When your telecom company puts a lot of time and resources into executing a well-thought out email campaign, it can be puzzling to see that readers don’t want to hear from you anymore.
What’s the first thing say to yourself when someone unsubscribes from your email list?
- Was the content not relevant to them?
- Did I send the email at an intrusive time?
- I knew I should have done [fill in the blank] instead!
Although the questions above are important to ask, it’s also time to stop taking email unsubscribes so personally. Contacts unsubscribe for a variety of reasons, and it’s important to analyze why. But don’t get hung up on sending an email at all for the fear of people unsubscribing. Unsubscribes are inevitable, and a lot of times, actually a good thing. Here’s why:
Email unsubscribes save you time
About once a year, we suggest going through your email list and deleting (or unsubscribing) contacts who have not opened one of your emails in the last year or even longer. When contacts unsubscribe themselves, this saves you the time and hassle of manually unsubscribing unengaged contacts year-after-year.
Note: This may seem extreme, but if a contact has not opened one of your emails in a year, they most likely never will!
Email unsubscribes improve the quality of your list
Unsubscribes help clean your list overtime by eliminating contacts who are unlikely to convert. Although your list may get a little smaller, the contacts who are on it are more likely to engage with your content.
This leaves you with:
- a higher quality list
- increases in open-rates and click-through-rates
- better insight into what’s working with your email marketing
Email unsubscribes help with overall email deliverability
Deliverability is a way to measure the success at which an email makes it into subscribers’ inboxes, and spam complaints can be a significant factor in how deliverable your campaigns are.
Email service providers can tell if a domain gets a lot of spam complaints, which causes their emails to go straight into spam folders. Unsubscribes help lower the amount of spam complaints, since people will generally unsubscribe before making a complaint.
Engagement rates, such as your open and click rates, are also taken into account when calculating your email deliverability. As unengaged subscribers remove themselves from your list, you’re left with those who are actually engaged with what you send. This will help your engagement rate and deliverability.
Email unsubscribes give insight to problems with your emails
Unsubscribes can also help uncover an issue with your email you may have overlooked. A few possible problems are:
- Wrong messaging / target audience
- Rendering issues on mobile
- Rendering issues with a particular email client (i.e. Outlook, AppleMail, etc.)
Although unsubscribes can be a good thing, the number should be kept within reason. According to Mailjet, a good range is between 0% and 0.5% but this also depends on what industry you are in. As mentioned above, high number of unsubscribes can affect deliverability. The typical amount of unsubscribes you receive will depend on how big your list is.
Also, keep in mind how your email list was acquired. A purchased list is more likely to receive more unsubscribes than a list that has been built organically through opt-ins.
Lastly, make sure your email marketing is legally compliant, too. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 requires marketers to offer recipients an unrestricted option to opt-out, so always be sure to give people a link to unsubscribe.
When it comes to email marketing, Mojenta can assist with the occasional email blast, a robust campaign, and everything in between. Contact us to chat more about what fits your needs best.
