What Can Your Unsubscribes Tell You?
So, you’ve given consumers the option to opt out of your emails. Not only are you being CAN-SPAM compliant, but by suppressing your customer list (optimally in real time) you’re practicing good marketing. Unfortunately, people are taking advantage of your unsubscribe buttons.
Now what?
I’m not going to tell you what people normally say after a bad breakup. It’s time for some tough love. It’s not them, it’s you. That’s not very helpful, but it had to be acknowledged to recoup and move forward.
Time to Focus on a New Game Plan
When a customer unsubscribes it can seem like all your hard work has been wasted but you can learn a lot from your customers who choose to opt out. Why are your customers unsubscribing? When are they unsubscribing? Answering these basic questions can help you answer a much tougher one, where do you go from here?
Keep reading to get some insight on how to plan your next email move and how to make your customers not only stick around but be excited to hear from you.
Look at Unsubscribe Data
Look at the facts. Did you get a downpour of unsubscribes with your last email? A light sprinkle? Do your unsubscribes mimic the Sahara? (Don’t we all wish?) It may seem intuitive to make reactionary decisions and simply not repeat an email that got negative reviews, but the real lesson to learn is that the more data we have at our fingertips the better decisions we can make.
While it’s good to make note of specific occurrences of awesome (or not so awesome) feats of marketing, consider utilizing different platforms to see a bigger picture. Try CAKE or HasOffers to see how the unsubscribe rate for a given date and publisher corresponds to their conversions for the same time period. Likewise, look at data in your ESP to see how the unsubscribe ratio compares to your open and click through rate to see if you can detect any overall patterns.
Segment
Consider segmenting your emails. Here’s an article from Marketing Sherpa that outlines some legit claims in favor of segmentation.
We here at UnsubCentral can also help you with your list maintenance needs, check out this article for a great starting place on how to segment your lists within UnsubCentral. As usual, we want to hear your thoughts and feedback on what your unsubscribes are telling you!