One of the reasons why email marketing is so successful is that it’s permission-based: the only people who will receive emails from you are those who have chosen to receive them. This means that these people are highly likely to be receptive to the messages that you send them. However, the nature of permission-based means that, if people no longer want to receive your emails, you have to comply with that. While no marketer wants to lose someone from their mailing list, you should take every effort to make the unsubscribe process as simple as possible. This will help ensure that you maintain a good reputation as a sender. Here are some tips:
Make It Clear
If you hide your unsubscribe link within your emails, it won’t make it less likely that people will leave your mailing list. It will just make it more likely that you will be marked as a spammer. Therefore, you should always make your unsubscribe link clear in your emails. People are used to looking for a link at the bottom of an email, so this is where you should place it. Don’t bury it in a long list of terms and conditions, and make sure you use the word ‘Unsubscribe’, rather than something vague like ‘Update Email Preferences’.
Paperchase include this at the bottom of their emails, making it very clear what the link does:
Put A Link At The Top
Although it’s standard practice to put an unsubscribe link at the bottom of an email, you sender reputation can be improved if you place yours at the top. This can be useful if your sender reputation has taken a bit of a hit recently. If you put your unsubscribe link at the top of the email, people will be far more likely to click that if they don’t want to receive your emails, rather than automatically click a ‘This is Spam’ link.
Prezzo include a clear unsubscribe link at the top of their emails:
Ask For A Reason
When someone unsubscribes from your list, it isn’t always a bad thing. Although it’s unfortunate that you’ve lost someone from your mailing list, it also gives you the opportunity to improve the experience for your existing subscribers. By asking anyone who leaves your mailing list to complete a short survey, you can find out what it was about your mailings that they didn’t like. You can then use this information to learn about your customer preferences, which will help you improve the marketing emails that you send out in the future. Just make sure that your survey is quick and simple to complete; you don’t want to aggravate your unsubscribers further!
Debenhams direct customers to this page when they click the unsubscribe link in their emails:
As an email marketer, it’s likely that your primary objective is to gain subscribers and retain customers. However, this doesn’t mean that you should neglect your unsubscribe process. Make your unsubscribe experience simple, and your customers will thank you and your reputation will remain strong.
