Category: Entrepreneurship, Marketing

6 Email Marketing tips for Reducing your Unsubscriptions

Sometimes I wonder about sharing my secrets since it makes competition harder but then it pushes me to just think of something new. On my way to breakfast I just had to get these out. These are some things I am learning about email marketing from running AppSumo.

Here’s an excel chart where you can calculate how much your email unsubscriptions are costing you. Guess how much I am losing after a year? Way higher than I expected…

Email Unsubscription Costs

email unsubscriptions costs calculator

(This is from a Facebook ad spend for AppSumo)

Download the email unsubscription calculator for Excel and try yourself or use Google Doc

Without further ado:

1- Suggest them to follow you on Twitter when a user tries to unsubscribe from your email.

A few people said emails clog their inbox and wanted less communication. They’d be okay with Twitter. Also, you can try to suggest them a lower frequency email when they try to unsubscribe.

2- True 1 click unsubscribes.

I personally hate email. I unsubscribe and filter almost every email that annoys me. To me long-term loyalty and good experiences make me much more likely to use your service. I HATE clicking unsubscribe then having to login, find account page, etc. I just filter those emails and forget about you forever.

Consider even putting the unsubscribe link at the top, Ramit really reminded me about quality > quantity. Having people who really want your emails is infinitely more valuable than just having a big list. Size doesn’t matter.

3- Save them at the unsubscribe.

This was something I built at Facebook. Ask the user why they are unsubscribing and offer a solution at that point. You may be able to save them.

3- A/B test your email provider for deliverability.

We found using aweber.com that many of our emails would go to spam on Gmail so we are split-testing the list with MailChimp.com and finding better results.

4- Offer pausing of email instead of unsubscribing.

Not sure where I saw this but as I am on vacation now there are a few San Francisco activity emails that I had to unsubscribe / forward since I’m not around for awhile. I’ve seen this on some site but can’t remember, they offered me the chance to pause emails and gave me a few choices (1 month, 3 months, 6 months).

5- Consider the name of your email list

Sometimes when you unsubscribe or signup for an email list you get to see the name, “Suckers who signed up for my service.” Is not a good one. For AppSumo I call one list of people who I really like “Gold,” you can name it VIP or whatever. Just something to be considerate of.

And my all-time favorite: I personally email every single person who unsubscribes. Please don’t try me:)

I apologize for the email and ask how we can improve for the future. The responses you get from this are a gold mine. It is a nightmare to get people and most just let them go without a fight. It takes time to get people to 1) be aware of your service 2) go there 3) sign up and the actual cost may be around $3+ per email sign up. It is WAY easier to keep them to then to go and find someone new, duh.

Any other good ones?

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