Do you find yourself staring at the unsubscribe list in your email database, questioning why your friends abandoned you?
The truth is, even if you follow all of the marketing principles of design AND write a valuable piece of content targeted towards your audience, your audience still might unsubscribe from your email list. What’s worse is that they’ll probably never tell you why they left.
It’s the business equivalent of “ghosting” that leaves us scratching our heads and wondering what we did wrong. The good news is, there are some things you can do to prevent people from unsubscribing.
Here are five tips on how to avoid those dreaded email unsubscribes:
- Re-evaluate What Your Audience Wants and Values
- Respect Your Subscribers’ Time
- Differentiate Content from Your Competitors
- Make Your Content Mobile Friendly
- Keep a Close Eye on Your Email List
1. Re-evaluate what your audience truly wants and values
Email marketing is a powerful tool for engaging with customers, but it’s easy to get it wrong.
Many companies email their customer lists without considering how to create an effective email marketing strategy. These companies aren’t thinking about what the customer wants to hear, they are only thinking about what they want to tell their customers. If you want your emails to be read and acted on, you’ll need to start by thinking about your audience—who they are, what they are struggling with, what they want, and how you can help.
If you’re sending out regular emails and not seeing any engagement or response from your customers, it’s probably time to reevaluate what they want. One way to do this is by conducting surveys or polls within your email campaigns–ask them questions like, “What are your biggest challenges right now?” or “How do you feel about our new product line?”
On another note, don’t spam their inbox with deals and information that doesn’t apply to their personal needs. Your audience will only tolerate so many irrelevant emails before they start unsubscribing from your list altogether. As the saying goes, “spam is for bologna sandwiches.” Treat people like they matter enough for you to put in the effort, and they will stick around!
2. Respect your subscribers' time
The average adult receives 121 business emails per day. That’s a lot of content! So, how do you make sure your email gets read instead of mass deleted with the rest of the emails in their inbox?
Be concise. If you want to get the point across, do it fast and efficiently. If you have a lot to say, break up your email into different sections so that it’s easy for people to scan through. You should also consider linking out to a landing page with longer-form content instead of putting it all in the email.
Use bullet points and numbered lists. Bullet points help guide readers through what they need to know from the most important things first. Numbering items in a list also helps readers scan through quickly and take away the most valuable information.
You can also make it easy for your readers to follow along by using bolded text and italics. These tactics draw attention to important information so readers don’t miss important details when scanning their inboxes.
Finally, you should pay attention to the time of day when you are sending out emails. For example, don’t send a B2B (business-to-business) email on a Monday when you know recipients are coming into work with a full inbox. If you send an email when your audience is potentially cranky, it may unintentionally create resentment towards your brand. Hubspot states the highest click-to-open rates are 10 AM, 1 PM, 6 PM.
3. Differentiate content from your competitors
The key to email is finding a unique angle that will make your subscribers want to stick around. This can include product discounts, presale offers, or exclusive inside looks. Most of your audience is already following you on social media, so why should they subscribe to your emails if they’re just going to receive the same content?
It is important your subscribers don’t feel like you only send out emails when you want something. You must make sure you are compensating them back in some way. According to Hubspot, transactional emails have 8x more opens and clicks than any other type of email and can generate 6x more revenue.
You want your subscribers to feel like they are part of something special, so the more you can personalize your emails, the better! The best way to do this is by including their name in your subject line. Personalizing emails yields better results than saying “Hey, everyone” or “New Product Launching Tomorrow.” Most people want to feel unique—like you’re talking to them personally. Your message should also incorporate plenty of “you”s, “yourself”s, and “your business.” This will make the recipient feel even more like they are a part of something exclusive and unique.
4. Make your content mobile friendly
Mobile-friendly email is essential to the success of your email marketing campaign. One Hubspot study found that 60% of emails are opened on mobile devices. So, it’s important that your message displays properly on these smaller screens.
If someone makes the leap to open your email (based on your clever subject line) only to find that the content is not mobile friendly, they will not stick around to interpret the message. The design needs to be high-quality so that it works on all devices without sacrificing the message.
If you're not launching a mobile-responsive email design, you're missing out on up to 15% of your clicks.
That’s right! A recent study completed by Mailchimp found that when businesses launch a mobile-responsive email design, unique mobile clicks increase by as much as 15%. The study also revealed that the average increase in unique mobile clicks was 7%.
The main areas you want to check for compatibility are:
- Subject Line and Body Text Fonts
- Image Resolution
- Text Block Alignment
- Inline Video Playback
- Embedded Content (e.g., YouTube videos)
If all of these elements display as expected, you’ll have a happy subscriber!
5. Keep a Close Eye on Your Email List
In the digital era, it’s easy to keep in touch with customers. But this convenience can be dangerous if it leads you to ignore your email list.
If folks didn’t sign up for your email (or don’t remember doing it because it was so long ago), they won’t know how or why you are reaching out to them. This may lead to an unsubscribe—or at the very least, no engagement.
One of the best ways to keep a clean list is to ask your contacts if they want to be receiving emails from you, and give them a clear and easy way to opt out. This is especially important when sending unsolicited emails (like those sent as part of an email marketing program).
You might think that you know exactly who your email list is, but there are probably a few people who you haven’t heard from in a while. That’s okay—it happens! Tools like HubSpot’s Email Audience tool makes it easy to keep your list up-to-date and segmented so that you can reach out to each person on your list at the right time with relevant content.
BMD Is Here to Set Your Email Strategy on the Right Path
Most people go about marketing their business the wrong way. They focus on following the latest, greatest trends that they see on social media platforms instead of focusing on what will help build their business into a long term success story. At Brand Mark Digital, we follow a proven digital marketing plan that’s been time tested. That’s why we have clients from all over the world who trust us and our services with their marketing efforts.
Skip the stress, talk to an email expert today!
