messages in the first place. Remind them of the benefits that your mailing list offers. And, as goodbye emails are relatively few and far between, they are likely to stand out in your subscribers’ inboxes, potentially resulting in a very high open rate.
Even if a customer doesn’t respond to your goodbye email, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It will simply show you that they weren’t a good fit for your output. You can remove them from your list and focus your attention on customers who are genuinely interested in what you are offering. You can’t re-engage with everyone.
What Should Your Goodbye Email Contain?
A goodbye email is different to your regular email newsletters. Therefore, it should look different to your regular email newsletters. Keep text and graphics to a minimum. Focus on the message at hand.
Take a look at this example from Monster Pet Supplies:
The entire email gets the message across simply and succinctly. Although it contains their company branding, it is not graphic-heavy. This is in contrast to most companies’ email newsletters. It’s also made very clear how the customer can resubscribe. However, there are a number of ways this email could be improved.
The goodbye email offers the ideal opportunity to remind your subscribers of the benefits of remaining on your mailing list. Include new products or latest offers. Show your customers what they’ll miss out on when they unsubscribe.
A customer might have unsubscribed from your list because you were emailing them too regularly, or your emails weren’t relevant. Your goodbye email can be used to give your subscriber the opportunity to change their subscription preferences. Include a link to a page like this (from Pinterest):
By giving them the chance to specify exactly what they want to receive (and how often), your customer may change their mind about unsubscribing. They may wish to re-engage.
Although it may not win back all your subscribers, the goodbye email can be a great way to identify who is (and isn’t) interested in what you’re offering. Give people a chance to rethink their unsubscribe decision, and you could turn that ‘goodbye’ into a ‘hello’!
