Another one bites the dust! If that’s how you feel on a daily basis watching notifications come in about email unsubscribes, maybe it’s time to figure out why you’re losing users.
There are lots of reasons why people leave an email marketing list, and if you can identify the ones that apply to you, it might be possible to do something about them. Here are the most common causes for readers disappearing suddenly and without warning.
It’s Raining Email
Research suggests that the primary reason users leave a list is that they receive too many messages. As much as 69 percent of unsubscribes are caused by this, which means it’s an important point for you to take note of. On the other hand, sending too few emails is also a recipe for losing subscribers, because if a user gets your email only once or twice a year he (or she) might lose interest in what you have to say.
Manage the fine balancing act of keeping your company top of mind with readers while not overwhelming them by offering them weekly, monthly or other options when they sign up. Then make sure you send them only the ones they want to receive.
(It’s a) Long Walk To Freedom
When Nelson Mandela named his famous autobiography he couldn’t have known how appropriate the title would be for email marketing. Long pieces of text are great for SEO, but an email that extends below the fold on the recipient’s screen is likely to be too long to read. If your user has to scroll through screeds of copy to get to your point, you’re likely to lose him.
Send liberating emails that deliver the message strongly in the first 100 words and use images, infographics and text formatting methods to break up the monotony for the reader and improve deliverability of your message. Instead of posting your full text in the email body, publish a synopsis of your message and link to read the rest online.
Size Does Matter
To be sure it does, especially when you’re talking digital imagery included in a marketing email. Emails containing large graphic files or high resolution photographs tend to slow down many subscribers’ Internet connections. When users with smaller bandwidth, large quantities of traffic, corporate restrictions on downloads or simply live in remote areas struggle to receive emails, they often unsubscribe to spare themselves the frustration.
Keep your emails small enough to load quickly by limiting your images to 30 percent of the content, and never send out emails that comprise images only—no matter how great you think that completed reno project looks. Test your email marketing sending it out using several different types of connections, and if any of the content slows it down then remove it before sending.
An Everlasting Sales Pitch
Everyone hates sales-y content. Well, almost everyone. The only time a user wants to see it is when they’re looking for a list of features and benefits for a particular product. At that point, they’re usually mid-way through the buying decision and don’t need to be convinced. So including any type of sales pitch in your email marketing is a sure-fire way to get unsubscribes.
With 5 percent of users who leave a list attributing it to not getting what they expected, it’s important to note that they expect useful information rather than a sales pitch. Follow the same rules as you do for content marketing: provide valuable information, don’t over-sell and use strong call-to-action buttons to generate leads.
Dull ‘n’ Deadly
Spare yourself the embarrassment of being labelled “boring,” or you’ll lose readers at the speed of light. Check your stats to see what your users are engaging with and give them more of that. Make sure your email marketing offers so much value that it counters any irritation the user might experience from getting the messages. Post material that can’t be found on your blog, website or social media, so the user gets value from receiving it instead of simply looking in those places.
